The People of Gibraltar

1883 - General John Miller Adye - Governor of Gibraltar

John Miller Adye was born in Kent in 1819, entered the Royal Artillery when he was 17 served in the Crimean War and was in India at the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Brigade-major John Miller Adye in the Crimean

After a conventional career in the British army he ended up as a general and as a Governor of Gibraltar, a post he held from 1883 to 1886. He was also a rather skilful watercolourist and seems to have spent at least some of his time on the Rock painting it. Here are a few of his pictures. Most of the originals are in the Gibraltar Museum.

Not quite the same vantage point but very similar - the horsemen are members of the Calpe Hunt of which almost certainly he would have been a member

The Queen of Spain's Chair

Possibly Signal Station looking south with O'Hara's Folly in the distance. The Tower in the pictures may have originally been an old Spanish chapel - Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

Adye seems to have enjoyed painting various versions of the same scene. Compare this one with the second one shown above. I prefer the first but the good general seems to have liked this one enough to place 'on top of bed' - as written in pencil at the back of the painting

Moorish Castle - Attributed to Adye but . . . 

Catalan Bay

Detail of Catalan Bay

North Face of the Rock

Looking North over the Neutral Ground with  the Spanish frontier in the distance