Portrait of Emily Knewstub ('Cloudy') by Walter John Knewstub (1831-1906)

Portrait of Emily Knewstub ('Cloudy')

Walter John Knewstub (1831-1906)

Watercolour on paper

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Commentary by Hilary Morgan

This image, with its fashionable tiny bonnet and snooded hair, probably dates from the mid 1860s. The title reveals that it was intended as an imaginative work, but it is close in conception to a portrait.

The sitter is the artist's wife, Emily Renshaw. Knewstub, like Rossetti, was attracted by the beauty of' women's hair. It is possible that the title of this painting, otherwise inexplicable, might relate to the theme of a painting Knewstub exhibited at Gambart's Gallery in 1867:

Not a sunbeam that might pass
Through the cloud that alias her hair.

References

Waters, Bill. Burne-Jones -- A Quest for Love: Works by Sir Edward Burne-Jones Bt and Related Works by Contemporary Artists. London: Peter Nahum, 1993.

Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1956.

10 December 2001