Landscape painter and author Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming, the twelfth of fifteen children of Sir William and Eliza (Campbell) Gordon-Cumming, was born on May 26, 1837, in Altyre, Scotland. She grew up in Northumberland, England, and was educated at Fulham in London. Although not formally trained in art and basically self taught, she was influenced by her artistic mother and the aristocratic people who visited her home including artists Sir Edwin Lanseer and Sir William Ross, from whom she learned to paint in oil and watercolor. By her own count she would paint, during her lifetime, five-hundred large landscapes and a similar number of smaller ones.

A visit to India in 1868 at the invitation of a relative, opened the world to G...