Labourers carrying coal up a gangway to a ship at Port Said

Howard employed light, fluid watercolor washes and loose brushwork to convey movement and fleeting light. The figures are suggested with quick strokes, their forms barely defined, while the gangway and ship are indicated with minimal tonal shifts. This approach prioritizes immediacy over detail, aligning with the conventions of travel sketching. The transparency of the medium enhances the sense of heat and air, reinforcing the atmospheric conditions of the Egyptian coast.

The watercolour was part of a small album of sketches Howard made during his 1891 journey to Egypt. After his death, the album remained in private hands until it was offered at Christie’s in 1969. Its inclusion in the sale suggests it was valued as a personal document rather than a major artistic work. No public institution held it prior to this, and its current location is unrecorded in major collections.

Howard’s sketch reflects the broader 19th-century practice of amateur artists documenting colonial and commercial ports during steamship voyages. Port Said, as a critical node in the Suez Canal, attracted observers interested in the intersection of labor, technology, and empire. Such sketches, though informal, offer quiet testimony to the human infrastructure supporting global trade networks of the era.

Though not widely exhibited or studied, Howard’s watercolours contribute to a lesser-known archive of British travel art from the late Victorian period. Their value lies in their unembellished record of everyday labor in imperial contexts. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds other works by Howard, preserving a broader, if modest, body of his observational drawings from this period.