From a painter’s family to a studio in Cairo
Robert George Talbot Kelly was born in Birkenhead in 1861 and learned painting from his father, Robert George Kelly. He worked in the cotton trade before choosing art as his profession in 1882. Travel took him through Spain and North Africa to Cairo, where he settled in 1883 and learned Arabic. He later added Talbot to his exhibiting name to distinguish himself from his father.
Kelly married Lilias Lindsay in 1894. Their son Richard Barrett Talbot Kelly also became a painter. Exhibitions and illustrated travel books helped establish his reputation, and he kept studios in Cairo and London. After the First World War his journeys concentrated on Europe. He died in 1934, following a career in which writing and painting repeatedly grew from the same travels.
Recording a visitor’s impressions of Burma
In the preface to his 1905 Burma, Kelly admits that he knew little about the country when he accepted the commission. He describes seven months of travel, difficult painting conditions, illness and the limitations of language. He offers the result as first impressions, expressly recognising how the circumstances of a journey could shape what an observer thought he saw.
His acknowledgements also make the journey’s support visible. Officials, hosts and transport and trading companies supplied accommodation, information and access. The chapters move from Rangoon through market towns, forests and river journeys, with Kelly credited for both pictures and text. The volume preserves his visual response to Burma alongside the perspective and connections through which a British visitor encountered it.
