Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Traveller, archaeologist and diplomat; born 14 July 1868 at Washington Hall, Co. Durham, eldest child of (Thomas) Hugh Bell, ironmaster, a lifelong influence. Educated at Queen’s College, London 1884–6 and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (1st class modern history 1888); undertook alpine expeditions 1899–1904; increasingly attracted to the East from c.1900; made architectural and archaeological surveys in Anatolia 1905–7 and important surveys of Ukhaidir and other parts of Mesopotamia 1909, 1911; elected FRGS 1913; expedition to Ha’il, central Arabia 1913–14; appointed to military intelligence department, Cairo, 1915; liaison officer, Arab Bureau, Iraq, from 1916; close adviser of King Faisal and known as the Khatun (‘Lady of the Court’), though from 1924 position weakened with change of constitution; died night of 11/12 July 1926 and buried in British military cemetery in Baghdad.

Gertrude Bell was the driving force behind the creation of a national museum in Baghdad – part of whose building was dedicated to her. Bell’s publications included translations from Arabic, accounts of archaeological expeditions and a white paper, Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia (1920). The bulk of her photographic archive and papers is at Newcastle University Library.

Gertrude Bell was of middle height, slender, and erect, with auburn hair and piercing greenish-brown eyes set in finely cut features. Her look and manner conveyed an impression of intense vitality and high intelligence.[1]

Her figure is quite English – tall and lank; her face is aristocratic – rather long and sharp; and her silver hair is not inharmonious with the persistent pink in her delicate complexion […] her energy and agility amazed me.[2]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Referencesback to top

Bell 1927b
Bell, Lady, ed., The Letters of Gertrude Bell, 2 vols, London, 1927.

Birkett 2004
Birkett, D., Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers, London, 2004 (to accompany exh., NPG, London, 2004).

Burgoyne 1958–61
Burgoyne, E., Gertrude Bell from her Personal Papers 1914–1926, 2 vols, London, 1958–61.

Goodman 1985
Goodman, S., Gertrude Bell, Leamington Spa, Dover, NH, and Heidelberg, 1985.

Hill 1976
Hill, S., Gertrude Bell: A Selection from the Photographic Archive of an Archaeologist and Traveller, Newcastle, 1976.

Hogarth 1937
Hogarth, W.D., ‘Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian (1868–1926)’, DNB, Oxford, 1937.

Howell 2006
Howell, G., Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell, London, 2006.

Knox 1979
Knox, R., ed., The Work of E.H. Shepard, London, 1979.

Lannon 2004
Lannon, F., Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford: The First 125 Years 1879–2004, Oxford, 2004.

Lawrence 1937
Lawrence, A.W., ed., T.E. Lawrence by his Friends, London, 1937.

Lukitz 2004
Lukitz, L., ‘Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian (1868–1926)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., January 2008.

Lukitz 2006
Lukitz, L., A Quest in the Middle East: Gertrude Bell and the Making of Modern Iraq, London and New York, 2006.

O’Brien 2000
O’Brien, R., ed., Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913–1914, Syracuse, NY, 2000.

Ormond & Kilmurray 2003
Ormond, R., and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Later Portraits, New Haven and London, 2003.

Richmond 1937
Richmond, E., ed., The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, London, 1937.

Ridley 1943
Ridley, M.R., Gertrude Bell, London and Glasgow, 1943 (original publ. 1941).

Rihani 1928
Rihani, A., Ibn Sa’oud of Arabia: His People and his Land, London, 1928.

Wallach 1996
Wallach, J., Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, New York and London, 1996.

Winstone 2004
Winstone, H.V.F., Gertrude Bell, rev. ed., London, 2004 (originally publ. 1978).