Details
William Bell Scott (1811-1890)
A Portrait of Margaret Mayhew bust length in red laced trimmed Dress
and lace Headdress, she is seen with a Chaffinch on a Camellia Branch
signed and dated W.B. Scott Feb. 1860, and inscribed Margaret Mayhew nee Losh, 1803 died 1858,
oil on canvas
24 x 20in. (61 x 50.7cm)
A Portrait of Margaret Mayhew bust length in red laced trimmed Dress
and lace Headdress, she is seen with a Chaffinch on a Camellia Branch
signed and dated W.B. Scott Feb. 1860, and inscribed Margaret Mayhew nee Losh, 1803 died 1858,
oil on canvas
24 x 20in. (61 x 50.7cm)
Literature
Hugh Taylor,'In the Bleak Mid-Winter: Christina Rossetti at Penkill Castle', The Order of the Owl, Journal of the Penkill Foundation, vol.3, no. 1, 1987
A posthumous portrait of one of Miss Boyd's relations on her mother's side of the family, painted the year that Scott first visited Penkill. The chaffinch has been identified with the one which settled on D.G. Rossetti's hand during his visit to Penkill in 1869, and which he imagined, in the overwrought state he was in at the time, to be the spirit of his dead wife Lizzie. The bird is further said to have remained a pet of Miss Boyd's, who named it 'Bonby', and to have inspired a poem by Christina Rossetti when it died:
Gone to his rest,
Bright little Bonby
Build green his nest
Where sun and dew be,
Nor snails molest
However in view of the date of the picture all this should be treated with caution.
A posthumous portrait of one of Miss Boyd's relations on her mother's side of the family, painted the year that Scott first visited Penkill. The chaffinch has been identified with the one which settled on D.G. Rossetti's hand during his visit to Penkill in 1869, and which he imagined, in the overwrought state he was in at the time, to be the spirit of his dead wife Lizzie. The bird is further said to have remained a pet of Miss Boyd's, who named it 'Bonby', and to have inspired a poem by Christina Rossetti when it died:
Gone to his rest,
Bright little Bonby
Build green his nest
Where sun and dew be,
Nor snails molest
However in view of the date of the picture all this should be treated with caution.