A Stunning Man

 I love finding the names of models behind Pre-Raphaelite paintings as I think the histories of these (often working-class) women are important in regards to the creations of the works. Over the last few years especially, we seem to have made great strides in uncovering the names and lives of all the fleeting models who appeared in one or two pictures but today I'm going to tell you about a model who appeared in some of the best known Pre-Raphaelite (and adjacent) images and continued to work well into the twentieth century.  However, when I read the name in the newspaper I had no idea who they were. Let's change that today because this Pre-Raphaelite stunner is a bit different, not least because he's a chap.  Say hello to Domenico Antonio Reitzo...

Sketch for King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884) Edward Burne-Jones

Now with the lovely Mr Reitzo, there is a lot of dreamy mythology which I am in no mood to shatter because I think it is an important part of who he was and what he meant to countless generations of artists.  This is a chap who spanned artworks from John Everett Millais until the Second World War, and was still modelling into his 80s. I will attempt to tell his story as best I can but I suspect when we start looking, his contribution to art will be enormous.

The story goes that while Valentine Cameron Prinsep and his friend Edward Burne-Jones were in Italy in 1859, he saw a small Italian boy running down the street. So bewitched was he with the child's appearance that he sponsored the boy (and possibly also his family?) to come to England and continue modelling.  While that is a lovely story, Domenico Reitzo, also known as Prinzi and 'Dom' to the countless artists he modelled for, wasn't born until December 1861 or possibly 1863 depending if you rely on the 1939 census or the certificates he brought from Italy. However, there are further issues with this timing when you see some of the paintings he posed for, so I'm guessing he was actually born earlier but still brought over to London as a child to act as an artist's model.  There are some definite issues of child welfare, and I'm not at all sure his parents were brought with him.  Goodness, the nineteenth century was exciting, wasn't it...?

As a child, Dom was very much in demand, but it was when it grew up that he became the superstar of the Victorian art world.  He was allegedly one of the first models at the Slade, employed by Edward Poynter, and he continued to model there every year until the 1940s. The painting that brought him to celebrity was undoubtedly Millais' image of Walter Raleigh as a boy...

The Boyhood of Raleigh (1870) John Everett Millais

You see the problem of his birth-date as Dom is not one of the little boys, but the man who is pointing out to sea. If you believe Prinsep's account that he met a little boy in the late 1850s then that could be a chap in his late teens with a false moustache, but there is no way he is a 10 year old. From the Slade work, Edward Poynter used him in a fresco in St Stephen's in Dulwich for the Trial and Martyrdom of St Stephen between 1871 and 1873. It seems amazing that Dom managed to fit this fairly steady modelling work around making and selling his own ice cream, which feels a bit of a stereotype for an Italian man in England but I bet a handsome man with a cornetto is popular everywhere...

Habour of Refuge (1872) Frederick Walker

Here we have Dom as the chap with the scythe, representing the inevitability of death as he cuts down people like grass. F G Stephen's reviewing the piece in The Athenaeum made much of the labourer's 'lithe limbs' in 'an agony of energy' and he seems to have turned the head of the young woman about to come down the steps. The romantic potential of the young man is something that the artists who flocked to him couldn't wait to exploit...

Harmony (1877) Frank Dicksee

Harmony was a painting reported as featuring the handsome features of our chap, but the writer in the newspaper in 1939 attributed it to Luke Fildes.  I can only imagine that they meant this one, and the young man looking devotedly at his lady love certainly looks like Dom.  What I love about this is that Dicksee was so young when he painted it, only 24 years old.  The girl was Hilda Spencer (not Hilda Carline Spencer), a young art student at Queens College where Dicksee was teaching, so these three young people produced such a wonderful, romantic image.

Romeo and Juliet (1884) Frank Dicksee

As Dicksee had scored so big with Harmony, it's unsurprising that he would try and recapture the magic in another picture and so we have 1884's Romeo and Juliet. This image was one of the plates in a gift book of the play in 1884 and was described in The Bookseller as featuring 'such a man and woman as Shakespeare must have pictured to himself.' 

In the meantime, Dom was also living a normal life. In 1890, he married local lass Mary Richards, signing the register with a cross as he was illiterate.  What I found interesting is that, despite being unable to write or (allegedly) read, Reitzo was never frightened to come forward and do the right thing in terms of participating in legal proceedings.  There are at least two instances of his involvement in crime (on the right side, I hasten to say), once where he tackled a mugger and made a citizen's arrest, and again where he witnessed a fight that resulted in a death.  He went to the Old Bailey as a witness testifying in Italian and English and putting up with cross-questioning.  

