New ICS exhibition explores holiday sketches from renowned painter Mary Severn Newton

‘Holiday Sketches: Two Female Artists and an Archaeologist Husband go on Holiday, 1863’ features drawings from Mary Severn Newton of her trips with husband and archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton. 

An accomplished painter of the Victorian era, Mary Severn Newton’s work is included in collections at the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Gallery.  

The exhibition includes sketches that Mary made of her time travelling with Charles and her friend Gertrude Jekyll to the then-Ottoman Empire from October to December 1863. In between Charles’ work for the British Museum at Ephesos, Istanbul and Athens, the group spent two weeks on holiday making sketches on the island of Rhodes. 

Speaking of what we can learn from the images, Dr Debbie Challis, cultural historian and curator of the exhibition, said: “The sketches offer an interesting insight on a marriage that appeared to be respectful, affectionate and equal - for the time.  

“Mary teaches Charles drawing and he teaches her philosophy and Greek. They share their own expertise and knowledge with each other at a time when middle-class women and men are placed in separate spheres.  

“Mary can clearly get away with laughing at Charles and his long legs on a train for example. The way Mary draws them together clearly indicates closeness and romance. It is an insight into a Victorian marriage that is very different from the stereotype.” 

The drawings also reveal interesting details about how the world was changing at the time, with new technologies and means of transportation. 

“The sketches show how travel is changing,” Dr Challis said. “They use trains and a steamboat, whereas a generation earlier it would have been carriages and a sailboat.  

“Interestingly, in these sketches you see more of the people and little of the antiquity, though this would not be the case if you picked up the book that Charles wrote and Mary made drawings for - there the emphasis is on the antiquities and sculpture. What you do see in these sketches is that juxtaposition of the ancient with the modern - I love the sketch of Ephesus with the station sign, camels and Mary and Gertrude drawing.” 

Reflecting on the popularity of travel-writing at the time, Dr Challis noted: “Illustrated travel-writing was very popular with publishers, particularly by the 1850s when illustrations were cheaper to produce.  

“Travel-writing itself was the 3rd most popular form of publishing (after religious and biographical publications) in the mid-Victorian period. Archaeologists and travellers hired artists if they could not make sketches themselves. Charles Thomas Newton was one of the first to use photography, too.  

“The emphasis in illustrated magazines was on the art and the landscape so this is very much what the books replicated. The more informal journals of Gertrude’s and Mary’s with text and sketches were a normal way of remembering a visit or even recording daily life at home. Even Queen Victoria and her children kept and made journals with sketches."  

Speaking about which of the sketches is her favourite, Dr Challis said: “It’s hard to choose. The romantic in me really likes the sketch of Charles teaching Mary philosophy as they look so at home and in love with each other.”  

‘Holiday Sketches: Two Female Artists and an Archaeologist Husband go on Holiday, 1863’ is on display from 1 February to 14 March, 2025 outside the Hellenic and Roman Library, on the third floor of Senate House, University of London.