Ladies of substance - portraits by William Blake Richmond

 

There's nothing terribly remarkable about these portraits. Pretty of composition, graceful of color. But when I came upon them the thing that most caught my attention was how very self-possessed most of these women appear to be. Whether direct or indirect of gaze, they fill the frame of their portraits with a nearly palpable feeling of confidence.

Mrs. Ernest Moon, 1888.

Charlotte Elizabeth Fuller-Maitland of Borwick Hall, circa 1886.

Mrs. Luke Ionides, 1882.

Maude Sarah Verney, 1895.

Mrs. Charles Rome, née Hunter, 1886.

Ethel Bertha Harrison, 1882.

Anne Jemima Clough, First Principal, Newnham College, Cambridge, 1883.

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Sir William Blake Richmond, (29 November 1842, Marylebone - 11 February 1921, Hammersmith), British painter, sculptor, and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and the decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London. Richmond was influential in the early stages of the Arts and Crafts Movement in his selection of bold colors and materials for the mosaics in St Paul's and in his collaboration with James Powell and Sons, glass makers. 

The son of portrait painter George Richmond, he was enrolled at the Royal Academy of Art at the age of fourteen, studying drawing and painting. By 1861, at only nineteen, he was already a successful portrait painter himself and was elected to the Royal Academy. He married twice. His first wife died in 1865, only a year after their marriage, and he remarried two years later; he and his second wife would have seven children together. He travelled often to Italy, Greece, Spain, and Egypt and, particularly, to Rome, where he spent years at a time. The Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford from 1878 to 1883, he succeeded his friend and mentor John Ruskin. He served as Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy from 1895 to 1899 and from 1909 to 1911, and continued to exhibit there until 1916.