Lot Essay
Born in London on 7 December 1831, Joanna Boyce showed an early aptidtude for art, which she studied at Cary's and Leigh's academies. Like her elder brother G.P. Boyce, she was inspired by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. In September 1855 she went to Paris to join a ladies class in the studio of Couture, with whom H.T. Wells, whom the Boyces had known since 1851, had studied some years before. In May 1857 she and Wells joined a party travelling in Italy, and on 9 December they were married in Rome, returning to England the following spring. She had begun to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1855 and continued to show there regularly, her work embracing portraiture, landscape, genre, history and symbolism. However on 15 July 1861, when still aged only twenty-nine, she died following the birth of her second child.
Today she is almost forgotten; her only work in a public collection seems to be the unfinished Gretchen in the Tate. Contemporaries, however, had a high regard for her and her work. Her first R.A. exhibit was praised by Ruskin in Academy Notes and described by Maddox Brown as 'the best head in the rooms'. G.F. Watts admired her Heather Gatherer (R.A. 1861), and Rossetti, who drew her on her deathbed, called her 'a wonderfully gifted woman'. This estimate survived her death; seven of her works were included in the Royal Academy's winter exhibition of 1901, twenty-five appeared in the 1860s exhibition at the Tate in 1923, and in 1935 she was the subject of a Tate retrospective; thirty-one pictures were included, probably more or less her entire surviving oeuvre. The catalogue, which reprints an obituary in the Critic (27 July 1861), is the chief source of information about her, although other references are given in Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, 1985.
The 'Sibyl' mentioned in the note on the back was a work left unfinished at the artist's death. Described at the time as a 'head exceedingly grand and bearing the direct impress of mental elevation and force in the artist', it was included in the 1935 exhibition, no.7.
Today she is almost forgotten; her only work in a public collection seems to be the unfinished Gretchen in the Tate. Contemporaries, however, had a high regard for her and her work. Her first R.A. exhibit was praised by Ruskin in Academy Notes and described by Maddox Brown as 'the best head in the rooms'. G.F. Watts admired her Heather Gatherer (R.A. 1861), and Rossetti, who drew her on her deathbed, called her 'a wonderfully gifted woman'. This estimate survived her death; seven of her works were included in the Royal Academy's winter exhibition of 1901, twenty-five appeared in the 1860s exhibition at the Tate in 1923, and in 1935 she was the subject of a Tate retrospective; thirty-one pictures were included, probably more or less her entire surviving oeuvre. The catalogue, which reprints an obituary in the Critic (27 July 1861), is the chief source of information about her, although other references are given in Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, 1985.
The 'Sibyl' mentioned in the note on the back was a work left unfinished at the artist's death. Described at the time as a 'head exceedingly grand and bearing the direct impress of mental elevation and force in the artist', it was included in the 1935 exhibition, no.7.