2-979-757 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Blue Grotto at Capri - from Mr. Albert Smith's New Entertainment, 1857. Painted scenery from a show by author and mountaineer Albert Richard Smith at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. 'The deep water, floating full and wide into the cave from its narrow entrance, is of the hue and transparency of the lightest and brightest sapphire. One author tells us that, when he had entered into the low-arching vault, and looked back to where the light streamed through the aperture, it appeared of a cerulean blue so fine and ethereal that it resembled undulating flames...No description, of course, can do such a scene justice. As painted by Mr. Beverley, and witnessed at the Egyptian Hall, the visitant of Mr. Smith's lecture may gain the nearest possible apprehension of the beauty of the place'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.