FORD MADOX BROWN (1821-1893) Biography
PRE-RAPHAELITE (founded 1848) Biography

Provenance

Mrs R. Minshull Jones (1865)

Literature

Hueffer, Ford Madox, Ford Madox Brown, A Record of his Life and Work, 1896, pages 19, 160-1

Exhibition History

London, The Exhibition of 'Work', and other Paintings by Ford Madox Brown, at the Gallery, 191, Piccadilly, 1865, number 70, as 'Chalk portrait of Mrs. Taylor, 1862', lent by Mrs R. Minshull Jones

Description / Expertise

Louie Jones, seen in this portrait in evening dress and holding a posy of flowers, was the daughter of Ford Madox Brown’s cousin by marriage, William Jones, a solicitor in the City of London, who lived in Greenwich. His wife and the mother of the sitter, Anna, was born a Miss Madox but had died in 1855. According to Ford Madox Brown’s Account Book the portrait was begun at Fortess Terrace, Kentish Town, where Brown was living in 1859; he is further recorded as working on it in 1860 and it was finally presented to the sitter in 1862, which is the date given to it in Brown’s 1865 Exhibition catalogue.
The portrait reflects Brown’s affectionate, almost playful, feelings for his beautiful and elegant cousin. It is quite different in mood to the highly serious, occasionally tragic, themes of the figurative paintings of modern-life subjects by Ford Madox Brown, which were contemporaneous with it.