Speak! Speak! (1895) John Everett Millais

At the same time, he was still appearing in famous paintings. He was the startled husband, crying out at the spirit of his dead wife in Speak! Speak! and the Bromsgrove and Droitwich Messenger called the work 'one of the principal points of attraction in this year's Academy pictures.'

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884) Edward Burne-Jones

I have found newspaper articles that claim Dom modelled for Leighton, Alma Tadema, Watts, Rossetti, Perugini, Shannon and Ricketts, Harry Bates, Singer Sargent, Orpen, Sickert and Glyn Philpot which is a really extraordinary collection of artists.  He was King Cophetua in Burne-Jones' picture, which is so important I can't believe I never asked who that was, but once you see his face, you can spot him everywhere. In an article written about him in 1949, it was claimed that every living artist who had studied in London would have drawn him at the very least. In total, he posed for around 80 years which is an astonishing contribution to art.

He and Mary had children and continued to live their extraordinary/ordinary life, appearing in the 1911 census living at 50 Lancaster Street in Southwark (which is definitely not there anymore, which is a shame as I am constantly looking for people to propose for Blue Plaques) and he is listed as an 'ice cream vendor.'  Of the seven children they had, only two, Betsy and Mary, survived. By 1921, Mary is still living at home, although has been married and now has her son, Domenico (obviously named for her Dad) living with them as well. They had moved to the very lovely (if it is original, and I'd love a building historian's view on this) Fryers Street in Vauxhall. The 1920s also saw Dom pose for the Exeter war memorial as one of the soldier's around the base...

He's in his 60s by this point and still working and looking glorious.  By the 1930s, he had moved to Grace House in Kennington, and the newspaper article on him recorded his 'two surviving sons' had done well in life, one an engineer and the other a solicitor - possibly they meant son-in-laws or even grandsons by this point. Mary's son is listed as a baker in 1939, on Kensington Park Road, which still seems to be an Italian eatery according to Google Maps.

The South London Observer ran an article on Dom's career in July 1939.  In this version of the story, the little boy was running along the road in St John's Wood when he was discovered by Prinsep and whisked away to artistic stardom.  It reported on the queues of Royal Academicians who lined the streets vying for his services (which is a brilliant visual) and how he had been courted by the greats of the nineteenth century.  Even after all those years, and despite saving enough money to retire, our chap was far too much in love with his career to give it up. Grace House was also a very short walk to the City and Guild of London Art School on Kennington Park Road where he still modelled. Innes Fripp, head of the school in 1939, had known Dom for 45 years, stating he had posed at every art school in London. One anecdote he shared was that the model had been mistaken for Peter the Painter and almost lynched by a mob in Whitechapel.  The police hauled him off to the local station but he was rescued by some famous artists who he called and announced he was their favourite model. 

Apologies for the quality, I pinched it off the Newspaper Archive

I am delighted that finally in the 1939 register, Domenico Reitzo is finally listed as an artist model. He and Mary are living at 47 Kennington Oval (which must be Grace House, looking at the map). The London Evening News catch up with him again a decade later in June of 1949, aged almost 90 and the star of the Royal Academy once more. Henry K McElwee's picture The Old Model caused quite a stir, not only because it is a moving piece but because of the heritage. In the newspaper article, they place the grainy image above next to a Poynter sketch from St Stephen's just to emphasise that although art had changed, the inspiration behind it had not.  A further charming article from the summer of 1949 reported on a 'Grandfather's club' that had been formed and there was a weekly get-together of elderly gentlemen in Camberwell including 89 year old Mr J Webb, renown Dahlia grower and broadcaster known as 'Daddy Dahlia', and one who had been at the relief of Ladysmith and the Egyptian campaign of the 19th century, but the star was, as ever, the 'most immortal' Domenico Reitzo, praised to the hilt as the superstar he was.

Finally, on 3rd December 1949, Reitzo died. He had been taken into hospital after the death of his beloved Mary in November, and in the London Evening News, it was reported that hers was a loss he couldn't recover from. His 'immortal face' graced many walls, both domestic and gallery, and the question remains, if he is so 'immortal' why is he not better known?

