Caribbean Beat — January/February 2017 (#143)

The Beloved (1865–66; oil on canvas), by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Fanny Eaton is the
third bridesmaid from left, her face half
visible behind the bride
a colonialist viewpoint). Solomon’s friend Albert
Moore used Eaton as The Mother of Sisera, a biblical
character who has already died in battle; the 1861
painting shows her waiting patiently but in vain
for her son’s return, a figure of pathos and anxiety.
Eaton also appears in Millais’s Old Testament
painting Jephthah (1867). She was sketched by
Rossetti, and in his painting The Beloved (1865),
now in Tate Britain, she is among the bridesmaids,
at the centre, behind the bride.
And probably the most beautiful and impressive
image of this once-forgotten model is a portrait
by a forgotten painter, Joanna Boyce Wells. The
sister of another Pre-Raphaelite artist, George
Boyce, Wells studied in Paris and showed at
the Royal Academy, was praised by Ruskin and
called “wonderfully gifted” by Rossetti, but died
at twenty-nine. Her painting is said to be a study
for the head of a Libyan (that is, African) Sibyl
(a prophetess of classical times) or of Zenobia,
a Syrian warrior queen of antiquity — Wells
apparently planned to use Eaton in full-length
paintings of both. Previously referred
to as Head of a Mulatto Woman, the
picture is now known as Head of Mrs
Eaton. Seen in profile, she is regal and
dignified, her shoulders wrapped in
fine draperies and with jewels looped
through her luxuriant hair.
But a recently discovered study by
Walter Fryer Stocks looks most like a
portrait of Fanny Eaton as herself. The
little-known Stocks was the same age
as Simeon Solomon, and might have
attended the same life-drawing classes
for which Eaton sat. In this sketch in
black, red, and white chalk, the woman
he drew, though young, is watchful and tired, with shadows under her eyes;
it dates from 1859, when Eaton was twenty-four, but she looks older than her
years (by then she would have been married with a small daughter, and her
second child perhaps on the way).
Eaton also modelled for painting classes at the Royal Academy between
July 1860 and January 1879. After that, she may have been too busy — at
least nine of her ten children, six daughters and four sons, had been born by
that time. Or perhaps by then she looked too careworn, owing to her hard life;
or she may have moved away. Her husband died in 1881, when she was fortyfive,
leaving her to raise seven of their children; the youngest, Frank, was just
two. She never remarried. Little more is known of the life she led between
the peaceful interludes of sitting to artists and the more glamorous moments
when pictures of her went on show.
In her sixties, Eaton lived on the Isle of Wight, working as a cook for a
wine merchant’s family. Two of her daughters had followed her by becoming
seamstresses, and two were servants; but one, Miriam, was briefly a sculptor’s
assistant. By 1911, Eaton was living with another daughter, Julia Powell, and
her family in Hammersmith, west London, and she died in nearby Acton.
Fanny Eaton has been saved from obscurity by the images of her that hang
in some of the world’s great galleries, depicting heroines and famous beauties.
But sadly, despite their numerous foreign settings, none depicts her against the
West Indian landscapes among which she was born. n
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