Aims and objectives

North Hertfordshire Museum looks after twenty-seven oil paintings by Margaret Thomas and more than eighty watercolours by Henrietta Pilkington – the record of two Victorian women who painted their way across the Mediterranean and the Near East, and whose pictures came home, quietly, to Hertfordshire. Most people have never heard of them – a neglect this project exists to end.

Through 2026 we are working with the museum to bring the collection into the light: the booklet telling the two women’s story, this website and its journey map, an exhibition at the University’s Chapman Gallery, new displays in the museum itself, public talks, and materials for local schools – with University of Hertfordshire students working alongside museum staff throughout, making the interpretation rather than just watching it happen.

And we read the paintings honestly: as the work of two adventurous, talented and devoted women, and as documents of a period whose ways of seeing the East carried assumptions we no longer share. Both truths belong in the telling.

“At the moment I’m reading ‘Cosmos’ by Humboldt. Have you read him?”

Margaret Thomas to her friend ‘Rebie’, Melbourne, 26 August 1866
Translated from the French

The project is led by William Bainbridge (University of Hertfordshire) with Helen Esfandiary, in partnership with Ros Allwood, Cultural Services Manager at North Hertfordshire Museum, and coordinated by Rosa Chalfen, Policy & Community Engagement Officer at the University of Hertfordshire. It is supported by an AHRC Impact Acceleration Account Co‑Production Heritage Award through the University of Hertfordshire.