Beggars at a Church Door at Rome, from "Illustrated London News"

Elizabeth Murray was a painter and writer, daughter of the artist Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835). She would become a founding member of the Society of Female Artists, London, and a member of the National Watercolour Society, and Institute of Painters in Watercolours. Commissioned by Queen Adelaide (the wife of William IV) to make drawings of Malta, Elizabeth left London at nineteen in 1835, traveled on to Gibraltar and Tangiers. In the latter city married the British Consul, Henry John Murray in 1845. Friendships with Moorish women gave her material for a book, published in 1859 titled Sixteen Years of an Artist's Life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands. In 1860 the Murrays crossed the Atlantic to take up a diplomatic post in Portland, Maine. staying in the United States until 1875. During this period, Elizabeth established artistic contacts along the Eastern seaboard and joined the American Society of Water Color Painters in New York. The present wood engraving reproduces a watercolor she made before her departure for America, one of a several devoted to Roman characters.