Off the Beaten Track - Three Centuries of Women Travellers
Past exhibition archive
7 July - 31 October 2004
Porter Gallery
Admission Free
Dame Freya Madeline Stark
by Herbert Olivier
1923
NPG 5465
Women travellers of the past three centuries have amazing and varied tales to tell. Some of them were exceptional individuals who broke all the rules, while others travelled as dutiful wives, mothers or daughters. Journeying to distant parts of the world from the 1660s to the 1960s, before the age of mass travel, these women had experiences and encounters almost unthinkable today.
Victorian traveller Mary Kingsley defended herself with a canoe paddle when a crocodile attempted to board her boat, and was saved only by the thickness of her skirt when she later fell into a pit of sharp stakes. Penelope Chetwode made a remarkable river crossing in India using the traditional method of floating across on an inflated animal hide, propelled by a local man on top of whom she was required to lie. Meanwhile Lady Hester Stanhope offered advice to respectable women on answering calls of nature whilst in the desert - one should take a chamber pot, a small tent, declare a coffee break, pitch the tent and gracefully retire.
John Elliott Burns
by Harry Furniss
1880s-1900s
NPG 3346
This exhibition brings together 60 portraits, in all media, from the National Portrait Gallery's collections, alongside photographs and paintings made by the women on their travels. It also features some of their finest souvenirs, now prized exhibits in major museums and private collections across Britain. The exhibition is organised geographically and ends with a selection of the world's women who made Britain the destination for their travels, recording their presence here by visiting a fashionable society photographer.
Travellers to the Americas include Maria Callcott who travelled in Brazil in the 1820s. The exhibition presents a fine portrait of her by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and the album of botanical illustrations that she painted there. Fanny Kemble, the famous actress, had a very different experience of the United States when she discovered that her American husband's money came from his slave plantations in Georgia. The marriage swiftly fell apart and her journal describing the plight of his slaves was published to further the cause of Abolition.
Well known twentieth-century women travellers, Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark, both travelled in the Middle East and Arabia. Both were superb travel writers and took photographs. Freya Stark's images of southern Yemen are displayed in the exhibition and are particularly beautiful. Bell lived in Baghdad, founding the Museum there, having been closely involved in the political and geographical decisions that created the modern state of Iraq. In the previous century, Jane Digby also chose to live in the Middle East. After a stormy divorce and many love affairs she found her final husband in Syria, a Bedouin Sheikh young enough to be her son, and joined his tribe in the deserts around the ruined city of Palmyra, shown here in one of her watercolours.
Travellers to Africa include Amelia Edwards whose 1877 book, A Thousand Miles up the Nile, earned her enough to pay for archaeological excavations in Egypt. An Egyptian portrait sculpture that belonged to her is displayed in the exhibition, as is a marble sculpture of her. Also in this section are a selection of Mary Kingsley's artefacts - a metre-high Congolese nail figure, a newly-discovered fish which was named after her, and the brown fur hat that she wore during her African journeys.
From the Far East and the Pacific come photographs of China taken in the 1890s by Isabella Bird on her journey up the Yangtze. She converted the cabin of her boat into a darkroom, washing the chemicals off her glass plate negatives in the river itself. In contrast, Annie Brassey chose to travel in a luxury yacht The Sunbeam, collecting masks and other Pacific ethnographic items.
Women who made Britain their destination include Pocohontas, the American Indian woman who visited the court of King James I, Queen Emma of Hawaii who stayed with Queen Victoria, Sarah Davies, a young African slave who became Queen Victoria's goddaughter and Nehru's sister Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit who was India's High Commissioner to Britain and the first woman President of the United Nations.
The exhibition is curated by Clare Gittings, Education Officer at the National Portrait Gallery and curator of Escape to Eden: Five Centuries of Women and Gardens (2000).
Publication
A fully-illustrated book by Dea Birkett, with a foreword by Jan Morris, accompanies the exhibition. Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers is published by the National Portrait Gallery in July 2004, price £18.99 (hardback).
