Sand painting is thought to have been introduced to Europe in the 18th-century by travellers returning from the East, inspired by the ancient Japanese art of Bonseki. The German-British painter Benjamin Zobel (1762–1830) developed the technique of sand painting or 'marmotinto' in Britain at the German-speaking court of King George III. At a dinner party given at Windsor, Zobel was responsible for a table display of unfixed coloured sands, sugars and marble dust arranged under glass. The king was said to have been so impressed by this that he suggested that Zobel find a way to make his compositions permanent, and hence the craft of sand painting was born.
Zobel was friends with George Morland, a prominent painter of the 'Isle of Wight school', and many of Zobel's 18th-century designs in sand featured animals and country scenes similar to Morland's subjects. The connection between 'marmotinto' and the Isle of Wight went deeper however, as the island's geology provided a multitude of coloured sands for painting. Sand pictures became a popular pastime outside of the royal court from the 1840s onwards, as the tourist industry began to develop on the island. Queen Victoria's decision to build her holiday home, Osborne House, at East Cowes, brought with it an influx of wealthy visitors and a ready market for picture souvenirs. Alum Bay and also Blackgang Chine were the most plentiful sources of coloured sand, with Alum Bay still purported to boast twenty-one different colours of sand.
A centre for producing sand pictures was established at Newport, and various artists such as Edward Dore, his brother John of Arreton, and James Neat of Newport, a geologist, took to creating scenes with sand. Neat also specialised in filling glass jars with coloured sand and arranging it in the form of designs and pictures. Examples of Alum Bay sand pictures can be found in the collections at Osborne House and Carisbrooke Castle, and Queen Mary's collection of Georgian sand paintings are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
