The British Orientalist painter Frank Dillon studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was a pupil of the English travel painter James Holland (1799–1870), who specialized in vedute of Venice (Lemaire, 2000, p. 338). He made numerous trips to Italy, Japan, Norway, and Spain. However, Dillon's favourite destination was Egypt, which he visited on several occasions, in 1854–1855, 1861–1862, 1869–1870 and 1873–1874 (Bénézit, 2006, p. 934).
Living in Cairo for extended periods of time, Dillon was keen to study traditional domestic dwellings, rather than focus exclusively on the more obvious religious buildings and public spaces (Abraham, 2013, pp. 59–60). Many of his watercolours of Cairo depict ancient dwellings, for the preservation of which he fought vehemently. In his desire to preserve and record the ancient buildings, Dillon produced accurate paintings of domestic interiors. In 1881, he published an article on traditional Cairo houses in the British monthly literary magazine The Nineteenth Century. He also launched a campaign to save Philae Island, which was threatened by the construction of the first Aswan Dam (Bénézit, 2006, p. 934; Ackerman, 1991, p. 72).
Dillon built an Arab studio at his house in Kensington to aid completion of his paintings, which were worked up from original drawings and watercolour sketches made in Cairo. As evidence of Dillon’s commitment to the accurate depiction of Cairene decorative details, his studio was furnished with a number of Islamic objects, some of which were likely to have been sourced from the collection of James Wild (1814–1892). Dillon’s studio was illustrated in the second volume of Georg Ebers’s Aegypten in Bild und Wort (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Hallberger 1880, p. 96).
Dillon participated regularly in the exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He also took part in the Expositions Universelles in Paris in 1862 and 1878 (Bénézit, 2006, p. 934). A number of Dillon's paintings were placed on display at the Royal Institute of British Architects during a lecture entitled 'The Arab House of Egypt'. The paper dealt with the architecture of Cairo and reflected a burgeoning interest in construction techniques of this Egyptian city (Abraham, 2013, p. 62).

Abraham T. (2013). James Wild, Cairo and the South Kensington Museum. In: M. Volait (ed.), Le Caire dessiné et photographié au XIXe siècle (pp. 41-68). Paris: Picard.

Ackerman, G. M. (1991). Les orientalistes de l'école britannique. Courbevoie: ACR.

Bénézit, E. (ed.) (2006). Dillon, Frank. In Dictionary of artists (Vol. 4, pp. 934–935). Paris: Gründ.

Dillon, F. (1881, August). The Arab monuments of Egypt. *The Nineteenth Century,* *10,* 276-283.

Ebers, G. (1880). Aegypten in Bild und Wort. Dargestellt von unseren ersten Künstlern. vol. 2, Stuttgart: Eduard Hallberger.

Lemaire, G.-G. (2000). Orientalismus. Das Bild des Morgenlandes in der Malerei. Cologne: Könemann.