Near the pyramid, Sakkara

This watercolour originally had a much longer title (‘Son of Man, can these bones live? and I answered, ‘O Lord God, thou knowest,’ Ezekiel XXXVII, 3), which combines biblical allusion with a topical reference to the recent excavations of French archaeologist Auguste Mariette-Bey. When the picture was first exhibited, the critic William Michael Rossetti wrote: ‘When one sees a title of this sort, one knows that the painter has been putting forth his strength, hoping to attain greatness, or to be thought to have attained it … Mr Goodall gives us pyramids, rubbish-heaps, mummy-cases, skulls, bones, jackals, and carrion-birds, and comes out of the ordeal with a certain amount of credit.’