Okay, so I know I shout 'retrospective!' far too much, but I am seriously going to try and get something done for Domenico Reitzo, if only in the publishing of this post.  I will try (as I always do) to get him a Blue Plaque because his contribution is massive to the art we all love. I know that our interest in models is quite a niche thing in art history in many ways, but it strikes me that it can be a bit sexist. I'm guessing, in the case of the Pre-Raphaelites, the men were a bit of a side-show with the women being the main event, and quite often they used each other as models, but there is no excuse for me not knowing this handsome chap's name. The list of people Dom posed for is extensive, so if you are more familiar with the output of some of the above and want to suggest other pictures Mr Reitzo could be the model for, email them over or pop them in the comments as I will be compiling a case for him. It's about time he got to be immortal again.

Mrs Shepherd's Locket

Sometimes the most innocent of items can have a history that makes you feel in awe.  After my Ma-in-Law's sudden passing last year, the redoubtable Mr Walker found himself in touch with all the different parts of our family, including our family in New Zealand. One amazing outcome of those conversations was that the very lovely Lynda offered to send our daughter Lily-Rose a locket that had been passed through the women of the family.  However, it was no ordinary locket...

As you can see, it's in its original box from E Davis of Leicester Square, Walsall.  Lynda told us that it was given to her grandmother from an older lady who they looked after as she suffered from poor health.  It was this lady's wish that Lynda's mum would receive it in time and it was then passed to Lynda.  The locket is lovely, but it was the background that makes it extra special for Lily because the older lady was ill health because of what had happened to her when she was younger.  This locket belonged to Mary Louisa Shepherd...

Mary Louisa Shepherd, or Louisa as she seems to have liked to be called, was born Mary Miles in Minety, Wiltshire in March of 1875.  Like most families in Wiltshire (my own included) Louisa came from a long line of Agricultural Labourers.  By the time she was a teenager, she was the only servant to a farmer and his family just outside Chippenham, also north Wiltshire.  In the south of Gloucestershire (just above Wiltshire), was William Thomas Shepherd, son of a saddler, and the couple met and married in 1902. By 1911 the couple had moved to Walsall, north of Birmingham, taking William' widowed mother with them.  William had work as a porter for a furniture dealer and they lived at 72 Brace Street, a very pleasant road of small houses.  Looking at the census, there are lots of different occupations living there, from licenced victuallers, railway porters and a Prudential agent.  However, two years later, Louisa was sent to jail.

Along with the locket, Lynda passed us some postcards which were very old and very special. As a group they tell a fascinating story. I'll start with this family group...

This is David Lloyd George, his wife Margaret and daughter Megan.  On the back it reads 'WELSH TROOPS PICTURE POST CARD DAY In Aid of THE NATIONAL FUND FOR WELSH TROOPS' which dates the postcard to around 1914-1918 (someone has removed the stamp and postmark).  The card has a brief note on the back that reads 

'Dear Mrs Sheppard [sic] Wishing you a good Xmas and Bright New Year. 

Hear you are doing well so be careful. Good luck, Edgar Jones'

Edgar Jones was an MP for Merthyr Tydfil from 1910 to 1918 and his wife was a NUWSS secretary and very politically active. Whilst I would be tempted to just think the card was from a friend, the formal nature of the message and the warning to 'be careful' seemed odd, but when you take into account Louisa's actions in July of 1913, it begins to make sense.

Two other postcards from Mrs Shepherd's collection were of Mrs Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel.  By this point, you can probably guess why Louisa Shepherd was arrested. 

The last two postcards are of marches for women's suffrage - the first shows a 'Leicester' banner and the other shows a banner reading 'TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY,' both being carried in a long procession of women in Edwardian dress. The presence of the Pankhurst postcards hints at a more militant interest in equal rights for women and Mrs Shepherd does not let us down...

The Grand Hotel, Colmore Row, Birmingham

July 1913 was a hot year for Suffragette action.  Mrs Pankhurst continued to escape the police and when Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister, blocked any progress for women's votes, his visit to Birmingham was always going to be an explosive one.  Asquith was attending a dinner for the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce at the Grand Hotel on Colmore Row when a group of women decided to smash the place up and got arrested.  Louisa and a woman called Florence Ward were the ring leaders, and I have to say the reports of what they did are astonishing. Windows were smashed with large bolts wrapped in leaflets reading 'broken pledges reap broken windows.' Louisa smashed the windows of the smoking room and also had half a brick in her handbag.  Both women gave their address as 19 Leicester Street, Walsall, the offices of the WSPU. Florence Ward asked the judge 'I ask you which ought to go to prison...Mr Asquith who breaks promises or a woman who breaks a little bit of glass?' 

