About this item

Jemima Blackburn travelled widely, using her sketchbook as we would use a camera today. Her personality and intelligence drew friends and admirers including Trollope, Oscar Wilde and Lord Kelvin. Her cousin was scientist James Clerk Maxwell. In 1980, artist Rob Fairley was mending the roof of a large country house on Scotland's west coast. The owners urged him to look at their great grandmother's sketchbooks, and with some reluctance he eventually agreed. Locked away were dozens of leather-bound volumes filled with paintings of remarkable quality. One find led to another, with Jemima's memoirs, as vivid as her paintings, the final jewel in the crown. In her lifetime she was known as a book illustrator and acknowledged by her peers as one of the leading bird painters of the day.