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Mrs W. Collins
Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1793-1892)
1826
Oil on panel
610mm (width), 736mm (height)
Te Papa Collections Online, Registration ID: 1912-0038-2
Gift of John Duthie, 1912
Described on the gallery website as having no known copyright restrictions. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
See below for commentary.
The sitter in this fine portrait was Margaret Collins, the paternal grandmother of the novelist Wilkie Collins and the artist Charles Allston Collins. She was also the mother-in-law of Carpenter's sister, Harriet. The old woman was living with her son and daughter-in-law by this time, when Wilkie Collins himself was little more than a baby, and his brother Charles not yet born.
Closer view of the sitter's face.
By all accounts Margaret Collins, "born in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh" (Collins 4) was a doughty Scotswoman. With her hair drawn back neatly from a pronounced widow's peak, and her rather aquiline features, she is sombrely but quite richly dressed, and looks up from her reading with a sharp and intelligent expression. However, she had come to stay with the young family because of her "infirmities" (Collins 326). Sadly, she would become "senile, with severe mental impairment" (see Grinstein 13), before dying in 1833. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Collins, Wilkie. Memoirs of the life of William Collins, esq., R.A. With selections from his journals and correspondence. 2 vols. Vol. 1. London: Longman, 1848. Internet Archive, from a copy in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 25 October 2024.
Grinstein, Alexander. Wilkie Collins: Man of Mystery and Imagination. Madison, CT.: International Universities Press, 2003.
Mrs W. Collins. Collins. Museum of New Zealand. Te Papa Tongarewa. Web. 25 October 2024.
Created 25 October 2024