Robert Talbot Kelly

Robert Talbot Kelly was born in 1861 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, the son of Irish landscape and portrait painter, Robert George Kelly. He received an art education from his father. 

Talbot Kelly worked mainly in watercolour and black and white. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI), Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), Royal British Colonial Society of Artists (RBC) and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).

He was the President of the Liver Sketching Club in Liverpool in 1917 and also a member of the Artists' Club Liverpool, of which his father, Robert George Kelly, was a founder member.

In the early 1880s, inspired by the places he saw during his vacation on the ocean cruise, Talbot-Kelly decided to take up his father’s profession. In 1882 he sailed on a boat to North Africa and settled in Egypt in 1883, acquiring a studio in Cairo and becoming fluent in Arabic. He traveled around the country, painting the people and scenes that he encountered both in towns and in the desert

Egypt Painted and Described, his first illustrated travel book, was published in 1902 and was an account of his impressions and experiences of that country during his long stay there; an exhibition of his Egyptian views was also held at the Fine Art Society in the same year. His paintings and writing showed a great empathy and respect for local people and culture, especially that of the desert Bedouin Arabs.

Kelly travelled to Burma, which he wrote about two books: Burma Painted and Described (1905) and Burma (1909). The former contains reproductions of 73 of Kelly's paintings and the latter contains 12 reproductions, all of which also appeared in the first book. Kelly's two books were widely available in Burma, or so were postcard reproductions, which were sold in Burma, of the paintings in his books. Kelly also did fine art reproductions of his watercolors on Burma (dated 1912) which today sell widely on the internet.