Bed Chamber View of Bordighera

As the daughter of the immensely successful Elizabeth Gaskell, author of Cranford, Margaret or Meta Gaskell (1837-1913) grew up in a house with frequent visits from such notables as Charlotte Bronte, John Ruskin (who taught her to paint and whose own watercolor is adjacent to this), Charles Darwin, and American art historian and intellectual Charles Eliot Norton who was to become a lifelong friend. Indeed Meta may have painted this watercolor during a family trip to Italy in 1857 when the Gaskells joined Charles Eliot Norton and his family.