THE PAGLIA FROM ORVIETO, by Susan Isabel Dacre.

Image: artuk.org.

  • Title(s): The Paglia from Orvieto, Italy (artuk.org).
  • Description: A landscape with a river running across the frame foreground with a number of cultivated fields immediately behind, mid- and far-background of increasingly elevated hills and mountains, narrow strip of mainly blue sky above,
  • Media: “Oil on canvas” (artuk.org).
  • Dimensions: “H 25.4 x W 38.1 cm” (artuk.org).
  • Signature/date/other text: “S. Isabel Dacre” bottom right (visible in online image artuk.org).
  • History:
    • 1912 – “Presented [to Leeds Art Gallery] by Charles Aitken, Esq” (artuk.org).
  • Location: Leeds City Art Gallery (artuk.org).

The full record from the Leeds Art Gallery catalogue (undated) reads, “DACRE, S. ISABEL. / Born at Manchester about 1846. Represented in Manchester Art Gallery. / 266. An Italian Landscape: The Paglia from Orvieto. Oil on canvas. Presented by Charles Aitken, Esq., 1912″. Isabel was actually born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, in 1844.

Exact viewpoint uncertain, but possibly the Pozzo di San Patrizio (Well of St Patrick), looking north to the hills behind the settlement of La Svolta (earth.google.com). Remarkably the treelines have hardly changed in well over a century. The river in the foreground is the Flume Paglia which give the painting it’s name – it joins the River Tiber 4 miles/7 km to the east.

Image: Google Earth.

Page last updated 11 Feb 2026.