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Lot Essay
The sitter was Edith Sarah (1851-1919), daughter of Samuel Williams of Greenwich and Boons Park, Edenbridge, Kent. Born in Greenwich, at the time she sat to Rossetti she was living with her widowed mother at Shirley Park, Tunbridge Wells. She had two brothers, Charles, two years older, and Frederick, possibly her twin, who was described as 'a Kentish squire' when he died in 1931.
On 28 July 1892, when still living at Shirley Park, Edith married Arthur Sackville Trevor Griffith-Boscawen (1865-1946). A bright young Welshman, educated at Rugby and Queen's College, Oxford, Arthur had nursed political ambitions from an early age, and in 1890, soon after leaving university, had been adopted as the Unionist (Conservative) candidate for the Tunbridge Division of Kent. He remained an active Member of Parliament for over thirty years, holding the Tunbridge seat until 1906, and then the seat for Dudley from 1910 until 1921 after which he sat briefly for Taunton. He was knighted in 1911.
Theirs was a love-match and unusually she was some fourteen years his senior. His published reminiscences, Memories (1925), unfortunately concentrates on his political career, however, in a brief reference to their marriage Arthur describes his wife as 'for twenty-seven years my constant companion and helpmeet', and he firmly believed that her death, which occurred on 7 July 1919, helped to lose him the Dudley seat two years later. Edith's loyal support of her husband is also stressed in her Times obituary, which speaks of her having 'taken a great part in assisting (him) in his elections and political work at Dudley and elsewhere. Yet Edith was far more than her husband's shadow. According to her obituary, she 'was herself a good speaker.' She was Chairman of the Women's Branch of the National Unionist Association, an office of considerable political importance. She was also 'connected with many other public movements, including war pensions and war savings, and she had 'worked hard in the recent campaign in favour of the Victory Loan.'
In his account of his brother's work, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer (1889), William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) wrote in his commentary on the year 1878: 'In the last month of the year Mr Valpy arranged with my brother that Miss Williams, the daughter of a lady residing at Shirley Hall, Tunbridge Wells, was to sit to him for a chalk portrait. It was finished in May of the following year.' Allowing for slight variations of date, this account is confirmed, and slightly expanded, by D.G. Rossetti's own letters. Leonard R. Valpy (1825-1884), who 'arranged' the commission, was a London solicitor with strict religious views; he had such a horror of the nude that he was said to be 'disaquieted even by a pair of bare arms'. Perhaps rather surprisingly, he was attracted to the sensuous art of Rossetti, becoming a patron in 1867, eventually owning several works including the colossal oil Dante’s Dream.
In a letter to his friend Theodore Watts (1832-1914) on 18 April 1879, Rossetti wrote: 'On Sunday I expect the last sitting from Miss W.' Ten days later he told Watts that he had 'finished Miss W's head today from her.' These sittings would have taken place at Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Edith Williams presumably travelling to London from Tunbridge Wells. Rossetti has depicted Edith Williams very much in the mode of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty but beneath the glamorous surface we sense the strength of character that would later make her a good public speaker, a valiant campaigner on behalf of social causes, and an intrepid traveller.
The striking treatment of silhouetting the head and shoulders against a pale blue ground, cut off below with a sweeping s-bend line is not uncommon in Rossetti's later drawings. A study for The Blessed Damozel, dating from 1876, in the Manchester City Art Gallery (Surtees no. 244B, pl. 356) and a drawing of Alexa Wilding, dated 1873, which was sold in these Rooms on 8 June 2000, lot 26 (fig. 1) both feature this device.
On 28 July 1892, when still living at Shirley Park, Edith married Arthur Sackville Trevor Griffith-Boscawen (1865-1946). A bright young Welshman, educated at Rugby and Queen's College, Oxford, Arthur had nursed political ambitions from an early age, and in 1890, soon after leaving university, had been adopted as the Unionist (Conservative) candidate for the Tunbridge Division of Kent. He remained an active Member of Parliament for over thirty years, holding the Tunbridge seat until 1906, and then the seat for Dudley from 1910 until 1921 after which he sat briefly for Taunton. He was knighted in 1911.
Theirs was a love-match and unusually she was some fourteen years his senior. His published reminiscences, Memories (1925), unfortunately concentrates on his political career, however, in a brief reference to their marriage Arthur describes his wife as 'for twenty-seven years my constant companion and helpmeet', and he firmly believed that her death, which occurred on 7 July 1919, helped to lose him the Dudley seat two years later. Edith's loyal support of her husband is also stressed in her Times obituary, which speaks of her having 'taken a great part in assisting (him) in his elections and political work at Dudley and elsewhere. Yet Edith was far more than her husband's shadow. According to her obituary, she 'was herself a good speaker.' She was Chairman of the Women's Branch of the National Unionist Association, an office of considerable political importance. She was also 'connected with many other public movements, including war pensions and war savings, and she had 'worked hard in the recent campaign in favour of the Victory Loan.'
In his account of his brother's work, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer (1889), William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) wrote in his commentary on the year 1878: 'In the last month of the year Mr Valpy arranged with my brother that Miss Williams, the daughter of a lady residing at Shirley Hall, Tunbridge Wells, was to sit to him for a chalk portrait. It was finished in May of the following year.' Allowing for slight variations of date, this account is confirmed, and slightly expanded, by D.G. Rossetti's own letters. Leonard R. Valpy (1825-1884), who 'arranged' the commission, was a London solicitor with strict religious views; he had such a horror of the nude that he was said to be 'disaquieted even by a pair of bare arms'. Perhaps rather surprisingly, he was attracted to the sensuous art of Rossetti, becoming a patron in 1867, eventually owning several works including the colossal oil Dante’s Dream.
In a letter to his friend Theodore Watts (1832-1914) on 18 April 1879, Rossetti wrote: 'On Sunday I expect the last sitting from Miss W.' Ten days later he told Watts that he had 'finished Miss W's head today from her.' These sittings would have taken place at Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Edith Williams presumably travelling to London from Tunbridge Wells. Rossetti has depicted Edith Williams very much in the mode of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty but beneath the glamorous surface we sense the strength of character that would later make her a good public speaker, a valiant campaigner on behalf of social causes, and an intrepid traveller.
The striking treatment of silhouetting the head and shoulders against a pale blue ground, cut off below with a sweeping s-bend line is not uncommon in Rossetti's later drawings. A study for The Blessed Damozel, dating from 1876, in the Manchester City Art Gallery (Surtees no. 244B, pl. 356) and a drawing of Alexa Wilding, dated 1873, which was sold in these Rooms on 8 June 2000, lot 26 (fig. 1) both feature this device.