Robert Talbot Kelly

Robert Talbot Kelly ( * 1861 in Birkenhead, Cheshire at that time, today the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, England, † 1934 in London, England) was a British painter and watercolorist, author and book illustrator.

Life

Kelly was the son of Irish landscape artist Robert George Kelly. He left the school in 1876 to a company in the cotton trade legwork. During this time, his father taught him the techniques of painting, drawing and representation using water colors. His first works he exhibited under the name RG Kelly jun. from. 1882 Kelly left his employer after he had received on a Mediterranean cruise enough stimulation to take his father's profession. He sailed to Egypt, rented a studio in Cairo and learned to speak fluent Arabic. He traveled throughout Egypt, took notes, drawings and paintings about the life in the cities, in the countryside and in the deserts. He spent a long time among the Bedouins of Egypt, whose life he described in his books about the country and recorded. In 1915 he went from health and age reasons back to London, but also painted in the following years. His works are attributed by art history Orientalism.

Kelly illustrated the 1896 book Fire and Sword in the Sudan by the Austrian Rudolf Slatin, who had been detained in the distant past years in Sudan during the Mahdi uprising, but managed to escape. 1902 published in London in his first book on Egypt, followed by three books about his trip to Burma. The representations Kelly from Burma had a great influence on artists of the country in the 20th century.

The first exhibition of the works of Kelly's was in 1902 in the Fine Art Society in London. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (RI ), the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA ), the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists ( RBC) and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS ).

Kelly's son Richard Talbot Kelly (1896-1971) was also a painter specializing in representation of birds and nature, and historic themes.

Publications

• Rudolf Carl von Slatin: Fire and Sword in the Sudan: My battles with the dervishes, my imprisonment and escape from 1879 to 1895. With a portrait and 19 illustrations by Kelly. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1896. ( Including the Internet)

• Egypt Painted and Described. A. & C. Black, London 1902.
• Burma Painted and Described. A. & C. Black, London, 1905.
• Burma, Description and travel, with 12 illustrations by the author. A. & C. Black, London 1908; 2nd revised edition: A. & C. Black, London, 1933.
• Egypt. A. & C. Black, London, 1908.
• Burma: The Land and the People. J. B. Millet, Boston 1910