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 <strong>—</strong> 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 <strong>January</strong> 1879. After that, she may have been too busy <strong>—</strong> 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 76 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
ARRIVE PHB.cz (Richard Semik) / shutterstock.com 72 Escape Tobago therapy 82 Neighbourhood Roseau, Dominica 85 Round Trip Carnival planet 98 Layover St John’s, Antigua Don’t underestimate the recuperative power of Tobago’s gorgeous beaches