A pair of sketches of the port cities of Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, and Muscat, Oman. A label on the reverse of these sketches incorrectly identifies them as drawings taken from the album of sketches for James Justinian Morier’s Journey through Persia and Asia Minor to Constantinople in the years 1808–1809. They are, in fact, preliminary sketches for woodcuts to illustrate James Silk Buckingham’s 1830 book Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia. A prolific travel writer, Buckingham wrote several volumes on his journey overland to India. In this, the second volume, Buckingham picks up in Baghdad in 1828 and ends in the port of Muscat. The sketches he made during his travels were then handed over to a professional artist and illustrator, William Henry Brooke (1772–1860), to transfer onto wood before a separate engraver finished the job. The sketch of Ras al Khaimah illustrates the heading of chapter 8, vol. II: ‘The Chief Port of the Wahabee Pirates’.[1] The illustration of Muscat, the focus of chapter 9, seems to have been dropped in favour of an engraving from a painting by ‘[William Frederick] Witherington, after a sketch of Colonel [John] Johnson, of the Bombay Engineers’.[2] The names in pencil in the top righthand corner of each sketch, Williams and White, refer to the intended engraver. According to the list of figures, a Williams and a White did work as engravers on this project, but the sketch of Ras al Khaimah was eventually engraved by a Slader.

Several watercolours by William Henry Brooke for the same publication are held in the British Museum, London. A sketch of the tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, Iran (no. 2014,6012.3) is labelled no. 16; a sketch of Kazerun, Iran (no. 2014,6012.2), is labelled no. 19; and a view of Aqar Quf, Iraq (no. 1957,0221.6), is labelled no. 21.

[1] Buckingham, James Silk. Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia: Including a Journey from Bagdad to Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, Researches in Ispahan and the Ruins of Persepolis, vol. 2. London: Colburn, 1830, Chapter VIII, p. 338. Accessed online via https://archive.org/details/travelsinassyria02buckuoft on 11.12.25.

[2] Ibid., p. 392.