The Gallery’s founder, Richard Glynn Vivian, loved to travel the world. He visited North Africa in 1873 and the Gallery holds his travel album for that journey which contains sketches and photographs of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In March 1878 Glynn Vivian visited South Africa, and the following year his mother’s notebook refers to his presence in Zululand during the massacre of the British and colonial troops at the 1879 Battle of Isandlwana.
In a letter written in 1890, Glynn Vivian records: “I rode alone 60 miles up into Zululand during the war. I crossed Madagascar 35 days, 15 days quite alone…and sleeping in the open on the banks of a river surrounded by crocodiles”.
Richard Glynn Vivian Bequest, 1911
