Artwork Title: Drawing of Fanny Eaton

Drawing of Fanny Eaton, 1859

Walter Fryer Stocks

Date: circa 1859 Drawing of Fanny Eaton by young artist Walter Fryer Stocks, only a teenager when he made this wonderful drawing in black, red & white chalks. (https://marinamade.me/2016/12/11/fanny-eaton-pre-raphaelite-muse/) This is a portrait of the mixed-race model Fanny Eaton, who moved with her mother, a former slave, from Jamaica to London in the 1840s. Married to a cab driver in 1857, Eaton worked as a cleaner and cook while posing for many Pre-Raphaelite painters—including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who adapted her distinctive beauty to fit different ethnic roles—Hebrew, African, Indian—in biblical and genre scenes. Best known as a minor landscape watercolorist, Walter Fryer Stocks was still a teenager when he made this highly finished drawing, in which he used a meticulous stippled chalk technique to highly expressive effect, conveying an alluring and introspective sensuality in the sitter’s asymmetrical glance and parted lips. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stocks,_Walter_Fryer,_Mrs._Fanny_Eaton,_ca._1859.jpg) Fanny Eaton: The Black Pre-Raphaelite Muse that Time Forgot The enigmatic model made her way to London from Jamaica in the early 19th century to sit for the Pre-Raphaelites, and her legacy lives on in their impactful work. Fanny Eaton was a black Victorian Londoner and, for some time, painter’s model. Born in Jamaica in 1835, Eaton was the daughter of an ex-slave and, it is suspected, a white slave owner. She came to London in the 1840s and began modelling in her twenties. It has been discovered that she was working as a regular portrait model at the Royal Academy, which is potentially where she caught the attention of the many renowned painters of the era she sat for.... In a short period, Eaton sat for John Millais, Joanna Boyce, Simeon and Rebecca Solomon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Frederick Sandys (with more continuing to be identified). Her career as a model lasted for around ten years. Much later a census finds her working as a domestic cook on the Isle of Wight at the age of 63, and another shows her back in London at the age 88, where she is known to have died. (http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8453/fanny-eaton-the-black-pre-raphaelite-muse-that-time-forgot)
Uploaded on Aug 2, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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