Louisa specified her grievance with the 'Cat and Mouse Act' which she declared 'very horrid and very cruel' which had become law in the Spring of 1913.  This allowed the imprisonment and force feeding of a suffragette on hunger strike until she became ill, then she was released to recover, then reimprisoned. The state-sanctioned torture of women was designed to break the suffragette's mission and just an escalation in the violence, rather than actually looking at the matter of giving women the vote. Louisa, and no doubt the other suffragettes who opted not to pay the 40 shilling fine and go to jail with a vow to go on hunger strike, was force fed, leading to health complications for the rest of her life.  She was released later in the summer, then rearrested (as part of the Cat and Mouse Bill) in the September.

I am indebted to this page for some context for Black Country Suffragettes and quite honestly it makes me feel grateful and alarmingly militant reading what these women did for us. I also found Louisa listed here, as 'Sheppard' as on the postcard from Edgar Jones, but it is definitely the same woman, possibly allowing the surname to be misspelt.

My husband's family lived a few doors down from the Shepherds on Brace Street and looked after Louisa in her old age.  By the 1939 register, William Shepherd is listed as incapacitated, and according to Lynda, Louisa's health was poor due to the force-feeding. William died in December of 1948 with Louisa following him in January 1957, leaving the locket to Lily's Great Great Grandma, and then to Great Great Auntie Barbara, Lynda's Mum. I've always told Lily about the importance of voting, she actually got to vote for the first time last year, but something like this brings it home to you that such a basic right as having a say in what happens to you as a woman is something so recently won.

Thank you again Lynda for such a treasure which we will keep very safe indeed.

The Accidental Pre-Raphaelitism of Miss Gabrielle Ray

Today's post is a bit of fun, but don't worry if you just read my stuff for the words 'then everything took a tragic turn...' because I promise you there is a bit of misery too. Mainly, I wanted to just point out something that occurred to me while researching Edwardian actresses.  First of all, let me introduce you to the gorgeous Gabrielle Ray...

I mean, my goodness me, stunning. Gabrielle Elizabeth Clifford Cook, or Miss Ray, or Gabs to her friends, was a dancer, singer and actress and one of the most famous beauties of her generation.  Born in 1883 in Stockport in the North of England, she came from a fairly wealthy family and her sister Gladys (1879-1920) was also an actress, known as Gladys Raymond...

This is not a biographical piece on Ray as there are some cracking ones out there (but I will give you a bit of tragedy later).The purpose of this post is calling Our Gabs out for being Accidentally Pre-Raphaelite...

Okay, we'll start somewhere really obvious.  Here we have a 1906 card where Gabrielle Ray is being Millais' Bubbles...

Bubbles (1886)

It's uncanny.  As I've already spoken about in this post, the recreation of paintings is not an unusual thing, but possibly pretending to be a small boy is a novel move.

Now Miss Ray has arrived with her lilies, a very Pre-Raphaelite prop, and it might be a tad tenuous but I can see things like Rossetti's Sanctas Lilias and Cooksey's Maria Virgo but we can call on Rossetti's Virgin Mary pictures as well.

Maria Virgo (1915) May Louise Greville Cooksey

If a lily is a standard Pre-Raphaelite prop meaning the innocence and purity of the Virgin Mary, then I was surprised to see Miss Ray posing with a bird.  Those of us lucky enough to do Open University A102 will remember the pictures of 'kept' women with birds, how women are also caged pets etc etc.  I must admit Miss Ray's bird is both exotic and slightly sinister. And stuffed.

I remember lots of Victorian pictures of women with their caged birds, and even Byam Shaw's image of Maud Atkinson releasing the bird as she would like to be released (as you can see in this post), but I've chosen this Val Prinsep image as the girl looks remarkably like Miss Ray...

Reclining Woman with Parrot (undated) Val Prinsep

The exotic dress, the bosoms, it's practically the same picture!

Girl with Lovebirds (1876) Henry Guillaume Schlesinger

Yes, this is the sort of thing I was remembering, where women are like pretty exotic birds and we must keep them in nice warm house with plenty of seed, or something.  Either way, I'd love to know where the photographer who took Gabrielle's picture got that bird. It is striking, to say the least.

I now draw your attention to the genre of Pre-Raphaelitism that is 'woman emerging from foliage' as Miss Ray is demonstrating here...

I obviously thought of Rossetti's Fiammetta and her apple blossoms

A Vision of Fiammetta (1878) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

But equally I could have gone with Julia Margaret Cameron's image of Alice Liddell lurking in a hedge...

Ceres (Alice Liddell) (1872) Julia Margaret Cameron

Or in fact something like Sophie Anderson's Capril girl who looks very happy about her flowers...

Capril Girl With Flowers (undated) Sophie Anderson

Good for her, it's nice to have a hobby.