Study Day
There will be a study day at the National Portrait Gallery on 25 September 2004, organised in partnership with the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE). Speakers will include Dea Birkett, Dr Caroline Bressey, Susanna Hoe and Sarah Searight. For further information please contact [email protected]
Related portraits
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her son, Edward Wortley Montagu, and attendants (NPG 3924)
- Elizabeth Craven (née Berkeley), Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach (NPG L223)
- Jane, Lady Franklin (NPG 904)
- Maria, Lady Callcott (NPG 954)
- Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick (NPG 498)
- Jane Elizabeth, Countess of Ellenborough (NPG 883(10))
- Frances Trollope (NPG 3906)
- Harriet Martineau (NPG 1085)
- Emily Eden (NPG 6455)
- Fanny Kemble (NPG 5462)
- Julia Margaret Cameron (NPG 5046)
- Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon (NPG 5584)
- Amelia Edwards (NPG 929)
- Gertrude Bell (NPG 4385)
- Clare Sheridan with her children (NPG P333)
- Dame Freya Madeline Stark (NPG 5465)
- Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Andrews (née Fairfield)) (NPG 5693)
- Vita Sackville-West (NPG P437)
- Marie Stopes (NPG 4111)
- Rose Macaulay (NPG P869(19))
- Dame (Margaret) Mary Douglas (née Twomey) (NPG P564(8))
- Charlotte Canning (née Stuart), Countess Canning (NPG x45082)
- Isabel (née Arundel), Lady Burton (NPG x76470)
- Robert Louis Stevenson and family (NPG x4630)
- Martha Ricks (NPG x38887)
- Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop (NPG x36474)
- Mary Henrietta Kingsley (NPG x19155)
- Florence Mills in 'Dover Street to Dixie' at the London Pavilion (NPG x85305)
- Ethel Edith Mannin (NPG x14264)
- Amy Johnson (NPG x17127)
- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (née Sarup Kumari Nehru) (NPG x84424)
- Beryl de Zoete (NPG x14058)
- Madame Wellington Koo (née Hui-lan Oei) (NPG x83698)
- Begum Zubeida Habib Rahimtoola (née Chinoy) (NPG x84516)
- Agatha Christie (NPG x126501)
- Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon (NPG x13729)
- Jan Morris; Twm Morys (NPG x76899)
- Aphra Behn (NPG D9483)
- Pocahontas (NPG D5536)
- Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope (NPG D5409)
- Lady Florence Caroline Dixie (née Douglas) (NPG D16189)
Related sitters
- Aphra Behn (née Johnson)
- Gertrude Bell
- Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop
- Isabel (née Arundel), Lady Burton
- Maria, Lady Callcott
- Julia Margaret Cameron
- Charlotte Canning (née Stuart), Countess Canning
- Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick
- Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (née Miller)
- Elizabeth Craven (née Berkeley), Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach
- Lady Florence Caroline Dixie (née Douglas)
- Dame (Margaret) Mary Douglas (née Twomey)
- Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon
- Emily Eden
- Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards
- Jane Elizabeth, Countess of Ellenborough
- Jane, Lady Franklin
- Margaret, Comtesse Guy de Reneville
- Amy Johnson (later Mollison)
- Frances Anne ('Fanny') Kemble
- Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon
- Mary Henrietta Kingsley
- Madame Wellington Koo (née Hui-lan Oei)
- Dame (Emilie) Rose Macaulay
- Ethel Edith Mannin
- Harriet Martineau
- Florence Mills
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
- Edward Wortley Montagu
- Jan Morris
- Twm Morys
- (Samuel) Lloyd Osbourne
- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (née Sarup Kumari Nehru)
- Pocahontas (Amonute) (née Matoaka, later Rebecca Rolfe)
- Begum Zubeida Habib Rahimtoola (née Chinoy)
- Martha Ricks
- Victoria Mary ('Vita') Sackville-West
- Clare Sheridan
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope
- Dame Freya Madeline Stark
- Fanny Stevenson (née Van de Grift)
- Margaret Isabella Stevenson (née Balfour)
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes
- Austin Strong
- Isobel Stuart Strong (née Osbourne)
- Joseph Dwight Strong
- Frances Trollope
- Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Andrews (née Fairfield))
- Beryl de Zoete
Related artists
- Percival Ball
- Bassano Ltd
- Cecil Beaton
- Richard Bentley
- John Capstack
- J. Davis
- Simon de Passe
- Elliott & Fry
- Richard Evans
- Gisèle Freund
- John Gay
- Robert Jacob Hamerton
- Sir George Hayter
- Henry Hering
- Auguste Hervieu
- Charles Joseph Hullmandel
- Ozias Humphry
- Sir Gerald Kelly
- Arthur King
- Sir Thomas Lawrence
- Jorge ('J.S.') Lewinski
- (Percy) Wyndham Lewis
- James Lonsdale
- Andrew Maclure
- Herbert Olivier
- Bertram Park
- Henry Wyndham Phillips
- William Richardson
- John Riley
- Simon Jacques Rochard
- Amélie Romilly
- Peter Frederick Rothermel
- Flora Russell
- Nick Sinclair
- Sir (John) Benjamin Stone
- Paul Tanqueray
- Unknown photographer
- Jean Baptiste Vanmour
- George Frederic Watts
- Robert White
- Richard Whitehead