Grace Rose, by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904). 1866. Oil on panel. 22 x 17 7/8 inches (71.7 x 61 cm). Collection of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, accession no. B1993.20. Image courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, originally originally added, along with caption material and image details, by George P. Landow. [Click on all the images to enlarge them.]
Sandys exhibited this portrait at Ernest Gambart's French Gallery, 14th Annual Winter Exhibition of British Artists in 1866-67, no. 189. Sandys chose the French Gallery in preference to the Royal Academy because Gambart was very anxious to have it and had promised Sandys a leading position so it would be sure to be seen well. The sitter is Grace Charlotte Rose, the daughter of Captain Winterton Snow of the Madras Army and the wife of Sir William Anderson Rose. Sandys painted numerous members of the Rose family, including Grace's husband William who was the brother of James Anderson Rose.
Betty Elzea has described this portrait as:
Bust-length of a plump young matron, with head facing half to right. There is a greenish marble parapet in front of her on which stands a green glass vase of an antiquarian design, and she is in the process of arranging some pink, crimson and yellow roses in the vase. Immediately behind her is a spray of white "China" roses, and in the background is an antique Japanese painted screen with a gold ground. Her brown hair is dressed smoothly down in a chignon. Her white silk dress is trimmed with blond lace, blue ribbon, and pearls. She wears a gold necklace, composed of small gold beads with a large gold ball as a pendant. This and her gold earrings and bracelet are in the antique style, newly made fashionable by Castellani of Rome. She also wears a plain gold ring set with a turquoise, which echoes the blue of her eyes, and the blue ribbon of her bodice. In the top right of the picture is her armorial shield and crest, and the Rose family motto: "Constant and true." All the signs indicate that the sitter was a rich and fashionable woman. [184]
Grace Rose's arms resting on a parapet has precedents in early sixteenth-century Italian and Netherlandish Renaissance painting. This device had been introduced into Pre-Raphaelite art with D. G. Rossetti's Boca Baciata of 1859. A gallery label for this work at the Yale Center for British Art points out: "Eclectic influences inform the details, from her gold jewelry and the jar in the foreground, which are modeled on antiquarian designs, to the traditional Japanese figures that appear on the screen behind her. These appropriations reflect Sandys's sympathies with both Pre-Raphaelitism and aestheticism, including James McNeill Whistler and Albert Moore, who were similarly invested in strongly decorative effects and Eastern motifs." Aesthetic Movement artists incorporated such elements of Japonisme into their paintings purely for decorative rather than symbolic purposes.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
Details, left to right: (a) Inscription, upper left; (b) Sitter’s hands and glass jar; and (c) Japanese screen at middle right.
This portrait may not have garnered the extensive reviews it almost certainly would have done had it been shown at the more prestigious Royal Academy rather than the French Gallery, but it was certainly still noticed by the critics. The critic for the Art Journal did not like the flesh tints but admired the handling of the painting's accessories: "Mr. Sandys, whose Gentle Spring will scarcely be forgotten, reverts to his first success in the painting of portraits. The head of Mrs. Rose, the wife of Alderman Rose, set by a kind of pictorial pun in the midst of roses, makes, it must be confessed, a remarkable picture. The flesh tints may not be altogether satisfactory; enamel, indeed, would seem to be suggested; and there is a thinness and want of richness in tone and texture. Still the canvas shows some admirable painting, especially in the lace and the glass flower-vase" (374). F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum gave it a very mixed review: "Mr. F. Sandys's Portrait of Mrs. Rose (189) has a face that is beautifully painted and modelled, notwithstanding that it has some of the qualities of Ivory in the flesh; the body of the lady and her hands are drawn in a very questionable manner: see the foreshortening of the latter. We hope these parts are not finished; some rose blooms are admirably executed" (612).
A reviewer for the Illustrated London News noted Sandys's debt to the early Flemish school of painting: "Mr. Sandys, unlike the preceding, imitates in a most brilliant and elaborate portrait of Mrs. Rose the early Flemish school of minute realization; but the toilsome result, however provocative of wonder, leaves the artistic imagination almost wholly unaffected" (454). Much later, in 1884, J. M. Gray in the Art Journal remarked that "the likeness of Lady Rose, 1866, is especially remarkable for its wealth of brilliant colour and the beauty of its accessories" (78).
Bibliography
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 2.A.87, 184.
“Exhibition of Pictures by British Artists – French Gallery.” The Art Journal XXVIII (1 December 1866): 374-75.
"Fine Arts. At the French Gallery." The Illustrated London News XLIX (10 November 1866): 454.
Grace Rose. Art UK. Web. 21 July 2025.
Grace Rose. Yale Center for British Art. Web. 21 July 2025.
Gray, John Miller. "Frederick Sandys." The Art Journal XLVI (March 1884): 73-78.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Winter Exhibition of Pictures by British Artists." The Athenaeum No. 2037 (10 November 1866): 612-13.
Created 27 July 2020
Last modifed (commentary added) 21 July 2025