Gentle Spring by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys. 1863-65. Oil on canvas.
47 ½ x 24 ½ inches (121 x 64 cm.) Collection: © Ashmolean Museum (A372). University of Oxford WA1923.2. Reproduced courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum [now available at Art UK, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND)]. — originally added, along with first few paragraphs, by George P. Landow
The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865 accompanied in the catalogue by a sonnet by the artist's friend, Charles Algernon Swinburne, inspired by the painting itself:
O virgin Mother! of gentle days and nights,
Spring of fresh buds and spring of soft delights,
Come, with lips kissed of many an amorous hour,
Come, with hands heavy from the fervent flower,
The fleet first flower that feels the wind and sighs,
The tenderer leaf that draws the sun and dies;
Light butterflies like flowers alive in the air
Circling and crowning thy delicious hair,
And many a fruitful flower and floral fruit
Born of thy breath and fragrant from thy foot.
Thee, Mother, all things born desire, and thee
Earth and the fruitless hollows of the sea
Praise, and thy tender winds of ungrown wing
Fill heaven with murmurs of the sudden spring.
According to the museum label, "[t]he figure was painted in the garden of the poet and novelist, George Meredith. She represents Proserpina returning from the land of the dead. Sandys joined Rossetti's circle in 1857 and lived with him in Cheyne Walk for most of 1866. Percy Bate writes in The Studio (October 1904):
In Gentle Spring he strikes a note that is purely idyllic. In this beautifully decorative panel the stately and gracious woman chosen by the artist as symbolic of spring is seen advancing to the spectator, while behind her a rainbow gleams against grey clouds and an orchard glows with a wealth of blossom. Her white robe has a border of blue, and in its folds she carries flowers; around her crown of auburn hair copper butterflies hover and flutter, and beside her spring poppies, gorgeous in colour and exquisitely painted. The whole composition is peaceful and serene. [5]
Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan
Sandys exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1865, no. 359. Betty Elzea has described and discussed it in some detail:
A single, full-length figure of a reddish-haired young woman standing in an open landscape, facing to the front and looking at the spectator. She stands in that patch of grass strewn with flowers of the spring. Immediately behind her is a green-sward with three blossoming fruit trees. Beyond this are woods and a distant landscape of a plain with low hills behind it. The sky is dark to the left, changing to sunlit clouds to the right and a rainbow spans the view, as if there had just been a rain shower. The young woman, who embodies the season of Spring, is wearing light draperies in luminous, white, in classical style and carries in a fold of her skirt the remains of the flowers she has gathered and let fall to her feet before the spectator. Snowdrops are placed in her hair, and two butterflies flutter above her head. No doubt the figure also represents the Greek goddess Proserpine, whose annual return from the Underworld symbolizes the coming of spring. The dark rain clouds and their shadow on the landscape giving way to sunlight and the rainbow in the background also carries out the underlying metaphor. [178]
Elzea feels the painting was influenced by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' La Source, a work that Sandys would have seen at the International Exhibition held at South Kensington in 1862. Another source would have been classical Greek sculpture, including the small terracotta Tanagra figurines that also inspired artists like Albert Moore and James Whistler at this time period. Certainly this was part of a move towards painting classical subjects in the mid-1860s by artists within the wider Pre-Raphaelite circle.
The model for Spring was likely Millie Jones, the sister of his future common-law wife Mary Emma Jones. Gentle Spring was the first of Sandys's classically-inspired single-figure allegorical subjects, produced in oils or large-scale drawings, that would later include such subjects as Danaë in the Brazen Chamber of 1866-67 and Bernice, Queen of Egypt of 1867. No preliminary drawings are known to survive for the figure of Spring. According to Elezea, the background was painted en plein air in Meredith's garden when he was living in Esher, at Copsham Cottage (see 179).
