A watercolour of a bearded man, sitting to right on a small box: with packages around him and figures sketched in behind him; wearing a hooded cloak; with the artists initials on the box at left. Inscribed on the mount below: Pilot Alexandria.

In October 1861 Egron Lundgren (1815-75), an intrepid and seasoned traveller, embarked on a tour of Egypt with fellow artists, George Price Boyce and Frank Dillon. In 1858 Lundgren had been in India, with the British army, where he made many drawings and watercolours recording the conflict and unrest following the Indian Rebellion against British colonnial rule.

This is a watercolour from the Indian Sketches album comprising watercolours and drawings by Egron Lundgren, Nicholas Chevalier, Count Gotz Burkhard Seckendorff and Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. Most of Lundgren's works within the album are set against a backdrop of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and were presented to Queen Victoria. Chevalier's watercolours represent high-ranking Sikh and Ceylonese [Sri Lankan] people who would have sat to the artist during his visits to India and Ceylon while journeying with Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, on the homeward voyage aboard HMS Galatea in 1870.