Love's Shadow. Left: c.1867. Oil on panel. 16 x 12 3/4 inches (40.6 X 32.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Sotheby's, London. Right: 1867. Black, red and white chalk on buff-coloured paper; 14 ¼ x 10 ¼ inches (36.5 x 26 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Sotheby's, London. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
This painting is based on two preliminary drawings executed in 1867 that are in private collections. Betty Elzea has described the first of these drawings in this way: "Head and shoulders of a young girl with long wavy hair. Her face is in profile to the left with her head inclined slightly downwards. Her right hand holds up a nosegay of flowers, the tip of which she grips with her teeth. She wears a rose in her hair and appears to be wearing a dress with puffed sleeves" (188). Elzea then goes on to describe the difference between the painting and the drawing:
The figure has red hair which contrasts well with her puce silk dress. Sandys has added several details to enrich the subject: she wears a jewelled headband and another jewelled ornament at the back of her head, two pink roses are tucked into her hair and she wears a jewelled bracelet. There is also some foliage behind her wrist. The nosegay on which she chews seems to be largely composed of forget-me-nots. The background appears to be an overall dark green. Sandys has slightly changed the somewhat bovine expression of the titled drawing to a more anguished one with an emphasis on the curve of the eyebrow and the slightly raised upper lip, showing more teeth. Also, the eye turns more to the spectator. [189]
The model was again Mary Emma Jones, Sandys's common-law wife.
When the painting came up for auction at Sotheby's in 2011 Christopher Newall pointed out that Sandys's choice of flowers was not arbitrary but had symbolic meaning:
In Love's Shadow, Sandys has crept up on his subject and manifested a voyeuristic experience for the viewer. This beautiful woman, opulently adorned with jewels to clearly signify her status, is caught in a moment of transgression. Her implied loveliness and that of the object of her intent gaze have been stripped to reveal its shadow. Her expression has snapped out of place and been replaced with a scowl and she unknowingly strips the stems of their flowers with her teeth. Sandys' selection of flowers is not arbitrary. In a preparatory drawing Sandys has her eating honeysuckle, a Victorian symbol for the bond of love which would have been immediately understood by audiences at the time. However, in this finished rendering, Sandys has been careful to have her biting blue violets, a symbol of love and watchfulness, and possibly heliotrope, for devotion. Later, in more than a dozen renderings of the iconic Proud Maisie, which are based on this work, she bites her hair in a gentle allusion to the ouroboros (the snake that bites its tail), a symbol of self reflection and cyclicality.
When the painting came up for sale at Christie's in 2003 the flowers the woman was chewing on were described as forget-me nots, also a not inappropriate choice considering the subject of the painting.
Richard Beresford feels the title Love's Shadow is "intended to reflect the contradictory state of mind which permits a gaze of love to coexist with a bite of hatred – love's shadow" (50). Beresford also compares the painting to the second of the known preliminary drawings, the one done in red chalk:
Here the girl holds (and bites on) a bunch of honeysuckle while more honeysuckle is shown in the bottom left corner of the composition. Sandys abandoned this idea in the finished painting, retaining the bunch of wildflowers (meadow flax?) but the painting otherwise adopts all the innovations of the new drawing. The head is tilted so the expression becomes angrier and the teeth are shown behind a curl of the lip, which suggests a snarl. The girl is no longer the innocent maiden out gathering wildflowers; she is given an extravagantly jewelled bracelet, tiara and headdress and now wears two roses in her hair. The puffed sleeve of her dress suggests a figure in historical costume, and the featureless dark background recalls Renaissance portraiture. [50]
Kristy Stonell Walker has added valuable insights into the possible meaning of the painting based on the language of flowers:
"In Love's Shadow, the woman bites on a posy of flowers consisting mainly of forget-me-nots or violets. In preparatory drawings, she bites on honeysuckle, symbolising the bond of love, but the tiny blue flowers imply watchfulness and fear in love. Presumably she has been given the flowers by her lover, but she bites them. If her lover wished to remain unforgotten, something in the bared teeth and scowl makes the viewer wonder if the flowers are ironic, that it is the woman who fears being forgotten. The small flowers of promised affection are greeted not with kisses but with a rather brazen snarl. Here in her expression is love's shadow, the dark cast of love, inconstant in size, without form, but existent and rather feminine. Love's shadow is feral, animalistic, female lust.
Bibliography
Beresford, Richard. Victorian Visions. Nineteenth-Century Art from the John Schaeffer Collection. Sydney, Australia: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2010, cat. 9, 50-51.
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 2A 98 & 2A.100, 188-89.
The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art II. London: Christie's (20 February 2003): lot 91, 116-17. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4051774
Newall, Christopher. 19th Century Paintings. London: Sotheby's (5 May 2011): lot 69. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/19th-century-paintings-n08738/lot.69.html
Wildman, Stephen. Visions of Love and Life. Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1995, cat.98, 284.
Walker, Kristy Stonell. "Woman Red in Tooth (and Claw)." The Kissed Mouth (10 August 2014). http://fannycornforth.blogspot.com/2014/08/
Created 16 July 2025