Arnold Henry Savage Landor

Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865–26 December 1924) was an English painter, explorer, writer and anthropologist, born in Florence.

In 1891, he visited Australia, where he painted a portrait of the Prime Minister of New South Wales, Sir Henry Parkes which excited much admiration in Sydney because of its striking resemblance.

Landor returned to England, and Queen Victoria invited him to Balmoral so that she could look at his drawings and hear of his journeys. In London he became great friends with James McNeill Whistler and Joseph Pennell.

In 1897 he set off on his travels to explore Tibet where he was captured and suffered terrible adversities and tortures. Nevertheless, he discovered the sources of the Indus and the Brahmaputra. Landor returned fearlessly to Tibet a second time and then to Nepal. From his journeys to Tibet and Nepal come his books In the Forbidden Land (1898) and Tibet and Nepal (1905).

On his return to Europe, Landor gave an increasing number of popular lectured and went on to America to repeat them there. While in America, he heard of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and went immediately to Peking where he was the first to accompany General Linievitch in the triumphal entry parade of honour at the Forbidden City. From this journey came his book China and the Allies (1901).

In 1901 he journeyed to India from Russia, riding on horseback through Persia, and in that year published his account of the journey in the book Across Coveted Lands (1902). He then went to the Philippines where he met the future General Pershing and, returning across America, he succeeded in convincing Theodore Roosevelt that Pershing would be the man which America would need for its Army. Another book The Gems of the East, describes this journey of discovery (1904).