Snakes, kidnap and sickness did not prevent Lady Caroline Gray Hill from painting the desert landscape. Laura Davis visits an exhibition of the Victorian adventurer’s work

THE rumours were that they had been killed – murdered in cold blood by a gang of marauding Arabs in depths of the Near East desert.

Under the publicly expressed concern of their fellow Brits living in relative luxury in late-19th century Jerusalem, there must surely have been a niggling feeling that this tragedy was of their own making.

For what respectable woman, a titled one no less, sets out into such dangerous territory to simply paint the view?

Lady Caroline Gray Hill and her husband, John Gray Hill, a partner in the Liverpool law firm Hill Dickinson, were not dead.

They had however, been taken captive at gunpoint by a sheik in a mix up over which tribal leader should be paid for their guaranteed safe passage.

What does an adopted Liverpudlian – blue or just plain old red-blooded – do in such a perilous situation? She talks herself out of it.

“We have travelled amongst the Bedouins before,” she began, as recorded in her husband’s account of their travels, “and have been taught to believe, as those who went before us in our country have believed, that from the time of our father Abraham until now, if anyone came as a guest into their tents their hospitality would be full and true.

“But we have lived to find ourselves mistaken.”

Precisely what it was in her words that struck a chord with Sheik Khalil we will never know, but he was moved by her speech and agreed not to harm them. A short period of negotiation later and the Gray Hills were permitted to continue their journey to Petra.

“The interesting thing is that episodes like that are so different from what she chose to paint,” says Moira Lindsay, curator of an exhibition of Lady Caroline’s art works, Desert Impressions: Journeys of a Victorian Lady currently running at Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum.

“In each area they visited they had to find the head of the local people and send letters ahead. Then they’d negotiate with presents and sometimes with payment. They seemed to find a way of getting on with everyone they met.”

When their gifts ran out they bartered with their own belongings – silk handkerchiefs and, on one occasion, a pair of scissors. On their arrival they would sometimes discover the person in charge had changed and they would have to start the process all over again.

Snakes slithered into their tent, battles between rival tribes disrupted their route and Lady Caroline became delirious from a serious illness but it seemed they would let nothing get in their way.

And during all these trials, she kept painting the landscape – great swathes of sand, dazzling sunsets and many, many camels.

She mostly used watercolours, but occasionally oils, working on the stacks of pre-prepared boards carried in knapsacks by her servants.