The Orientalist

Among the many lovely pieces in the new "Exotic Encounters" show — which the Bruce Museum in Greenwich has ingeniously culled from its own collection — is a hand-colored lithograph by David Roberts, "View of the Hall of Columns, Karnac, Thebes."

Roberts was a 19th-century Scottish painter whose honeyed, sand-swept scenes of Egypt and the Holy Land were part of the Orientalist movement, in which the West reinterpreted the Middle East. From the moment I became acquainted with it, I've been addicted to his work. There's something particularly satisfying about the creamy palette he used to conjure the fallen columns of Egyptian temples and the still-proud statues of Ramesses the Great. It's as if this lost world were once again kissed by the sun.

There is also a beguiling solitude about his paintings, prints and drawings, in which people often appear only to give the viewer a sense of scale. This enables us to inhabit the space instead, if only in our imaginations.

"Art, Travel, and Modernity in the Collection of the Bruce Museum" runs through April 25. 203-869-0376, www.brucemuseum.org