Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming

Known to her intimates as ‘Eka’, Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming was the twelfth child of a Scottish baronet and largely self-taught. She arrived at Colombo in February 1873 at the Bishop of Colombo’s invitation, and kept a rule of never a day without at least one carefully coloured sketch, beginning at five each morning. She returned to Scotland with several hundred works in watercolour and bodycolour heightened with white, a richer and more opaque technique than simple wash, and exhibited them in London, Glasgow and Liverpool to considerable admiration. Her Two Happy Years in Ceylon (1892) is at once a travel memoir and a reflection upon empire.