Portrait of Sidney Wells, by Joanna Boyce Wells

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Portrait of Sidney Wells

Joanna Boyce Wells (1831-1861)

1859

Oil on canvas

H 27.6 x W 25.1 cm

Tate, accession. no. T07058

Presented by Anne Christopherson in 1996, to celebrate the Tate Gallery Centenary of 1997

Image download and text by Jacqueline Banerjee.

Image kindly released by the Tate under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED licence. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links. See below for commentary.]

This "striking, minutely detailed" portrait of the artist's first child, Sidney, shows her going beyond early Pre-Raphaelite painting in several ways, for example in the soft blending of the "fine, soft brushstrokes of the face" (Herrington 190-91). Less than a year old here, Sidney would die in later childhood, in 1869.

Bibliography

Herrington, Katie J.T. "Joanna Mary Boyce: Beyond Pre-Raphaelitism." Victorian Artists and Their World, 1844-1861, as Reflected in the Papers of Joanna and George Boyce and Henry Wells. Edited by Herrington. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2024. 169-206. [Review]

Portrait of Sidney Wells. Tate. Web. 13 July 2024.

Created 13 July 2024