"Portrait Study of Louisa Marks" by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904)

Portrait Study of Louisa Marks by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904)

Dennis T. Lanigan

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Portrait Study of Louisa Marks

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904)

1873

Coloured chalks, heightened by white, on buff paper

30 1/4 x 21 1/2 inches (76.8 x 54.6 cm)

Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. P.41-1939

Image courtesy of the museum (original image on this webpage scanned by George P. Landow from Bate, p. 8)

Click on the image to enlarge it. See below for commentary; mouse over the text for links

Sandys's portrait of Louisa Marks was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875, no. 1058. Betty Elzea describes this portrait as being:

Half-length of a young woman, facing half to the right, seen from a low eye-level. Her left hand is held up to the neck of her dress. Her hair is drawn back to a fashionable high chignon with a fillet of small flowers across it. She wears a dark silk outer dress and an inner blouse with frilly muslin collar and cuffs. She wears drop earrings, an antique gem-set chain around her neck, rings, and a meshed gold wire bracelet. In the immediate background and in front of her to the left are lilies. [248]

White lilies are traditionally considered symbolic of purity. In the Victorian language of flowers the fillet of white jasmine in Louisa's hair is a reference to her amiability (see Rose 123).

Louisa Marks was the wife of the prominent London antiques dealer Murray Marks who was especially known for dealing in blue and white Chinese export porcelain. Such ceramics were widely collected by artists with advanced tastes like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and James McNeill Whistler. Rossetti introduced Sandys to Marks who subsequently acted as a dealer for some of Sandys's drawings and helped find him commissions. G. C. Williamson, in his book on Marks, mentions the sitter and this portrait: "Marks married a lady of great personal beauty and considerable fascination, as kind-hearted and as generous as he was himself. Her portrait was painted on several occasions, notably twice by Rossetti and once by Sandys" (21). Marks commissioned this portrait of his wife from Sandys.

When the drawing was shown at the Royal Academy in 1875 it was singled out by the critic of The Art Journal, despite the sitter not being named: "The portraits of F. Sandys also come under the same head of praise: see his Miss Ellis(1076), and his nameless lovely lady surrounded by flowers (1058)" (263).

Bibliography

Bate, Percy "The Late Frederick Sandys: A Retrospective." The Studio XXXIII (October 1904): 3-17. Internet Archive, from a copy in the University of Toronto. [The original image on this page ws an engraving from this article, added in 2010 by George P. Landow]

Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 3.46, 248.

Portrait Study of Louisa Marks. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 18 August 2025.

Rose, Andrea. Pre-Raphaelite Portraits. Oxford: The Oxford Illustrated Press, 1981. 123-24.

"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series XIV (1875): 263-64.

Williamson, G. C. Murray Marks and his Friends. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1919. 21 & 110.

Created 23 December 2010

Last modified 17 August 2025