DANIEL HAVELL (1785-1822)
Amba Alagi (3,438 m -11,280 ft )
Ethiopia
In The Vale of Calaat , Ethiopia, engraving 1800, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
The mountain Amba Alagi is the one situated on extreme right of the engraving
Amba Alagi (3,438 m -11,280 ft )is a mountain, or an Amba, in northern Ethiopia. Located in the Debubawi Zone of the Tigray Region, Amba Alagi dominates the roadway that runs past it from the city of Mek'ele south to Maychew. Because of its strategic location, Amba Alagi has been the location of several battles. As Anthony Mockler describes it,
It was [a] real amba, flat-topped, covered with crevices and canyons and caves, impregnable on the north and north-east where the Tug Gabat ran round its flanks through precipitous ravines, falling steeply away in the rear to the spur of Antalo, behind which lay the broad plain of Mahera.
Amba Alagi (3,438 m -11,280 ft)is a mountain, or an amba, in northern Ethiopia. Located in the Debubawi Zone of the Tigray Region, Amba Alagi dominates the roadway that runs past it from the city of Mek'ele south to Maychew. Because of its strategic location, Amba Alagi has been the location of several battles. As Anthony Mockler describes it,
It was [a] real amba, flat-topped, covered with crevices and canyons and caves, impregnable on the north and north-east where the Tug Gabat ran round its flanks through precipitous ravines, falling steeply away in the rear to the spur of Antalo, behind which lay the broad plain of Mahera.
The artist
In older texts (and in the current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Daniel Havell is often claimed as the father of Robert (and sometimes of Luke as well); but more recent references generally place him as born in 1785, the son of Luke's brother Thomas, also a painter, who was born in 1762. Daniel moved to London, and set up in partnership as an aquatint engraver with Robert Havell. Together they published aquatints of Twenty Four Views Taken in St. Helena (1809–10) after pictures by Henry Salt, and Twelve Picturesque Views of the River Thames (1812) from watercolours by William Havell. But the partnership did not last, and soon Daniel was working independently, including plates for Rudolph Ackermann's History of Cambridge (1815) and Ackermann's history of various Public Schools including Eton, Winchester and Rugby (1816), as well as a celebrated view of St Paul's Cathedral (1818) and various other London landmarks for Ackermann's Repository of Arts. Other subjects included topographical views of Devon, and of North Wales; and views of naval engagements. Havell's final work was for E.W. Brayley's Historical and descriptive accounts of the theatres of London (1826) "illustrated with a view of each theatre, elegantly coloured, drawn and engraved by the late Daniel Havell."
The Daniel Havell who was the son of Thomas Havell was baptised on 30 November 1786 at St Mary's, Reading; married Maria Wilmot on 5 June 1813 at St James's in Paddington; and was buried on 19 May 1822 at Kingston upon Thames, his occupation given as "artist".
