Camels were used for a variety of domestic purposes throughout Egypt. Some, like the baggage camel depicted in a companion watercolour to the one shown here (also in the Searight Collection, SD.438), were bred for their strength and stamina, and were capable of carrying heavy loads long distances across the desert. The more slender type seen in this watercolour was faster and better suited for riding. She therefore carries a saddle, and her master's dagger and decorated woollen saddlebag. Goodall was a prolific and successful Orientalist painter. He first visited Egypt in 1858-59. He shared a house in Cairo with Carl Haag (see SD.458-473), and they made many sketches together in the streets, outside the city around the Pyramids, and also near Suez. During the 1860s Goodall used these for several carefully constructed paintings of rural and urban Egyptian life and of Biblical scenes. When he visited Egypt again in 1870-71 he lived at Saqqarah, a few miles south of Cairo, so that he could observe the daily life of the Bedouin. In England for the next three decades he continued to paint variations on the same themes as before.