Fanny Eaton 1835 – 1924
original drawing by Anne Sassoon
Domestic worker, artist’s model, seamstress.
23 June 1835- 4 March 1924
The life of the Pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton: a tribute by Lydia Figes
In the middle of the 19th century, a collective of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood emerged in Bloomsbury, London. Founded by painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais amongst others, the group sought to champion and revive a style of painting that had flourished before the artist Raphael during the Italian High Renaissance. Turning away from the trends of the Academy, the collective upheld a romanticised aesthetic that espoused naturalism and was a reaction to the industrialisation reshaping Victorian Britain.
When we think of the Pre-Raphaelites, we also think of their muses. From Jane Morris to Elizabeth Siddal, the male artists of the Brotherhood were fascinated by idealised forms of female beauty, with Rossetti being particularly known for his pursuit of beauty, as both an aesthetic and moral concept. “Beauty without the beloved is like a sword through the heart. It is beautiful, the world, and life itself” he once wrote.
One of the most influential muses admired by the Pre-Raphaelites was Fanny Eaton (1835–1924), a Jamaican-born woman who came to London as an infant – shortly after the abolition of slavery in British colonies. Admired for her beauty and distinctive features – strong elegant jawline, pronounced high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes – the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were quickly mesmerised by her. She became one of their favourite models and also modelled regularly at the Royal Academy. Despite European tastes at that time, which promoted ‘whiteness’ as the epitome of beauty, artists of that era appear to have empowered Eaton, painting her in a dignified manner (albeit perhaps not without exoticizing her).
Born ‘Fanny Matilda Antwistle’ in St Andrew, Jamaica, on 23rd June 1835, Eaton was the daughter of Matilda Foster, a former slave who had worked on the British-owned plantations. The young Fanny was recorded as ‘mulatto’, a pejorative and outdated term once used to describe someone of ‘mixed race’ – it is quite possible that she had a white European father, possibly the British soldier James Entwistle (or Antwistle). No substantial information about Eaton’s father has yet been found.
Eaton and her mother left Jamaica for Britain sometime in the 1840s. The Atlantic Slave Trade had been abolished in 1807, but it was only in 1834 that slavery was abolished entirely in Britain’s colonies. Despite new legislation, many enslaved individuals remained bound to their former masters as ‘apprentices’ for another six years, until further laws were passed to abolish the apprenticeship clause in 1838.
When she came of age, Fanny cohabitated with James Eaton, a horse-cab driver. They lived in London’s Coram Fields and had ten children together between 1858 and 1879. Brian Eaton, the great-grandson of Fanny, claims they were never married as no certificate has ever been found. Quite possibly, an interracial marriage would have been frowned upon and discouraged by James’ family. When James died in his forties in 1881, his wife was left to raise and provide for all of their surviving children.
It has been estimated that London’s black population in 1800 was around 20,000. Typically, wealthy aristocratic households employed black footmen, coachmen, nursemaids and cooks, some of whom appear prominently in British paintings, usually as status symbols. Outside London, individuals of African descent could be found living in major British trading ports such as Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. Art historian Roberto C. Ferrari notes that the minority black population in Britain in the nineteenth century ‘existed outside the traditional parameters of Victorian society, yet was a vital product of its industrial and mercantile success.’
In Victorian Britain, people of colour were typically treated as objects rather than subjects in painting. In 1867 an art critic said: ‘a black [figure] is eminently picturesque, his colour can be turned to good account in picture-making.’ According to the curator Jan Marsh, Black figures were often used to illustrate ‘genre scenes, social comedy, historical and fictional figures African exploration and anti-slavery images, […] exotic fantasy and straight portraiture.’ Marsh argues that African complexions provided new challenges to artists, as to paint their skin “required different pigments, careful attention to exact hues and understanding of how light reflects from dark skin’. Thus, the desire to paint darker-skinned subjects was not simply about subject matter, but also to demonstrate expertise in painting.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/spiralsheep/10835756544
One of the first artists to show an interest in Fanny Eaton was Simeon Solomon (1840–1905), an English artist of Jewish descent who was affiliated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Solomon’s beautiful graphite sketches of Eaton from 1859 can be viewed in The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Solomon captured Eaton in his painting The Mother of Moses (1860). The artist’s sister, Rebecca Solomon (1832–1886), also painted Eaton in the work A Young Teacher (1861).
