English: (Recto) The Plain of Athens, October 1852 (continuation to left on verso of PAI0876); (verso) the Bay of Salamis from the Piraeus road

No. 29 of 36 (PAI0849 - PAI0884).

(Recto) Panoramic study across one-and-a-half sides of a sketchbook, inscribed on the left-hand part sheet, top, 'Plain of Athens / October 8th 1852' and along the bottom 'Mt Pentelion' (left sheet) followed on the right sheet by [Mount] 'Lycabettus / or St George', 'Acropolis / Mars' [or Main] Hill' and 'Phillopapus'. In the foreground two Greek men in traditional dress look out across a roadway flanked by farm buildings, beyond which stretches a plain of green cultivation and olive trees towards the hills of Athens and the mountains beyond. Between Lykabettos and the Acropolis, the outlying parts of Athens itself appear as a low white mass of buildings. The ruin on the Museion (or Phillopappus) Hill is the remains of the elaborate 2nd century AD monumental tomb of this highly regarded Roman citizen of Athens (d. 116). To the left of the watercolour, filling about half the left-hand page is a careful pencil study of a neat-looking merchant brig at anchor (see verso of PAI0876 for details).

(Verso) A not fully finished watercolour, inscribed top left, ‘Salamis Bay from / the Piraeus road Oct 8th 52’ and top right above a rocky eminence on a hill, ‘Xerxes’ chair’. The view looks down on the Bay of Salamis from the north-east (the Athens direction), with the road bending round to the left towards Piraeus beyond a male figure in Greek costume sitting on a rock. Warships anchored in the bay, with Salamis island behind, are beyond reasonable doubt the British squadron including Mends’s ‘Trafalgar’. The straits of Salamis to the left, round the headland, and on the far side of the island, were the scene of the Greek city states’ defeat of the navy of Xerxes, emperor of Persia, in 480BC.

The Plain of Athens, October 1852