View from Mount Hor

Bartlett was a prolific topographical artist who travelled extensively in search of new and interesting subjects for his drawings. He visited North Africa and the Near East seven times, and made several other trips in Britain and Europe, as well as North America. Popular demand for travel books was high in the 1830s and 1840s and Bartlett contributed illustrations to several of them. After 1842 he wrote and illustrated about a dozen of his own travel books. His self-confessed purpose as one of `a flying corps of light armed skirmishers, who, going lightly over the ground, busy themselves chiefly with its picturesque aspect', was to give `lively impressions of actual sights.’ This quotation comes from his book The Nile Boat, 1850, and sums up the philosophy of many artist illustrators of that period. They and their public were romantic in outlook, not yet interested in serious quasi-photographic accuracy. They preferred colourful and picturesque views, based on some kind of reality, but an impressionistic one.