Drawing of Saami children

Drawing in pencil by Arthur Evans of a Saami boy and girl.

Artist: Arthur John Evans
Date of drawing: 31 August to 1 September 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Finland
Region/Place: Lapland; Lake Suolajarvi; Jurma
Cultural group: European Saami
Format: Drawing (mounted on card)
Size: 74 x 115 mm; 173 x 244 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evans. Donated August 1941

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Primary documentation: ‘[p.588] Dr. JOAN EVANS, from the property of the late SIR ARTHUR EVANS, Youlbury, Boars Hill, Oxford. [List of items follows]’; ‘[p.590] 15 original pencil sketches of types & scenery, chiefly round ENARE, LAPPMARK, FINLAND. Made on journey in 1873. Mounted’: Pitt Rivers Museum accession records (Donations X, 1937–1941), pp.588, 590. Annotations on drawing: ‘Jurma’ (written in pencil below drawing). Annotations on mount: ‘Lapp children. Jurma on Lake Suolajäyri/ Enare Lappmark’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this drawing was made by Arthur Evans on 31 August or 1 September 1873, when his travelling party was at Jurma, a settlement beside Lake Suolajarvi. Evans wrote in his journal of the voyage to Finnish Lapland: ‘Two Lappem & some children - blue & yellow the prevailing colour of their dresses’ (entry dated 31 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 2, p.54. For more information on Arthur Evans’ voyage to Finnish Lapland in 1873, see Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears (London, 1943), pp.172–176; Ann Brown, Before Knossos...: Arthur Evans’s Travels in the Balkans and Crete (Oxford, 1993), pp.14–16, 90; and Tony Lurcock, No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland, 1830-1917 (London, 2013), pp.123–134, 250.