Saturday 9th December - Blanche Jenkins (1851-1915)

 Hurrah, it's the weekend! I should get more time to do these posts, although nothing works out like that, especially at Christmas.  We are off seeing people, delivering cards and presents while I try and remember who I am meant to be writing about.  I'm a bit worried about today's lady as she did portraits and we know how the Royal Academy illustrated supplement felt about portraits.  Let's brace ourselves and dive in...

Cupid with Roses (no date)

Okay, I possibly should have warned you how sugar-laden today's post is likely to be.  There will be all manner of cutie-pies, little moppets and kiddiewinks, so feel free to pace yourself.  The sweetness levels are going to be through the roof. Welcome to the world of Blanche Jenkins...

Portrait from Look and Learn (c.1890s)

I am in the debt of the Queen magazine, who ran a piece on Blanche in 1888 and gave me some very searchable facts to find her family tree. Blanche was born in the summer of 1851 to George (1799-1871) and Emma (1816-1904). As a side-note, it sometimes surprises me how old parents could be at the birth of their children in the olden days.  My grandparents were in their 40s when they had my mother, and I see George was 52 when Blanche came into the world. I was made to feel like a museum piece at 32 when Lily was born - 'geriatric pregnancy' and 'elderly primigravida'  were mentioned, even though I had a good 3 years before either of those applied.  I digress.  

Anyway, Blanche was the middle of 5 siblings, starting with Emma junior (1847-1936), Anne (1850-1926), Rose (1853-1931) and finally Arnold (1859-1926). Yet again we have another girl exposed to art at an early age (when will we ever learn?), this time through her mother's cousins William Lionel Wyllie (lots of boats), his brother Charles William Wyllie (not so many boats and no Wikipedia page) and their half brother Lionel Percy Smythe (practically no boats but a Wikipedia page).  According to the Queen, Blanche loved to draw from an early age, and by 11 years old was top of her class in art.  As the family lived in London, as a reward for her talent Blanche was allowed to attend the Female School of Art in Queen's Square for two afternoons a week.  She was already winning prizes at 12...

Little Elsie (1899)

She went to the Royal Academy School under Mr Pickersgill and while at the school, painted a study of a head entitled Madeline.  She entered it into the 1873 Royal Academy exhibition and it appeared in the same room as John Everett Millais (although I'm guessing slightly higher). I was disappointed (yet somehow unsurprised) to see that it gained no interest in the newspapers. Nevertheless, she followed it in 1874 with A Captive, again no press reviews.  Although her 1875 RA picture, Merry Christmas Time gained no press interest, she appeared in the Liverpool Mercury's review of the exhibition of paintings at the Free Library, where her picture Sunbeam in Granny's Chair was described thus 'a sweet laughing cherry-cheeked sunbeam it is - Some mother's darling, beautifully portrayed.'  She also appeared in the December exhibition at the Dudley Gallery where she had two paintings described by the St Pancras Guardian as 'agreeably-painted little portraits.'

1876 started with a mention in Building News who I think employed art critics who hated Victorian art (so it's traditional, Guardian) which is unfortunate if you are Victorian. It considered the Dudley Gallery exhibition as having no watercolour painting on its walls that was of any consequence 'to anyone but the painter and his frame-maker.' They caveat their review with 'the specimens we commend are only commendable because they are not quite so bad as some others in the exhibition.' Marvellous. With this in mind, they commented that Blanche's piece How Tommy Does His Sums was recommended to the visitors' attention. Thanks, I think...

1876 was also important because not only did Blanche get away with not being too badly reviews in Building News but also at the Royal Academy in May, she was joined on the walls by her sister Anne.  Blanche had two paintings on show, A Study and Playmates Asleep, which also showed at the Royal Scottish Academy's exhibition in March of 1877, and Anne had a still life.

Brace yourself, because in 1877 Blanche's RA work was finally mentioned by a newspaper! In The Era, Blanche's work Slyboots was called a 'meritorious little work' and 'a clever work' and Blanche was called 'a promising young artist.' Another exhibition saw Blanche sell her work Lilian for £7 7s which seems an average price of a painting sold on that occasion. Sadly, there is no mention in 1878, where Blanche showed two portraits The Widow and Portrait of a Lady.  It is easy to see Blanche as merely a poppet painter, but she did a fair number of portraits of women too. The Royal Scottish Academy did not let us down and the Edinburgh Evening News mentioned An Attentive Listener as 'a fine study of a young girl in modern costume.'  However, it was not all good news - 'It is marred by some defects of colour, and by a slight carelessness of drawing in the right arm.' Despite a wonky arm, she sold it for £15.

The Hon Mrs Henry Howard (1879)

Blanche ended the 1870s with another mention of her Royal Academy efforts in the newspaper.  The Morning Post awarded praise to her portrait of The Hon. Mrs Henry Howard  and The Graphic reported 'Miss Blanche Jenkins's head of the Hon. Mrs Henry Howard is one of many portraits which do honour to our lady painters this year.' As you will see, Mrs Howard is very dignified and non-poppety and I can see why it caught the critics eye.  Her other picture, Mrs Sneyd of Keele received no mention in the press, but outside the Royal Academy, her piece Little Rustic was called 'an apple-cheeked country lassock' by the Dundee Advertiser and her portrait Dolly sold for £8 8s.

