Amiandos. The Mountain women wear their hair draped about with a black handkerchief - cottages below Amiandos

Gladys Emma Peto was an English artist, fashion designer and illustrator. She married Cuthbert Lindsay Emmerson of the Royal Army medical Corps and, during the 1920’s, she travelled with him to Malta, Cyprus and Egypt. An outcome of her travels was the book ‘Malta and Cyprus’ and ‘The Egypt of the Sojourner’ published by J.M. Dent for the Outward Bound Library. In her art deco style, she was clearly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley. In the picture, Gladys Peto presents the Cypriot women as the hard working force of the country, the men as exotic and picturesque in their quaint costumes. A mother holds an infant in one arm, a wicker tray in the other, and beside her is a rugged child carrying a basket on her shoulder. The little girl is being trained by her mother to accept hard work: In the background, the grandmother is busy at the entrance of the cottage while the master of the house sits at ease on the stairway. The artist used the ‘picture postcard’ approach placing buildings in romantic or picturesque settings, their lines softened by the surrounding shrubs, hills and trees. Walls are shown crumbling with age and benign neglect. There is nothing monumental or austere about her work.