Gretchen, by Joanna Boyce Wells

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Gretchen

Joanna Boyce Wells (1831-1861)

1861

Oil on canvas

Support: 730 × 437 mm frame: 922 × 618 × 48 mm

Collection: Tate, ref. N03814

Presented by the artist's daughters in 1923

Gretchen was the name of the Wells's nursemaid. As Wells's unfinished last work, lacking in details that might help to clarify the artist's intention, the painting has provoked some speculation. Katie Herrington feels that the "warm-brown background suggests an early evening setting and, while the standing figure with blank expression is initially reminiscent of the eldest girl in Millais’s outdoor scene Autumn Leaves, the rectangular shape in the foreground of Boyce’s work suggests a set of drawers or dressing table, indicating that the figure stands in a domestic interior" (200). [Commentary continues below.]

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.]

It is hard to see what the young woman is doing, but Herrington wonders if she may be holding something from the furniture beside her, and wonders, moreover, if there may be a reference here to Gretchen in Goethe's Faust, who "alone in ‘a small neat room’ at twilight, braiding her hair, finds a casket of jewels left by Faust and ... tries them on in front of a mirror" (201). In that case (and indeed in any case) there might be a reflection on social status here. The comparison with Gretchen in Faust seems apt, seems particularly apt to Herrington, insofar as "the transitory power of the jewels mirrors that of Boyce’s art, through which she depicted women’s expressive heads with individuality and dignity that transcended their social status" (201). However, this must remain a speculative reading.

Bibliography

Gretchen. Tate. Web. 13 July 2024.

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]

Created 13 July 2024