#custure

Painted twenty years after John Frederick Lewis returned to London after a decade in Cairo, this picture’s title is a quotation from the Epistle of St. James in the New Testament, yet the work apparently depicts a Muslim man reading from the Koran. The cross-cultural ambiguity is complicated further by the close resemblance of the reclining sick woman to Lewis’s wife, Marianne; furthermore, the cross-legged reader appears to be a self-portrait of the artist. A panel on the wall bears a relief of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor, and above this is a quotation from the Koran: “We have embraced the faith, so forgive us.”