Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming (1837–1924)

Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming was born in Altyre, Scotland, the 12th child of a wealthy, aristocratic family. Following the death of her mother when she was six years old, she was raised by an older sister in Northumberland, and was educated at home and at a boarding school in London. She taught herself how to paint, with some help from visiting artists, including Sir Edwin Landseer. She began to exhibit her work publicly in 1866. In 1868, she took her first trip overseas to visit another sister in India. She soon became an intrepid solo world traveler and prolific travel writer and landscape painter, traveling to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan, among others. She was a keen observer, interested in every aspect of the people and regions she visited, and her narratives were both substantial and popular. Her first books were Camp Life in the Himalayas (1870) and From the Hebrides to the Himalayas (1876). She was among the first artists to paint the active volcanoes of Hawaii, which resulted in the book Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii (1883). Her best known works are At Home in Fiji and A Lady's Cruise on a French Man-of-War (1882). The book Granite Crags (1884) covers the three months that she spent painting in at Yosemite National Park in California. Her last book was an autobiography called Memories (1904). She was made a Life Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1914.