Killarney's modern tourism industry owes much to a visit by Queen Victoria more than 130 years ago, which made the area one of the most fashionable places in Europe to visit. Now an exhibition at Muckross House shows how it looked when it so enchanted its royal visitor.
The exhibition features 28 watercolours painted by the first mistress of Muckross House, Mary Herbert who, together with her husband, the Right Hon Henry Arthur Herbert, acted as hosts for Queen Victoria on her visit to Killarney in August 1861.
Indeed, Queen Victoria, writing in her journal, described the walls of her rooms at Muckross as "being hung with beautiful water-colours by Mrs Herbert, chiefly views of Killarney" and being a talented sketcher herself, she attempted some copies.
Mrs Herbert was duly flattered and in return presented Queen Victoria with three of her paintings of Killarney which remained in the possession of the British royal family and are now held by Queen Elizabeth in her collection at Windsor Palace.
Now visitors to Muckross have a chance to see Mrs Herbert's talent in a series of landscapes which extends beyond Killarney to include scenic views from her native Scotland as well as England, Italy and Switzerland.
Born in 1817 into the wealthy Balfour family of East Lothian, Mary brought a sizeable dowry to her marriage to Henry Herbert and is credited with contributing both to the design and actual location of Muckross House on the shores of the lakes.
According to Sinead McCoole, who researched and co-ordinated the project, the centrepiece of the exhibition is a bound red leather album featuring 42 views of Killarney which Mary presented to her husband as a birthday present in 1860.
The trustees of Muckross House only became aware of the album's existence in 1997 when it was sold at Sothebys in London and they negotiated to buy it from the purchaser, fashion-designer turned fine art dealer, Ib Jorgensen.
According to the Muckross House manager Pat Dawson, a number of the paintings on display have been acquired by the trustees over the past two years, 14 are on loan from private collectors in Ireland and Britain, while the National Library has loaned three.
When she lived at Muckross, Mary Herbert taught art locally, but following the death of her husband in 1866, she went to live in London where she continued to involve herself in the artistic and literary worlds. Before her death on January 14th, 1893, at her daughter Eleanor's home in Eaton Square, she had requested to be buried "wherever I happen to die", but her children felt it would be appropriate that she be buried in Co Kerry.
"She was laid to rest," writes Sinead McCoole in the exhibition catalogue "in the Herbert tomb, beneath the Celtic Cross that had been erected in memory of her husband on Killegy Hill, overlooking the Muckross estate and Killarney lakes and mountains that she had loved and recorded for posterity."
The exhibition, which runs for a year was officially opened last month by the former tanaiste, Mr Dick Spring.