Lewis spent ten years in Cairo between 1841 and 1850. He was visited there in 1844 by the novelist WM Thackeray, who described him as living 'like a languid Lotus-eater - a dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life'. Thackeray was impressed by the city, remarking that he 'never saw such a variety of architecture, of life, of picturesqueness, of brilliant colour, and light and shade.'

This watercolour, depicting the house where Lewis was living, combines highly worked, brilliantly-detailed passages with unfinished areas, notably the extreme left of the watercolour and the figures on the right-hand side.