May Margaret. 1865-66. Oil on canvas. 17 ¼ x 11 ¼ inches (43.8 x 28.6 cm). Collection of Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, object no. 1935-32, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935. Image courtesy of Delaware Art Museum. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Sandys did not exhibit this fine work at any of the primary London venues. Betty Elzea describes it in her Catalogue Raisonné in this way:
Bust of a young woman with reddish-blond hair, facing to the right. Her head turns slightly to the spectator, half right. Both hands are seen as she places a flower at her neck. She wears a hand-woven and embroidered African robe and a red silk tassel for an earring…. The robe is identical to the one appearing in D.G. Rossetti's paintings, Il Ramoscello(1865) and Mary Magdalene (1877) and may be the latter of the two mentioned by Rossetti in a letter to Ford Madox Brown: "I have also bought two very loose African men's woollen robes – very fine – one white embroidered with cream-coloured silk, the other grey with white pattern very slight here and there. Both have very wide hanging sleeves. Rossetti was an avid collector of exotic costumes and accessories for his paintings, and Sandys had a reputation as a borrower among the members of the Rossetti circle." [183]
This particular robe is characteristic of the Hausa culture of Northwest Africa. The letter from Rossetti to Brown is from c. September 13, 1865 (Fredeman, letter 65.132, 327). In addition, May Margaret wears a scarlet silk rope around her neck and matching bracelets.
The derivation of the painting's title is uncertain. Elzea felt May Margaret could possibly refer to the character in the traditional Scottish ballad, "Clerk Saunders," but as she points out there seems to be little relationship between the placid figure in Sandy's picture and the maiden haunted by her dead lover in the ballad. The model for May Margaret is likely Emilie "Millie" Jones who posed for Sandys several times at this time period before he started using her sister Mary Emma Jones as his principal model.
Bibliography
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 2.A.84, 183-84.
Elzea, Betty. Waking Dreams. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum. Stephen Wildman Ed. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 2004, cat 56, 210-211.
Elzea, Rowland. The Pre-Raphaelite Collections of the Delaware Art Museum. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1984. 138-39.
Fredeman, William E., ed. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Chelsea Years, I. 1863-1867. Vol. III. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003.
May Margaret. Delaware Art Museum. Web. 16 July 2025.
Created 16 July 2025