Gods and Foolish Grandeur: Simeon Solomon

Friday, May 14, 2021

The two Fanny Eatons

Simeon Solomon, 1859.

Fanny Eaton, née Fanny Antwistle or Entwhistle (23 June 1835, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica – 4 March 1924, Acton), Jamaican-born artist's model and domestic worker. Her mother was of African descent, possibly born into slavery, while no father was named on her birth records, suggesting that she may have been illegitimate. She and her mother made their way to England some time in the 1840s, and by 1851 they were living in London, where she was working as a domestic servant.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, circa 1863-65.

Frederick Sandys, circa 1859-60.

"The Mother of Sisera", by Albert Joseph Moore, 1861.

In 1857 she married James Eaton, a horse-cab proprietor and driver, and together, they had ten children. She continued to work as a cleaner and cook and, from 1859 to 1867, she posed for several of the Pre-Raphaelite painters in order to supplement the family income. Her distinctive likeness is to be found in the works of Simeon Solomon, Frederick Sandys, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others.

Walter Fryer Stocks, circa 1859.

Simeon Solomon, 1860.

By 1881 Eaton had been widowed and was working as a seamstress. In her later years, she worked as a cook on the Isle of Wight for a wine merchant and his wife. But by 1911, she was living with her daughter Julia, her son-in-law, and grandchildren in London. She died at the age of eighty-eight and was buried in Margravine Road Cemetery in Hammersmith.

Frederick Sandys, circa 1862.

Joanna Mary Wells, née Boyce, 1861.

Miss Frances Louise "Fanny" Eaton (1849-1936), only daughter of Henry William Eaton, later 1st Baron Cheylesmore, British businessman, Conservative politician, and important art collector. Miss - later "The Honourable" - Fanny Eaton is aged from eleven to about fifteen in these images. The photographs are the work of the studio of Camille Silvy.

19 December 1860.

1 March 1861.

1 May 1862.

5 August 1864.

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Dressing up friends - photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield, circa 1863-68

Unidentified man.

David Wilkie Wynfield (1837, India – 26 May 1887, London), British painter and photographer. Born in India, the son of James Stainback Winfield, a captain in the 47th Bengal native infantry, he was named after his maternal great-uncle and godfather Sir David Wilkie. Originally intended for the priesthood, he studied at Leigh’s Art School from 1856 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1859. He was a founding member of the St. John’s Wood Clique of artists, and his paintings are in keeping with the group’s interest in historical genre subjects; he would be the only member of that group not eventually elected a member or associate member of the Royal Academy. Like many of his artistic comrades, Wynfield served in The Artists' Rifles, reaching the rank of Captain and was commander of 'H' Company by 1880. He died only seven years later, though, reportedly of consumption, in his fiftieth year.

Self-portrait.

In the 1860s Wynfield had become interested in photography and developed a technique of shallow-focus portrait photography. (Which he would pass on to Julia Margaret Cameron, who later acknowledged him as the main influence on her own work.) Using an 8 x 6 inch glass plate camera combined with careful lighting and an emphasis on form rather than detail, he was trying to capture something of the effect of Old Master paintings using the new medium. By the middle of the decade, he was working on a large series of portraits of artists (and one architect) - both members of the St. John’s Wood Clique and others - dressed in medieval and Renaissance costume. An early selection of twenty of these photographs was published in book form in March of 1864 under the title The Studio: A Collection of Photographic Portraits of Living Artists, Taken in the Style of Old Masters, by an Amateur.