![Portrait of Mrs. George Smith [née Elizabeth Blakeway]](15.jpg)
Portrait of Mrs. George Smith [née Elizabeth Blakeway], 1873. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 487/8 x 421/8 inches (124 x 107 cm). Private collection.
This is certainly one if not the most beautiful of Burton’s “Aesthetic” portraits. The sitter was the wife of George Murray Smith, the publisher of The Cornhill Magazine and The Dictionary of National Biography. It is uncertain when Burton began the portrait but he recorded in his diary that he had finished it by August 7, 1843. Her husband, not surprisingly, was delighted with the result. Hodge has noted: The portrait has much in common, both in terms of composition and technique, with the idealised images of women from literature and history which took up most of Burton’s time and energy over the past ten years. Elizabeth Smith is shown in profile, seated in an upholstered armchair, looking into the distance. Burton paid great attention to the face, capturing the dewy glow of her cheek, and shiny black hair pulled back into a simple knot. The colourful embroidered shawl has been rendered in exquisite detail, with gold threads sparkling. It is the culmination of a life’s work in portraiture and brings together his skills at capturing a likeness and rendering colours and textures in a realistic manner” (46).
This portrait was favourably reviewed when shown at the Royal Academy in 1874. The reviewer for The Art Journal gave it the highest possible praise, asserting that
in the portrait of ‘Mrs. George Smith’ (869), by F. W. Burton, we have, without a doubt, the most important piece of work in this gallery [Gallery of Watercolours], as well as one of the most masterly portraits of the year. There are few painters of the present day who can combine such force of realisation with correct choice of material. Every incident of the picture, from the opal ring upon the well-drawn hand to the spray of jasmine-flower fixed in the smooth dark hair, is executed with admirable completeness, without permitting what is trivial to be supreme over the more important elements of the composition.
The Art Journal next compared Burton’s
kind of portraiture with the utterly distinct style of G. F. Watts. Both painters are careful to make a portrait something more than a mere dry imitation of feature, but the result is gained by very different means. While Mr. Watts strives to present his subject in such a way as to show the painter’s appreciation of the mental qualities of the particular face, Mr. Burton lays particular stress upon the pictorial graces of composition and colour. Here the costume has been so treated as to accord with a chosen design; each tint fits naturally into its place in the picture, and we recognise throughout the presence of a rare gift of selection, exercised without apparent disturbance of what is natural to modern costume. [228-29]
The Times praised the “exquisite life-size half-length of ’Mrs. George Smith’ (869) – a striking example of the delightful effect which water colours may be used for portraiture even of the slice of life.” The reviewer for The Spectator was equally complimentary, pointing out that in portraiture “there is nothing finer than the very beautiful water-colour drawing of Mr. F. W. Burton of ‘Mrs. George Smith’ (869). Besides the refined individuality of the likeness, the picture is remarkable for the delicacy of finish and thorough elaboration of the draperies, and the way in which their richness is kept unobtrusive by harmony of colour and light and shade, is a much higher kind of art than the contest of brightness in fashionable full-lengths that make a greater show in the Oil galleries. Not that elaborate finish or close imitation of texture are things to desire for themselves” (630-31). This watercolour also received favourable reviews from The Athenaeum, The Saturday Review, and The Pall Mall Gazette.
Bibliography
“The Royal Academy.” The Art Journal new Series 13 (1874): 225-229.
“The Royal Academy.” The Times. (July 1, 1874).
“Art. The Royal Academy.” The Spectator 47 (May 16, 1874): 629-631.
Last modified 11 April 2022