Christopher Newall, however, interprets the painting rather more pessimistically, finding allusions here to the decay that inevitably follows in the natural cycle :
The woman seems to be bringing flowers to the spectator, and these in their perfusion cascade to the ground and are so many that she inevitably tramples upon them. This is intended as a memento mori, for in their effulgent beauty there are already (like the dandelion) preparing for their own dispersal and death. Furthermore, a sense of foreboding is given by the passage across the distant landscape of clouds heavy with rain, against which a rainbow shines brightly, and one perceives that the woman herself is lit by a momentary beam of sunlight which will be shut off by the oncoming storm. All of these elements speak of the transience of spring weather, and by analogy the uncertainty of happiness and fortune. [114]
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
A critic for The Art Journal found much to praise in Sandys's painting and the accompanying poem by Swinburne: "F. Sandys, from the first moment he entered the Academy two years ago, riveted attention. And his personification of Gentle Spring (359) in the present exhibition will certainly not fail to attract to itself loving eyes. The lines of Mr. Algernon Swinburne, which furnish Mr. Sandys with a text, are of rare loveliness, clothed in that lustrous apparel of metaphor which sparkles in the poems of Keats and Shelley" (166). This critic found the painting itself exquisite, "set as with jewels; and it intones impassioned rhapsody…" (166); but his praise is sometimes more nuanced: "The figure is somewhat statuesque, yet voluptuous in swelling bust. As an allegory of Spring, the lady is more sensuous than intellectual or soul-like. Turning to more direct Art qualities, the colour may be said to have at least decorative dazzle; but the whites are chalky and the greens sometimes too blue, and occasionally too yellow for concerted harmony. The execution is rather small and miniature-like, considering the size of the canvas" (166). The reviewer for The Illustrated London News found the picture frankly "disappointing," finding the effect of the finished work "far from commensurate with the extremely careful elaboration of the execution. The impersonation throughout is that of well-worn classical allegory, but without natural grace or virginal tenderness – without even the somewhat fantastic, luxurious abandonment of the poetry by Mr. Swinburne accompanying it" (451).
F.G. Stephens mentioned this work twice in The Athenaeum in 1865, the first time in his "Fine Art Gossip" column: "Mr. F. Sandys will probably send to the Royal Academy a picture upon which he is reported to have been engaged for two years past; it represents Spring, – a young girl, dressed in white, with spring flowers in her lap" (353). He then reported on it again when it was shown at the Royal Academy where he too expressed some reservations about it, particularly about the unidealized features chosen for Spring:
Mr. Sandy's picture, Gentle Spring (No. 359), may be styled allegorical; it represents a young and somewhat exuberant female, dressed in white robes of differing substances, holding flowers in their folds, standing in an open landscape, with the effects of rainy weather about it; gleams of sunlight lie on the figure and parts of the background, dark clouds roll pass, a rainbow is bent above the head. That head is raised and looking somewhat forwards, the expression aims at joyfulness, as of what was once so delicately called "heart singing."" We write "aims at" advisedly, for, notwithstanding all its brilliancy and poetic suggestiveness, the face is not painted in a perfect manner, either as regards modelling or drawing, nor is it free from the vulgarity, or, as it would be juster to say, the personal elements of portraiture. Painting a subject which is ideal and expressing it with a face that is not devoid of personality, Mr. Sandys has not escaped the earthly trammels of his model's features, nor risen to the level of inspiration. What is such a theme as this if not treated with ideality? Who, when the first impression of a brilliant picture has passed from his mind will hesitate whether this is really Spring or an exuberant young English woman of the Eastern Counties, standing in a shower of rain? [657]
W.M. Rossetti in The Spectator praised Sandys's draughtsmanship of the figure of Spring but felt his landscape painting suffered in comparison to the nearby landscape by Mark Anthony hanging above it: "Gentle Spring (359) is an attempt by Mr. Sandys to symbolize in human form the season which the flowers and blossoms of the background more distinctly express. The drawing of the figure is irreproachable, but there is a want of joyousness in her expression, and her embonpoint is excessive. The landscape background suffers by hanging just below, and being thus brought into inevitable comparison with one of the most luminous and powerful landscapes in the exhibition" (526).
Bibliography
Bate, Percy “The Late Frederick Sandys: A Retrospective.”The Studio 33 (October 1904): 3-17. Internet Archive digitized from a copy in the University of Toronto Library.
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 2.A.70, 178-80.
"Fine Arts. Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News XLVI (13 May 1865): 451.
Gentle Spring. Art UK. Web. 15 July 2025.
Newall, Christopher. The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts. Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910. Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone Eds. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1997, cat. 13, 113-14.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Art. The Royal Academy." The Spectator XXXVIII (13 May 1865): 526-27.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series IV (1 June 1865): 161-72.
Staley, Allen. The New Painting of the 1860s. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011, Chapter Three, "Frederick Sandys," 82-83.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Art Gossip." The Athenaeum No. 1950 (11 March 1865): 353.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1959 (13 May 1865): 657-58.
Created 22 February 2014; last modified (commentary added) 15 July 2025