Crazy French Monk...Mt. Sinai

Art Historical Context

**Crazy French Monk...Mt.** by Miner Kilbourne invites us into the adventurous world of a 19th-century American artist and traveler. Kellogg (1814–1889), known for his portraits and landscapes, journeyed through the Middle East, including biblical Mount Sinai, during the mid-1800s. This undated drawing, a bust portrait from the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection, captures an eccentric French monk—complete with his distinctive hat—likely encountered at the historic Monastery of Saint Catherine, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited Christian monasteries. Rendered in drawing ...