Untitled (Ah Fu feeding hens), p. 44

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19373

Title

p. 44, Untitled (Ah Fu feeding hens)

Description

Ah Fu, Robert Louis Stevenson's Chinese cook, a young man with a hat on is feeding hens with grain from a striped cup. He is sitting on a box in a yard with the birds all around him. To his right water is pouring from a stand pipe into a large metal bucket. Around the yard are trees and a fence. A small hut can be seen in the background.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Casco' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around Hawaii and French Polynesia in 1888.

Artist / maker

Osbourne, Lloyd

Date

1889

Size

10.4 x 12.7 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

This image was taken by Lloyd Osbourne, Robert Louis Stevenson's step-son.

Ah Fu, became Robert Louis Stevenson's cook on the Casco in August 1888. He replaced the previous cook who had been drunk ashore and placed in jail. Ah Fu was from China, but had been marooned on Hiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands, as a boy. He remained with the Stevenson's until 1890 when he returned to China.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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Related subjects

Animals > Birds > Chickens

People > Adults > Men

Plants > Trees > Trees

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