[6] Ellis was one of 170 students from 43 countries in Bonnat's studio at the time, but seems to have developed a friendship with his teacher, who advised him to focus on history painting.
[7] This success encouraged him to plan a more ambitious trip, and so on 1 October 1879 he boarded a steamship for Alexandria with the aim of visiting Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.
[7][8] Ellis succeeded in traveling from the Syrian coast, overland to Diyarbakır in southeast Turkey and then by raft down the Tigris to Mosul and Baghdad in Iraq.
[10] He spent three weeks at the Pyramids, where he stayed with the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, and left the country in May, just before the massacre at Alexandria on 11 June 1882 that precipitated the Anglo-Egyptian War.
[10] Several years later, Ellis made another trip to the eastern Mediterranean, where he spent time in Athens, and had three sketches selected by George I of Greece.