Miranda by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904). Left: c.1868. Oil on mahogany panel. 17 ½ x 13 ½ inches (44.4 X 34.2 cm). Private collection of Lord Lloyd Webber. Image courtesy of Betty Elzea. Right: Miranda. 1868. Red and black chalk on paper. 14 ½ x 12 inches (37 x 30.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Sotheby's, London. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Betty Elzea describes this picture as: "Bust of a young woman facing the spectator, but with head turned half to left. She has long reddish gold waving hair with a white chiffon scarf tied around the crown of her head, into which two pink roses have been tucked. She wears a gold and white striped robe, over which the ends of the scarf are loosely draped. The striped rope is edged with bright red embroidery or binding. Around her neck are three strands of pink pearls. Behind her head are the white flowers and foliage of an azalea shrub" (192). The title suggests the heroine of William Shakespeare's The Tempest but in reality it is just another in a series of Sandys's "fancy heads" to which he has attached a title taken from literature, the Bible, or classical mythology. The model again is his common-law wife Mary Emma Jones. The robe Miranda wears is no doubt the one Sandys mentions in a letter to D.G. Rossetti of November 1868 in which he asks Rossetti to return his white and gold "Algerine" dress as he wished to "paint [it] into a picture at once" (qtd. in Elzea 192).
The preliminary study for the painting in red and black chalks, identical in sitter and pose, sold at Sotheby's, London, on December 14, 2022, lot 42. This drawing had been illustrated in The Studio, volume XXXIII, in October 1904, on page 4.
Links to Related Material
- The Child Miranda (1864), by Frederic William Burton
- Miranda's First Sight of Ferdinand (1863, exhibited in 1864), by William Maw Egley
Bibliography
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 200, cat. 2:A.106, 191, and cat. 2.A.107, 192.
Elzea, Rowland and Betty Elzea. The Pre-Raphaelite Era 1848-1914. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1976, cat. 4-17, 76-77.
European and British Art. London: Sotheby's (December 14, 2022) lot 42. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/european-british-art/miranda
Created 17 July 2025