1889 Sketchbook: Scenes from North Africa, Italy & Switzerland

Lilias Trotter’s 1889 Pocket Sketchbook captured views from North Africa and Europe one year after she left London to live in Algiers and minister to the Arab people. Most of the views were sketched during the month of June while taking a break from the scorching heat of a North African summer. Her ability to quickly capture views with accuracy and beauty was a skill that John Ruskin, eminent Victorian art critic, extolled in his 1884 “Art of England” lecture and demonstrated with specimens removed from her Norwegian Sketchbook: “…they are patterns to you therefore only of pocket-book work; but what skill is more precious to a traveller than that of minute, instantaneous, and unerring record of the things that are precisely best?” Her range of subjects and scenes that were at once “lovely and honorable” met the high standard that Ruskin, mentor/friend, set and valued: mountains and clouds, ships and seascapes, figures in regional garb and headdress, flowers and architectural details.