Object Details

From:NHerts

Name/TitleTiberias 1895, Twilight

About this objectThis watercolour was painted during one of the artist’s trips around Europe and the Middle East with her travelling and life companion Margaret Thomas in 1895.

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.’

Henrietta Pilkington painted two landscapes of Tiberias during her time there in 1895, both in the museum’s collection. This, the larger of the two, is more muted in colour but more detailed in its depiction of the walled city. In contrast to the brighter painting, this one suggests that the sun has either just set or just risen as the artist captured the scene.

Margaret Thomas, in her book Two Years in Palestine and Syria, written during the pair’s trip, remarked the town ‘has narrow streets lined with little white houses built of mud or stone, with few or no windows exteriorly, a souk where the tiny shops are shaded by ragged awnings stretched from side to side, and a white-domed mosque and a minaret.’ That same mosque and minaret, the Great Al Omari Mosque, can be seen in the centre left of the painting.

On the reverse of this painting, the initial washes of another illustration are outlined, with the inscription ‘Mount of Olives Jerusalem 1895.’

MakerHenrietta M Pilkington

Maker RoleArtist

Date Made1895

Period19th Century (1801-1900)

Medium and MaterialsWatercolour on paper

Inscription and MarksInscription, front bottom right: Tiberius 1895
Inscription on reverse, signed: Tiberias H.M. Pilkington
Inscription, reverse bottom right: Mount of Olives Jerusalem 1895

Measurements225 x 375 mm

Named CollectionLetchworth Museum

Credit LineThe estate of Margaret Thomas

Object TypePainting

Object number1930.5477.80

Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved