A Babe (A head study of a young girl). c. 1906. Black and white chalk on grey paper. 8 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches (21.5 X 14.75 cm) – sight. Private collection, image courtesy of the author. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Hughes was particularly well known for his sensitive and perceptive portrait drawings of children. As Victoria Osborne has commented: "At their best, Hughes's studies of children have an unsentimental directness that recall the drawn portraits of the early Pre-Raphaelite circle" (46). While portrait commission drawings were an important source of income for Hughes, many were also drawn as tokens of friendship and given as gifts (see Osborne 47). This portrait is inscribed on the verso "To Margaret Wilson from her affectionate friend ERH." Margaret Wilson, née Margaret Ellinor Morse (1869-1931), to whom this drawing was given, was the wife of the designer/architect/sculptor Henry Wilson. She was the daughter of Francis Morse, the vicar of St. Mary Church in Nottingham. Her brother was Sydney Morse. Sydney and his wife Juliet were close friends of Hughes. In 1900 Margaret Morse and Henry Wilson had been instrumental in Hughes' obtaining his post teaching the men's life drawing class at the London County Council Central School of Art that had been established in 1896 by W. R. Lethaby. Hughes began teaching the drawing class along with Wilson in the autumn of 1900. Hughes took the class alone from 1909 until his death in 1914 and proved to be a popular teacher.
Margaret Morse had married Henry Wilson on 1 August 1901 in the chapel of the Savoy after an engagement of ten years. They had initially been introduced at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Margaret was an accomplished embroideress. The Wilsons had one son and three daughters. Their three daughters Fiammetta, Pernel, and Dione were born between 1904 and 1909. Fiammetta Giulietta Francesca was born in 1904 in Italy, Pernel Imogen Yolande in 1906, and Dione Narona Margarita in 1909, also in Italy. Based on the inscription found on the verso of the drawing, "To Margaret Wilson from her affectionate friend ERH," this drawing is probably of one of the Wilson daughters, most likely Fiammetta. Fiammetta grew up to be a skilled weaver and won recognition as Master of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers before her premature death at age thirty-seven in London.
Bibliography
Manton, Cyndy. Henry Wilson. Practical Idealist. Cambridge: The Letterworth Press, 2009, 83 & 125-28.
Osborne, Victoria Jean. "A British Symbolist in Pre-Raphaelite Circles: Edward Robert Hughes RWS (1851-1914)." M. Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009.
Created 13 May 2026