EYE-CATCHING images of the Near East, painted by a Victorian lady adventurer, go on display at the Victoria Gallery & Museum from tomorrow.
Lady Caroline Gray-Hill and her husband, John Gray-Hill, solicitor with Liverpool law firm Hill Dickinson, made annual visits to the Middle East, building a home with a panoramic view of the Dead Sea in 1889, where she lived for several months a year for three decades.
Travelling across this region in the late-19th century was fraught with danger, and Gray-Hill experienced kidnap, ransom and arrest while painting the landscape.
Fascinated by the scenery and the people they met on their travels, she created astonishingly vibrant pictures – layers of burnished orange and green skies above an undulating landscape.
VG&M curator Moira Lindsay says: “Lady Caroline’s pictures are timeless romantic views of the desert, expanses of land and water beneath golden and crimson skies.Š
“Her art almost harks back to a historical European idea of the Near East.” Desert Impressions: Journeys of a Victorian Lady, which includes oil paintings and watercolours depicting places from modern Turkey in the North to Jordan in the South, runs from tomorrow until September 3. Admission to all galleries and exhibitions is free and the building is open Tuesday to Saturday.
