Charles Robertson

‘O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; Thy temple have they defiled.' Psalm LXXIX 1.

‘”The Wall of Wailing, Jerusalem” Charles Robertson. A most singular picture, having an immense amount of labour in it. The enthusiastic priests and figures on the ground are splendidly painted. Altogether it is a rare and valuable work – one that should hang on the walls of one of our cathedrals, only there is little chance of getting art into these large edifices.’ Liverpool Mercury, 23 September 1878, p.8

In AD70 the Romans destroyed the Temple of Solomon in the city that is now Jerusalem, leaving only the Wailing Wall or Western Wall (Ha-kotel ha-maa-ravi in Hebrew), standing. Parts of the wall date from the 2^nd Century BC and today form part of a larger wall that surrounds the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. It has been a place of Jewish worship from the early Byzantine period - rabbinic belief states that 'the Divine presence never departs from the Western wall'. European travelers coined the term 'Wailing Wall' after witnessing the mournful vigils of devoted Jews at the site of the sacred temple.

Charles Robertson was born in Walton-on-Thames but left England in his youth to live in Aix-en-Provence in France; he later moved to Italy. It may have been in France that Robertson saw and was inspired by the European fashion for North African scenes. In 1862, at eighteen years of age, he first travelled to Algeria and was instantly fascinated by the local culture and customs. Although he had a home in Godalming in Surrey, he loved to travel and embarked on numerous painting expeditions to Morocco, Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus and Turkey. His works, which recount everyday scenes in the Arab world, were exhibited at the Royal Water-Colour Society and the Royal Academy in London. His devotion to Orientalist subjects reflects Britain's enduring fascination for the Muslim world. He followed the example of earlier artists including John Frederick Lewis and David Roberts as well as contemporaries such as Carl Haag, all of whom sought authentic, unvarnished representatives of daily life in the Arab countries. Robertson dealt with rituals of religion and warfare as well as genre subjects set in cities and desert landscapes of those countries and was praised for his 'rendering of oriental life and manner’ (Illustrated London News, 8 May 1886).

Robertson was one of many European artists moved and inspired by the sight of Jewish worshipers at the Wailing Wall. Notable depictions of the same subject include several by Gustav Bauernfeind’s, the most spectacular of which is The Western Wall (Sotheby’s, New York, 1 February 2024, lot 353) and Carl Werner’s The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1880 (Sotheby’s, London, 26 October 2021, lot 18).

Robertson painted several depictions of the Wailing Wall, the first probably the watercolour dated 1872 (private collects ion) which was followed in 1873 by an oil (private collects ion). A watercolour The Wall of Wailing, Jerusalem (Christie’s, 15 June 2005, lot 67) was shown in an exhibition devoted to Robertson’s works on paper at The Replica Handbags Society in 1892, a year after his death. In 1877 Robertson showed at the Royal Academy a painting entitled The Wall of Wailing, Jerusalem with the same Psalm quoted, which is presumably the present work - the date of 1878 was probably added by Robertson when he re-exhibited the picture at Liverpool.