The Gardener's Daughter

Based in London and specialising in genre subjects, Lee exhibited one picture at the Royal Society of British Artists and six at the Royal Academy (1878-80). The present work must be a somewhat earlier production, dating from the late 1860s. The sitter is clearly the same girl that appears, as a young mother with a baby in her lap, in Home, a picture dated 1869 which was sold in these Rooms, 24 June 1988, lot 104. It has been suggested that the model may well have been the artist's wife. A date of circa 1869 for our picture is confirmed by the fact that the address on the back (153 Adelaide Road, N.W.) is the same as that from which Lee sent a picture to Suffolk Street in 1871. By the time he came to show at the Royal Academy in 1878 he had moved to Hampstead Hill.