Miner Kilbourne Kellogg, born Manlius - Alexandria - n.d. - T-Shirt

This long, narrow pencil panorama shows the skyline of Alexandria and its low shore as a traveller first sees it from the water.

Visual Elements & Composition

The sheet is built in three horizontal bands. The uppermost band traces a broken line of low roofs, with a few vertical forms that read as minarets or towers and a darker mass rising at the right. The middle band repeats that row of roofs more lightly, so the city recedes as the eye moves down. A shoreline runs across the foot of the sheet, with the inscription Abukir Bay beneath it and the handwritten caption Alexandria, first sight in the lower right. Graphite lines are fine and economical, and the cream paper is left largely clear around them, which gives the composition its open, expansive quality.

Meaning & Symbolism

The drawing captures the moment of approach. Alexandria, a port on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, was the arrival point for many European travellers, and its first view of roofs and spires was often remembered as a threshold into the country. Kellogg, an American painter born in Manlius, New York, in 1814, worked in watercolour, oil and pencil. His travel sketches from Europe and farther east record places as they were first encountered, and this panorama belongs to that body of landscape notes made on the spot. The original is held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection.

Built for the Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee

A panorama suits a tee because the design reads across the body rather than in a single focal point. The skyline line and the shoreline run side to side, so the image carries the sense of distance and slow emergence that the original sheet holds. Wearing it, the viewer gets the same experience as the traveller on deck: a city rising gradually out of the horizon.