About this objectThis small ink sketch was likely completed during one of the artist’s trips around Europe and the Middle East with her travelling and life companion Margaret Thomas in 1896.
Henrietta Pilkington (1845-1927) and Margaret Thomas (1842-1929) met in London in the 1870s. The two women became very close, travelling together throughout the 1890s before settling down in a house in Norton in 1911 where they lived until their deaths.
Their bond is memorialised on their shared headstone, where they are buried together. Beneath Henrietta Pilkington’s name it reads ‘The sweetest soul that ever looked with human eyes. Friends for sixty years.’
This drawing is unique among the museum's collection of Henrietta Pilkington's work as it is not a watercolour piece, being instead composed of short hashed lines of black ink. The scene depicted could have come from any of the artist's many trips across Europe and the Middle East with Margaret Thomas in the 1890s.
The castle structure on the left of the image evokes the style of Mediterranean fortresses that dotted the coast and became attractions to the wealthy traveller class to which Pilkington and Thomas belonged.
MakerHenrietta M Pilkington
Maker RoleArtist
Date Made1875 - 1900
Period19th Century (1801-1900)
Medium and MaterialsInk on paper
Inscription and MarksSigned on the reverse: H.M. Pilkington
