George Edward Bonsor Saint Martin (March 30, 1855 – August 1930) was a French-born British historian, painter, and archaeologist who is known for the discovery and study of several sites in Spain–including the necropolis and amphitheater at Carmona–parts of the ancient Roman town of Baelo Claudia in Cádiz, and the Setefilla zone [es] in Lora del Río.

[2] His mother, Pauline Marie Leonie Saint Martin Ghislaine, was a native of Lille and died of sepsis at the age of 25, a few months after her son's birth.

He lived alternately with the Batleys in southern England with his Guernes cousins while his father pursued his various business interests in different parts of the European mainland.

[6] Constant travel became a permanent feature of Bonsor's life, and it developed his intense curiosity, observational abilities, love of geography, and appetite for knowledge.

There are suggestions that on his extensive boyhood travels with his father he had gained an exceptionally broad exposure to various aspects of Europe's cultural heritage.

There are widely repeated (though otherwise undocumented) reports that at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels he won a significant prize for "archaeological technical drawing".

Bonsor became the first self-taught archaeologist who systematically used technical drawings in documenting materials and structures discovered, which he saw as genuinely artistic items.

"[3][b] Bonsor was always eager to exploit newly emerging technologies, and complemented drawings with photographs, the latter of which he primarily relied on Ramón Pinzón or Augusto Pérez Romero.

"[8] After finishing his academic studies, Bonsor travelled to southern Europe to deepen his understanding of Spanish art, in part as a way to consolidate his own painting style.

In his diary Bonsor recorded the names of more than ten of his former fellow students from the Beaux-Arts Académie who took the opportunity to visit other southern European countries.

[3] In Burgos Bonsor and Paulus befriended Primitivo Carcedo, who showed them the city, paying particular attention to the great Gothic cathedral and the Miraflores Charterhouse.

Shortly before their departure from Madrid they visited the National Archaeological Museum, at which point Bonsor confided in his diary that the place bored him supremely.

[e] The people he picked out were the types that tend to capture the attention of many foreign visitors, the street beggars, the gypsies and the priests.

While respectful of Seville's rich artistic legacy, Bonsor was underwhelmed by contemporary Sevillan painters, whom he found "mediocre".

He accompanied his relatives on a little tour of the region, taking in visits to Málaga, Granada and Seville, where he left them, returning again to Carmona on 4 March 1881.

[3][10] Bonsor loved to observe and to paint scenes from the vibrant daily life of the townsfolk, much of which in those days was centred round the church.

His diary record indicates a loss of the famous reserve that people associated with well-born English gentlemen: "When night came, I watched from my balcony the procession passing with all its lights.