The picture that really set me off on this frankly ridiculous post was this one...

Oh, come on now, she's definitely referencing this painting by Frederick Sandys...

Love's Shadow (1867) Frederick Sandys

We're looking at around 40 years between the images but the moment I saw (and subsequently bought) this postcard on eBay, I knew it was either consciously or unconsciously a call-back to another actress, Mary Emma Jones/Sandys, the common-law wife and model of Frederick.  Mary was also still alive and, depending if this postcard was after Sandys death in 1904, putting on performances to pay the bills.

Finally, I saw this image of Gabrielle...

which reminded me of this image of Florence Welch (from this post)...

which obviously led me to this painting, which incorporates a multiple image of Jane Morris...

Astarte Syriaca (1877) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Yes, I know that Jane isn't all three women, her daughter May is one of them, but the effect is of a multiple of the same goddess. With Gabrielle's image, reflected in the mirror, I'm guessing there is a hint of her life as an actress, being in front of the mirror to prepare for the stage, but also the many parts she will play, the many facets of her personality. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the images of Fanny Cornforth and Alexa Wilding in front of mirrors in such works as Lady Lilith or Fazio's Mistress. A woman in reflection is a trope, for want of a better word, also buying into the notion of women's vanity, but judging by Gabrielle's expression, I wonder if there is more to the term 'reflection' here.  What is she thinking?

Gabrielle Ray (c.1910) Foulsham and Banfield, London

Miss Ray was only 10 years old when she took to the stage in 1893, but from that point she became a star. She was just shy of 30 years old when she retired from the stage in order to marry Eric Loder in the Spring of 1912, however less than a year later he had cleared off and committed adultery, giving her grounds for a divorce. Meanwhile, her beautiful sister Gladys had married railway engineer John Winnington in 1910. Despite regularly appearing in plays throughout the war and after, Gladys suddenly disappeared from public life, dying in 1920 of cancer in the Barnsley Hall Asylum in Bromsgrove.  

Gabrielle kept working, but her original fame had been damaged by her retirement and the scandal around her marriage and she never found the same popularity.  Mental health issues caused her to have a breakdown in 1936.  She lived out the rest of her life in Holloway Sanatorium where she was visited by her fellow actresses including Lily Elsie.  She was remembered by the staff there as a small, neat old lady who enjoyed going out in the car and shopping, walking in the nearby village, being quiet and cheerful.  She died in May of 1973 and had an obituary in The Stage which tactfully reported that 'for half a century, she has lived away from theatrical circles.'

Apologies for the tragic ending, but the point of this rambling post is the currency of Pre-Raphaelite imagery, fifty years after its creation.  I'm not sure if I think the echoing of these paintings is deliberate either by Gabrielle Ray or the photographer but it is a very strong coincidence if it isn't.  More likely, the poses and props of Pre-Raphaelitism had become their own graphic language that superseded the original meaning and place to become the standard of feminine beauty, easily understood by the viewer. My hunt continues for inadvertent Pre-Raphaelitism but it has been a charming diversion to spend time with Miss Ray.

Miss Dorothy Tennant and Mrs Dorothy Stanley and Lady Stanley

I had a moment of foolishness the other day.  I was idly leafing (digitally) through the Royal Academy catalogue for 1900, looking for names of artists to have a look into and I came across Dorothy Stanley and her painting The Fallen Nymph.  Well, that sounds up my street, and so I took to the researching machine and immediately found out that not only did I know her, she also had a very complicated husband.  Say hello to Dorothy Tennant...

Dorothy Tennant (1891) Eveleen Myers (nee Tennant)

Now, I don't need to tell you that the Tennants were a fairly well-known family from the 1800s and early 20th century, until the First World War wiped them all out, but I was a little unsure which part of the family was which.  I was more familiar with Margot Tennant of The Souls, but she is from a separate part, hailing from Scotland.  Dorothy, her photographer sister Eveleen and other siblings were descended from Charles Tennant, MP who supported emigration to the colonies and didn't marry until he was 51.  When he did wed, it was to Irish society hostess Gertrude Collier, and they had six children.  Two, Blanche and Gertrude jnr, didn't survive childhood, but Alice, Charles, Eveleen and Dorothy (or Dolly as she was known to her family) led remarkable lives.

