The special relationship between text and illustrations in Castile and Andalucia by Louisa Mary Anne Tenison

Aug 22, 2026

Many studies highlight the close relationship between text and illustration, which becomes especially strong in travel literature where images help convey lived realities. For Louisa Mary Anne Tenison, illustration is divided: she sketches landscapes, while professional artists supply the figures. This paper examines how her written accounts and visual strokes work together to capture Andalusia, and also addresses her position among often forgotten female travelers.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time12 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Context

Castile and Andalucia

Relationship between illustrations and texts

Conclusions

References

International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences Vol-7, Issue-6; Nov-Dec, 2022 Journal Home Page Available: [https://ijels.com/](https://ijels.com/)[ ](https://ijels.com/)Journal DOI: 10.22161/ijels | The special relationship between text and illustrations in Castile andAndalucia by Louisa MaryAnne Tenison
Marta Jiménez Miranda
University ofCórdoba, Spain | | --- | | Received: 22 Nov 2022; Received in revised form: 16 Dec 2022; Accepted: 23 Dec 2022; Available online: 31 Dec 2022 ©2022 The Author(s). Published by Infogain Publication. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)). | | Abstract—Many studies show the close relationship that exists between text and illustration. In the case of travel literature, this relationship is much closer, as for most of the authors whose work is related to travel literature, illustration is as necessary as the text in order to convey to the reader the reality that they have experienced far home. In many cases, it was the writer who illustrated the book, but on other occasions the writer commissioned the work to a professional illustrator. The case of Louisa Tenison catches our attention, given that, despite being a drawer, she orders the illustrations that depict figures to a professional illustrator while landscapes belong to her own sketches. This paper tries to emphasize how special this traveler is, because she is still one of those many forgotten, ignored and silence ones and who also not only wrote what she saw but also drew it. With this work we intend to describe the author's need to capture both with words and with strokes her experience in Andalusia.
Keywords—English literature, Louisa MaryAnne Tenison, travelling literature, ut pictura poesis, women authors. | I. INTRODUCTION I-Introduction; II-Context; III-Castile and Andalucia; IVRelationship between illustrations and texts of her work; VConclusions; References. The landscape and architectural drawings are from my own sketches, but the figures are from the pencil of Mr. Egron Lundgren, a Swedish Artist now residing in Seville, whose admirable delineations of Spanish life and customs are well known to those who have had the pleasure of visiting his studio. (Tenison, 1853:5) The relationship between travel literature and illustration is well-defined by Quintus Horacio Flacus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, when he formulated the well-known Latin phrase: ut pictura poesis (Jiménez and Rivas, 2022) . Although it was more common that writers commissioned the illustration of their work to professional drawers so they could draw the landscaped and scenes from everyday life by reading the text, there were also cases in which the writer oversaw illustrating his or her own words. This was roughly the case of Louisa Mary Anne Tenison, as she was the one who took paper and pencil to draw the landscapes she saw during her stay in Spain but at the sametime she contacted a professional drawer to collaborate with her to draw figures and scenes. The main objective of our research is to understand the real connection of Tenison’s written words and the drawings of her book. At the same time, our intention is also to find out her necessity of drawing her own sketches and if there is any reason why she contacted a different artist to draw situations and people. Likewise, with the present work we intend to highlight the capacities and sensibility of women travellers to reflect the culture, customs, and landscapes of Andalusia. As whenever we think about English travellers in Spain exclusively masculine names arise to our minds first: as Thomas Roscoe or Richard Ford. The necessity of giving the same visibility to these female travellers is our main reason for researching about this topic. IJELS-2022, 7(6), (ISSN: 2456-7620) [https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.76.35](https://dx.doi.org/

FAQs

Why is the relationship between text and illustration particularly important in travel literature?

Travel literature relies on illustrations to convey the reality experienced by the authors far from home, making images as necessary as words.

How did Louisa Mary Anne Tenison divide illustration work in her book?

She produced her own landscape sketches, while she commissioned professional artists to create the figures and related scenes.

What is the main research objective of the paper?

To clarify the connection between Tenison’s written words and the drawings in her book, including why she needed both her own sketches and a collaborating artist.

Aug 22, 2026

Upload by Felix Montgomery