Study for Mehmet Ali Pasha, c. 1844. This drawing was a study for a larger watercolour (now at the Victoria and Albert Museum) of Mehmet Ali Pasha, considered by many as the "Father of Modern Egypt." While European travel to the Middle East burgeoned during the mid 19th century, Lewis was more intrepid than most, living and painting in Cairo for a decade. Upon his return to England in 1851, he astonished London audiences with more than 600 watercolours that conjured an exotic world of sumptuous colours and textures articulated in painstaking detail.