Lily Pettigrew was born about 1874 and was one of three sisters, the oldest of whom was Hetty and the youngest, Rose. Their family came from the West Country, but when their father, Joseph Pettigrew, died suddenly, their mother, assured by a local artist that they could make their fortunes as models, brought them to London. They had arrived by 1884 when they posed as the three little girls listening to a boy fifer in Millais' painting An Idyll of 1745 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. According to J.G. Millais, they gave his father 'more trouble than any [models] he ever had to deal with. They were three little gypsies...and with the characteristic carelessness of their race, they just came when they liked, and only smiled benignly when lectured on their lack of punctuality' (The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899, II, p.165). Although the Pettigrews were certainly at least partly of gypsy descent, Rose chose to paint a rather different picture when she wrote some autobiographical notes in the 1940s, emphasising her family's aristocratic connections with 'the Mount Edgecomes of Cornwall' and describing the happy relations which she and her sisters enjoyed with Millais ('we were all in love with him') and the other artists who vied for their services. 'We posed to every great artist in the land, Whistler, Poynter, Onslow Ford (who was as dear to us as Millais), Leighton, whom I never admired as an artist, Holman Hunt, Princep [sic], Gilbert, John Tweed, to whom my sister Hetty became engaged, Sargent, etc., in fact we became the rage among the artists, and it was most difficult to get sittings from us ... Every exhibition had a picture of at least one of the "Beautiful Miss Pettigrews", as we were called...We never, never posed under half a guinea a day, which was a big sum in those days of cheapness' (see Laughton, op.cit., p.116). They also sat to Sickert, Wilson Steer, who was evidently in love with Rose, and - as the present picture shows - Godward.

The picture is undated but was probably painted about 1900, when the sitter was about twenty-five. She seems to be a little older than she appears in Whistler's portrait of her (Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow), which dates from c.1895 (see Andrew McLaren Young and others, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, 1980, cat.no.434 and pl.285). According to Rose Pettigrew, Lily was the most beautiful of the three girls. 'My sister Lily was lovely!', she wrote. 'She had most beautiful curly red gold hair, violet eyes, a beautiful mouth, classic nose, and beautifully shaped face, long neck, well set, and a most exquisite figure; in fact, she was perfection!' (op.cit., p.114).

Rose makes no mention of Godward in her account except to say that, after her marriage to the musician H. Waldo Warner, her 'little sitting room' was hung 'with pictures by Wilson Steer, Godward, and etchings by Theodore Roussel' (op.cit., p.116). It seems highly likely that this portrait of her sister was the picture by Godward in question.

We are grateful to Dr. Vern G. Swanson of Springville Museum of Art, Utah, for his help in preparing this and the following entry.