Miss Dorothy Tennant (1888) Émile Friant

Dolly was born in 1855, their fourth child, born the year her sister Blanche died. It was written that Dolly was so beautiful that when she was young, she never went out without a large footman accompanying her for imposing protection. The family were comfortably off to say the least and after a private education, Dorothy attended the Slade School of Art, studying under Edward Poynter.  From there she went to Paris to study with Jean-Jacques Henner and through herself into the French artistic scene.  Her first brush with the Royal Academy was as a model, which I feel may be the fate of many female artists at this time.  She posed for John Everett Millais' Yes or No in 1871...

Yes or No (1871) John Everett Millais

When she appeared again it was as the subject of a 1877 portrait by G F Watts, the Leeds Mercury was moved to call the piece 'charming', 'but even these public appearances, it may be observed in passing, do not entitle people in general society to speak of this young lady by a familiar pet name' after the York Herald and Liverpool Daily Post both insisted on referring to the painting as a portrait of 'Dolly Tennant.' How familiar!

Dorothy Tennant (1877) G F Watts

The full title for this piece is Miss Dorothy Tennant, second daughter of the late Charles Tennant Esq, of Cadoxton Lodge, Neath, Glamorganshire, which is a bit long to pop on a frame, but you get the gist.  Also, I find it a bit jarring that Dolly is described as the 'second' daughter when she is actually the third, but one died. I'm not sure the significance of the squirrel.  Is Watts inferring that Dolly was thrifty and hardworking? Did she hide nuts for the winter? It has a more 'renaissance-y' feel than the portrait Watts did of Eveleen a couple of years later - 

Eveleen Tennant Myers (1880) G F Watts

Eveleen's portrait feels far more contemporary than Dolly's and it could be read as a comment on their chosen art forms, with Eveleen choosing the modern art of photography, with Dolly choosing painting.  I wonder if the difference might be to do with their life paths, as the 1880 portrait of Eveleen coincided with her marriage to psychical researcher Frederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901).  There is a fabulous biography of Gertrude Tennant by David Waller and in it the author suggests that Mrs Tennant might have encourage Dolly's career in lieu of finding her a husband as she didn't want to lose Dolly as she had Eveleen.  Gertrude reminds me of Sara Prinsep's salon, and interestingly Mrs Tennant started hosting her own gatherings around the time that Sara and Thoby Prinsep moved to the Isle of Wight and obviously the two families had Watts in common.

Dorothy wasted no time in cultivating her artistic career and appeared as an artist at the Royal Academy in 1886 with An Arab Dance but at the same time had three paintings at the Grosvenor Gallery, including The Emigrants, sadly lost during the Second World War. However, by this time Dolly had become famous for her pictures of little children, ragamuffins and street urchins that endeared her to a book and art public.  Her illustrated book The London Ragamuffin received delighted reviews, although the Manchester Courier wrote of her plight to get the small boys to sit still in her studio, implying that they were somewhat ungrateful to not appreciate the warmth, food and playthings she provided. 

The Dead Mer-baby (1879)

A lesser-known work of Dolly's which proved inspirational for others was the rather odd The Dead Mer-baby from 1879 which appeared at the Dudley Gallery and was declared a 'graceful little fancy' in the newspaper. It divided opinion when it was once more shown again at the New Art Gallery in 1888, where some newspapers admitted they did not care for it but the Manchester Courier gave a rather fulsome description of the piece:

 'The infant of some naughty mermaid has been abandoned by its mother on the sands, or has been cast up by them, for there it lies, half fish and half human child, so pathetic in its helplessness, so odd in its mixed nature, that one quite pities it. It seems to have suffered, and yet to be now in blissful peace. Had it a soul, and is the soul smiling upon the poor damp frame of the little sea urchin it once inhabited, from the morning clouds above which are rolling in after what has been a stormy night at sea? A very human little child stands all naked, wondering at the queer little corpse the sea has cast up.  Nothing can be more original, and this little gem is destined, I think, to make a sensation.'

It made not only a sensation but inspired Violet Fane to write a lengthy poem too...

 Meanwhile, in 1886, Henry Morton Stanley proposed, although Dolly refused at first. Stanley remains a complicated character for reasons I'll get on to, but he was an iconic figure of late Victorian explorer/colonialism. He had already lived quite the patchwork life up to that romantic gesture.  Born John Rowlands in Wales in 1841, his mother abandoned him as a child and his father allegedly died just after his birth (there is some uncertainty, arguably purposefully so because of the nature and taint of illegitimacy at that time.)  He grew up in a workhouse after no members of the family were able to take him in, where it is now alleged he was horribly abused by bother fellow pupils and staff.  This would become very relevant later in life.  He travelled to America aged 18 and (depending on whose account you believe) either was taken in by a wealthy man called Henry Stanley, whose name he adopted in tribute to his adopted father, or else just styled himself after Stanley because he admired him.  He fought in the American Civil War, including the Battle of Shiloh (which even I know was very unpleasant indeed, despite its name meaning 'place of peace').  After all that, he became a journalist, then organised his first expeditions in the late 1860s.  He is probably best known for the 1871 expedition to find David Livingstone, apparently greeting him with 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' when they met. He traversed Africa many times until Dolly wrote and said she changed her mind, she would marry him after all.

