This is a collection of art work created by the Royal Engineer Edward Charles Frome (1802-1890). In 1929 Frome’s surviving daughter, Mrs Frank Wynne, presented some of the South Australian drawings to the Royal Empire Society through the good offices of Sir Harry Wilson, to whom she bequeathed the rest of the collection. He presented it to the society in 1931. The majority of Frome’s individual watercolours and drawings, varying in size from 250 to 450 mm, were then housed in eight specially constructed albums. Frome had also created a series of sketchbooks of various formats during his travels and most of the more finished pieces were removed to the albums.

In 1970, all of Frome’s Australian artwork was sold to the Art Gallery of South Australia and Australian pieces by other artists he had acquired were sold at auction. This included the entire contents of albums 1-2 and sketchbooks 2-3. In 1975, the society sold five of the Canadian items depicting early Kingston, Ontario, to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre of Queen’s University, Kingston.

When donating the collection, Wilson had presented a few items to the countries they represented, and over the years the RCS loaned others to high commissions, some of which were never recovered. One drawing was destroyed during the bombing raids of the Second World War. Sketchbooks 1 and 4-5 were missing when the collection was acquired by the University Library and sketchbooks 6-7 and 11 had never been presented to the society. Many individual items from the albums and sketchbooks were found to be missing when the collection came to Cambridge. This catalogue provides a detailed list of the remaining watercolours and sketches.

Albums 3-8 have been catalogued as RCMS 40/1/3-8:

Album 3 RCMS 40/1/3 Mauritius
Album 4 RCMS 40/1/4 Channel Islands and Gibraltar
Album 5 RCMS 40/1/5 Gibraltar and Tangier
Album 6 RCMS 40/1/6 Africa, Heligoland, Canada
Album 7 RCMS 40/1/7 Germany and Scotland
Album 8 RCMS 40/1/8 United Kingdom and Ireland

Sketchbooks 8-10 and 12-15 have become RCMS 40/2/8-10 and 12-15:

Sketchbook 8 RCMS 40/2/8 Heligoland and Scotland
Sketchbook 9 RCMS 40/2/9 Ireland and sundries
Sketchbook 10 RCMS 40/2/10 Ireland, Gibraltar and miscellaneous
Sketchbook 12 RCMS 40/2/12 Tangier and Gibraltar
Sketchbook 13 RCMS 40/2/13 Gibraltar and Tangier
Sketchbook 14 RCMS 40/2/14 Gibraltar
Sketchbook 15 RCMS 40/2/15 Miscellaneous sketches