This beautiful, light-filled painting by Noel Harry Leaver is wrought from watercolour heightened with bodycolour on paper, all held within a giltwood frame. The painting portrays an intimate urban scene located at the confluence of several streets; a large mosque predominates, its dome and minaret defining the background, its masses blanched white by the midday sun. Several figures, dressed in Middle Eastern garb, populate the small square in front of the mosque, all beneath the pale blue sky. Leaver was celebrated in his own day, and is celebrated today too, for his Orientalist watercolours of Middle Eastern and North African locales. The present piece is an excellent example of his work.
The painting is signed lower left 'Noel. H. Leaver. A.R.C.A.'