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/women-artists/a-young-teacher
Another artist who employed Eaton as a model was Albert Joseph Moore (1841–1893), an English painter known for his works showing listless and reclining female figures, usually draped in classical robes. Moore was a close friend of Solomon’s, and it is likely that he was introduced to Eaton through the artist. Moore created The Mother of Sisera in 1861, which portrayed Eaton as the mother of the military commander of the Canaanite army of King Jabin of Hazor – he features prominently in the Hebrew Bible (Judges 4–5).
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-mother-of-sisera-144559
In the same year, Eaton was painted by Joanna Mary Wells (1831–1861), a prominent female artist affiliated with the Pre-Raphaelites who often painted under her maiden name of Boyce. Boyce’s exquisite portrait of Eaton in profile accentuates Eaton’s beauty with refined shimmering fabric and jewellery, including turquoise beads and pearls. Painted on paper laid on linen, the work is signed and dated 1861 and must have been created shortly before Boyce died in July of that year during childbirth. Boyce’s depiction of Eaton is perhaps the most dignified: her strength of character and beauty are directly conveyed. Importantly, she is clothed as if she was a wealthier woman, not someone from an impoverished, working-class background.]
Sometime between 1863 and 1865, Rossetti sketched Eaton. In 1865, he wrote to Ford Madox Brown to compliment her Eaton’s beauty: ‘very fine head and figure’. He had equated her beauty to that of ‘Janey’, referring to Jane Morris – his favourite muse and lover. In August of that year, Rossetti wrote to Brown stating about Eaton: ‘she isn’t Hindoo […] but mulatto’, which suggests that artists were perhaps unsure about her origins, regarding her lighter complexion as a reason to portray her as Hebrew, Middle Eastern or Indian. Interestingly, she was rarely painted as ‘Jamaican’.
Eaton appears in one of Rossetti’s well-known paintings, The Beloved (The Bride), a large-scale work illustrating the Biblical tale of the Song of Solomon and featuring other figures of colour, including an African page boy who appears in the foreground of the painting. Eaton is barely detectable as she stands in the background, behind the other women on the right-hand side of the painting. It has been suggested that Rossetti’s inclusion of darker-skinned models in this painting – representing the virginal bridesmaids who flank the bride – was to emphasise the whiteness of his central model.
Following her later life through the censuses, in 1871 she and her family were living in Islington; by 1881 she was widowed, and living in Kensington as a needlewoman; and by 1891 she was a housekeeper in Hammersmith, living with several of her children (interestingly her daughter Miriam is listed as an artist’s assistant). In 1901 she was a domestic cook on the Isle of Wight, and by 1911, now in her seventies, she was living back in Hammersmith with Julia, her daughter, and Julia’s husband and two children.
Fanny Eaton died at the age of around 89 in 1924, most likely in the home of one of her children. According to Marsh, her final resting place is Margravine Cemetery in Hammersmith. As well as the mystery of her disappearing from paintings after 1867, Eaton’s presence was overlooked by art historians and biographers in the following decades. Her obscurity in art history was likely to do with her race but will have been compounded by her working-class origins.
In recent years, her legacy has begun to attract more museum curators and art professionals, with paintings of her being shown at major exhibitions such as ‘Pre-Raphaelite Sisters’ (2018) at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Eaton was also the Google Doodle in November 2020.
See another version of this story on Art UK: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/fanny-eaton-jamaican-pre-raphaelite-muse
MINI BIOGRAPHY
Background
Born in Jamaica to a former slave.
Came to London as an infant in the 1840s after the abolition of slavery in British colonies.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
1859-67 Modelled at the Royal Academy of Arts as well as for several Pre-Raphaelite artists having a profound influence on their work.
Works for which she posed include The Young Teacher by Rebecca Solomon, The Beloved by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Slave by William Blake Richmond, The Mother of Moses by Simeon Solomon.
Her great beauty and dignity are show through in whichever way her role as a model was interpreted.
Issues
The reaction of the public to a black woman being depicted was often negative: – from dislike of her ‘dark complexion to cultivation of a love for the ‘exotic’ and a focus on her blackness as emphasising the whiteness of other models.
Connection to Bloomsbury
Lived with her partner in Coram Fields, Bloomsbury.
Further reading:
Fanny Eaton: Jamaican Pre-Raphaelite muse | Art UK
BBC Arts – New Creatives, Fanny Eaton: The forgotten Pre-Raphaelite Model