It's a bit of an understatement to say that Stanley does not seem to be brilliant with romance and women.  He had a reputation as a bit of a man's man for many years, but he did apparently have some female friends, some close enough for Dolly to allegedly delete them from his memoirs.  He complained to a friend when Dolly was a little uncertain about marriage 'that woman entrapped me with her gush...and her fulsome adulations, her knicknacks inscribed with 'Remember Me,' her sweet scented notes...' I hope I never entrap anyone with my 'gush,' thank you very much. To be fair, Dolly still slept in the same room as her mother and addressed her diary to her dead father and so I think she had her own problems.  

The couple's engagement was announced to a gossip-hungry nation. The Richmond and Ripon Chronicle announced 'All the drawing-rooms of Belgravia and Mayfair were vastly excited when the announcement came like a bolt out of the blue that Mr Stanley was going to be married,' although the official line they were taking was that Stanley had proposed just before his last expedition and everyone was sworn to secrecy about the marriage until he returned.  Accounts of Stanley unwaveringly reference how heroic he was, although Dolly was seen as both a society beauty, the model for Millais and also able to converse on political topics of the day. Rather than describe her as the Royal Academy artist, one newspaper said 'her peculiar forte lies in pen and ink drawings of the gamins of London.' Quite.

Street Arabs at Play (1890)

The same year as her marriage, Dolly sold her painting Street Arabs at Play to the Lever Bros to use in their advertising campaigns. The Aberdeen People's Journal wrote how she, unlike some of her fellow artists, had no qualms about her art being turned into advertising, although she remarked 'I don't see how the boys turning 'Heads over Tails,' as I meant to call it, can be turned into a sunlight soap advertisement, but ingenuity can do a great deal.' So concerned with the plight of some of her young models, Dolly adopted them, giving them a home, clothes and food, but the story goes that each little urchin ran away after a week when the boots pinched and the few rules imposed on them were too restrictive.

Herbert Morton Stanley (1893)

The invitations for the wedding were distributed, some white, some pink, inviting the great and the good to Westminster Abbey on the 12th July 1890 at 2pm.  The newspaper's ran stories of Stanley's romantic life in stark contrast to his manly expeditions, however they were an odd collection of stories.  He told how he had been refused eleven times by numerous ladies before he could find a woman willing to take him on, and as one newspaper reported 'Miss Tennant has been content to secure the lion of the season' which is all a bit too Bridgerton. As a wedding gift, the Queen gave Dorothy a miniature of herself in a lock surrounded by diamonds, Thomas Edison sent a phonographic machine and King Leopold send Count d'Aarche, who was definitely not on the gift list and I hope he also sent the receipt. Stanley was far from being a lion on the day as he was very ill with gastritis and needed a chair to sit in for most of the ceremony. He was unable to leave the ceremony on foot with Dolly, who was led to her bridal carriage by John Everett Millais.  As the crowd's cheered the couple, Millais shouted back 'I'm not Stanley, I wish I were! Lucky dog! Lucky dog!'

Dorothy and Henry Morten Stanley (1890) Eveleen Myers

After the marriage, the newspapers were keen to lay out the couple's itinerary, including a tour of Scotland, Switzerland and Paris, then returning to Stanley's native Wales where he received the freedom of Cardiff and Swansea. Considering that the groom was too ill to stand during the wedding, this all seems like a lot, but possibly some of it was intended to be for his health, thinking especially of the portion in Switzerland.  Seemingly with no break, by November, the Stanleys were off again, this time sailing to New York complete with her mother and met by her brother.  The Tennants had Mr Stanley surrounded but possibly he liked that. I read in a biography of his that it is assumed that the marriage remained unconsummated either because he was too ill/uninterested or she was not that bothered either, but one thing is certain, the Stanleys became a formidable team.