The First Kiss (1881)

Although Blanche did not show at the London Royal Academy in 1880, Phillis appeared at the Scottish RA, selling for £36 15s. She was back at the RA in 1881 with her sister Anne and three pictures, Going Out, Mrs Lyttleton Annesley and Little Sunshine, none of which were covered in the newspapers. Blanche had an impressive four paintings accepted in 1882, Little Frank, Captain A G Corbet, Nearly Bedtime and The First Kiss. The last on the list made the news, with The Era describing 'There are few nicer works of [pretty children] than "The First Kiss" by Blanche Jenkins.  The fair artist has been most successful in depicting the pretty shyness of the little girl who is being so demurely kissed by a cavalier of about her own age.' The Evening News commented 'it is uncommonly well done, and it does one good to look at it.' The painting was bought by the artist T O Barlow who produced an engraving of it and entered it into the 1886 Royal Academy show.

1883 saw three more paintings at the RA, and what the Queen magazine called an advance in her art style. Other than that, and a brief acknowledgment that she had portraits in the May exhibition, there were no reviews of Daisy, daughter of G T R Preston Esq, A Little Coquette and The Queen of the Fisher Maidens. The latter was reviewed well the following year when it appeared in a Society of Lady Artists exhibition where it was described as 'remarkable for the youthful beauty of the head, and its animated expression.' The Penny Illustrated Paper had Blanche's Sly Puss as its colour plate for Christmas the same year, described as a picture of a 'pretty little girl and a no less pretty kitten.'

Hush! (1887)

In 1885, Blanche sold His Mother's Darling at an exhibition in Manchester for £6 6s and The Youngest for £12 12s at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool. Her picture Christmas Eve was mentioned in a review of the Royal Academy exhibition in the Stratford Upon Avon Herald. In 1887, Blanche's work Hush! reminded the Queen magazine of the work of Joshua Reynolds, whilst other publications likened her child portraits to those of Millais, with whom she shared gallery space. Hush!  proved so popular that it appeared as an engraving in 1888 in The Graphic. One painting which prompted the comparison with Millais was The Primrose Dance which, from descriptions, I think is this one...

Girl in a Green Dress (The Primrose Dance) (1887)

The likeness to Reynolds appeared again in 1888 with A Simple Child, one of two paintings Blanche had in the Royal Academy that year. The Bath Chronicle remarked that Blanche's portraiture possessed 'a singular charm of tenderness.' The painting she exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, The Tiff, won her the prize of 20 guineas at the Wolverhampton exhibition.

In 1889, the Queen magazine ran the interview with Blanche, listing her successes, but reporting that ill health had prevented her from exhibiting that year. The Jenkins family had moved into their new home (and studio) in Abbey Road, which would become known as Blanche's mature studio, only leaving it towards the end of her life when the railway bought the land for extension of the London and North West railway line.  

In 1890, Blanche was back, exhibiting Early Spring with the Society of Lady Artists, and an 'exceedingly lovely little girl' (according to the Queen) in her RA piece, Lilies. together with another charming child study Ruby, at the New Gallery. In 1891, Blanche exhibited a portrait of her cousin Mrs Charles Wyllie praised by John Bull for its 'charming sprightliness as well as for its fine and harmonious colour.'

Her Morning Ride (1892)

Father's Little Comforter, Blanche's1892 Royal Academy painting featured the same little girl who had appeared in Lilies and who liked by critics who had come to expect certain subjects and emotions from Blanche's work. At the Dundee Fine Art Exhibition in the March, Blanche sold her painting A Simple Child for £200. She also exhibited Her Morning Ride, a painting that appeared in Walter Sparrow's 1905 classic Women Painters of the World. In 1893, another child portrait Through the Woods appeared at the New Gallery, Blanche's portrait of Mrs Wyllie graced the Royal Academy, while an engraving of Lilies appeared in Christmas annuals in December. Her portraits of girls including Miss Isabella Wilson, Meriel, daughter of A E Perkins, together with an engraving of The Morning Ride, filled the Royal Academy in the1890s, culminating with a portrait of her mother, Emma in 1899 , surprising some critics but reminding others that Blanche was not just a painter of little girls.  

Wreaths and Smiles (1897)

Although obviously, a lot of it was little girls.

At this time, Blanche, together with her sister Emma, Anne and Rose, all still lived at home with their mother, in Abbey Road. Anne was listed as a painter in the 1901 census, with Blanche listed as a portrait painter.  Sister Emma was a professor of music and Rose, a professor of elocution.  Not much changed after the death of Mrs Jenkins in 1904, the sisters continuing to live together, with the addition of a servant. Interestingly, Anne seems to stop claiming artistic status somewhen in the first decade of the twentieth century, becoming the only one of the sisters without a profession.

You can see the interest in Blanche's art slip away in the early years of the twentieth century.  She was regarded as a figure of authority, a trail-blazer in female portraiture, with her famous pictures repeatedly used as illustrations in magazines, but she became very much pigeonholed as a child portrait painter, even adding that detail to her 1911 census return.  This ignores the large number of portraits of adults she was praised for.  In the years before her death in 1915, her sparse output became narrowed to just what was expected of her - portraits of girls, including an image of The Fairy Queen at the War Relief Exhibition in 1915, a few months before her death in the autumn.

So, what do we take away from Blanche Jenkins? She definitely suffers from the general disinterest in portraiture and I can see why - if you don't know the person in the picture, where is the pull other than to look at the skill involved.  Such works are also done for commission, so lack the need to capture the general imagination, which is fair enough. The fashion for the sort of child portrait she was so good at has definitely not come back around, and I fear her retrospective might be a while away, unless anyone fancies a saccharine poppet exhibition that concentrates on that sugary genre in an attempt to understand it. Why, for example, did Millais reach back to Reynolds? That is certainly who I feel Blanche is emulating, and was it a conscious reaching back to the Georgians? That Victorian celebration of childhood, which by the end of her life in the Edwardian period and beyond is what Blanche had boiled down to, deserves our attention because it is so intense.  Maybe those poppets aren't as sugary as they first appear. We owe it Blanche to take another look.