Arnold Henry Savage Landor - Later Years

Later Years

After so many adventures Landor's health broke down, and he travelled less frequently. He was meanwhile an extremely popular figure, being a friend of the Kings of Italy and Belgium and of Pope Pius X. Other friends included General Luigi Cadorna, Prince Alexander Obrenovic of Serbia, Eleftherios Venizelos of Greece and Essad Pasha. In the theatre he knew Maude Adams and Sarah Bernhardt and painted a portrait of Sada Yacco, the Japanese actress.

When his mother died in 1915 and his father in 1917, he was deeply affected and retired to his home in Florence, where he died in 1924. His remains rest in the family chapel in the English Cemetery, Florence.

His autobiography Everywhere: The Memoirs of an Explorer (1924) is an account of a life lived intensely, and a witness to the history and customs of far away people of the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth.

Three exhibitions of his paintings have been displayed – in 1959–60 by the British Council, in the Palazzo del Drago at Rome, in the Palazzo Antinori in Florence and in Naples at the British Consulate.