Three Children Playing (undated)

Being Mrs Stanley seems to have taken up a lot of Dolly's life, especially when the couple adopted their son Denzil, a child of one of Stanley's relatives, whose origins were rather discretely veiled. Denzil wasn't the first child that Stanley adopted, after he 'adopted' a slave, Ndugu M'hali or Kalulu Stanley, who he freed and kept as a companion after the Livingstone expedition and even wrote a story about.  Kalulu drowned in 1877 and became fundamental in Stanley's anti-slavery crusade. Stanley became a Liberal Unionist MP in 1895 and was knighted  in 1897, and with so much fame, he turned his attention to writing his memoirs. By 1901, the whole family was living in 2 Richmond Terrace, along with Mrs Tennant and Alice, Dolly's unmarried sister, and the family had eight servants which included two indoor servants and a 'useful maid' which is a new one on me.

Two Children Playing by a Gutter (1886)

The first decade of the twentieth century was eventful for Dolly. She had her identity stolen by a 43 year old woman called Gertrude Cunningham who pretended to be Lady Stanley in order to buy clothes. Also around this time, Dolly started to write more in addition to her art. As well as her illustrated books on street children, I am rather keen to read this book from 1918...

Miss Pim gets sunstroke while gardening and gains the power of invisibility.  She becomes a secret agent during the Great War and gets information behind enemy lines, then tackles the Kaiser.  Blimey, that sounds amazing! But that isn't the book she is best known for...

Sir Henry Morton Stanley died in 1904 aged only 63.  Dorothy was only 49 and found a task for herself in editing her husband's memoirs for publication in 1909. The memoirs remain extremely contentious, and were viewed as such shortly after their appearance.  For starters, Dorothy cut mention of any other women out, which reminds me of Georgiana Burne-Jones' editing out of Maria Zambaco in her husband's biography. The thing that really put Stanley on the wrong side of history is his description of his treatment of the people he met on his travels, the 'natives'.  He describes acts of cruelty towards the 'savages,' his hatred of people of mixed race, and general brutality and atrocity, backed up by accounts of her fellow colonial problematic men.  I have no wish to become an apologist for the sort of man we now rip down statues of, but there is an interesting thread of research that challenges a great number of not only Stanley's claims but also those made by other explorers.  With regard to the latter, Stanley had the habit of rubbing his peers up the wrong way and in one case disproving their 'scientific' theories about the source of the Nile.  Stanley was a famous man and that sort of thing made people jealous.  Not only that, Stanley's actions seem to contradict his words and he was anti-slavery and the claims of his brutality can be challenged, so why did he claim it?  Apparently when acting as a journalist in America, his editor encouraged him to bedazzle and enlarge the accounts of deaths and violence to make good copy.  Also, going right back to his childhood, it is suggested that in order to survive the workhouse, he had to be the biggest, baddest and nastiest, and that all stuck. Either way, the perils of biography in the case of Stanley are very much a cautionary tale which I find fascinating.

In the meantime, Lady Stanley quietly remarried in 1907 to Henry Curtis, a surgeon.  In some of the reports, it was said that Dolly would have been a very successful artist had she not married, which is a surprisingly feminist line for the Leicester Daily Post to take. By the 1911 census, the family are living in Whitehall Court, but Dolly is still Lady Stanley, despite her surgeon husband.  Annoyingly, she has no occupation listed, which always infuriates me, despite the fact that she was continuing to write and paint. She provided illustrations for the 1925 collection of stories Rosemary, Miss Pim was out in 1918, Ragamuffins was out in the 1920s and her painting His First Offence from 1896 found new audiences as a print in magazines. However, by the 1920s, Dolly found her art style being left behind. Her painting River Lily Bud from the Royal Academy in 1924 was mentioned in the magazine Vote as being 'refined, but very conventional of its school.' 

By her death in 1926, the family were living back at 2 Richmond Terrace, where they had been since the 1921 census (where Dolly was the head of the household, despite her husband working as a consultant surgeon). Really irritatingly, her obituaries mentioned all the important men in her life, Stanley, Curtis, her brother who had become an MP.  Portsmouth Evening News actually called it - 'It is a matter of remark how some women, distinguished in themselves, lose their individuality if they marry.' Dorothy Tennant should have been a household name for her art - her pictures of the street children in London were well-known enough for her to be acknowledged but she had the misfortune to be related to and marry well-known men and therefore was eclipsed. Also to her detriment, she altered her surname and so there is no continuation of 'Dorothy Tennant' but a change to 'Dorothy Stanley' who might well be two different people to the uninformed eye. This was a peril for a lot of female artists, Henrietta Rae often had her married name in brackets, but at least she was tagged by her professional, unmarried name as well. 

Dorothy Stanley (1896)

If Dolly tells us anything, it is how women were consumed by history and it is our job to put the pieces back together.