Dominic Winter Auctions
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* Downes (Thomas Price, active 1835-1887). Portrait of Mrs Henry Back, circa 1851, oil on canvas, half-length portrait of a young woman with flower sprigs in her swept-back brown hair, wearing a lace-trimmed black gown, a brooch, and gold link and enamel bracelets, and carrying a folding fan, against a backdrop of sky, re-lined, contemporary manuscript label on stretcher with name of sitter and artist (latter indistinct), 91.5 x 71 cm (36 x 28 ins), period gilt moulded frame with elaborate strapwork and volute pattern (119.5 x 99 cm)QTY: (1)NOTE:Fanny Lamprière (born 1830) was courted by the artist John Everett Millas (1829-1926), although she later married land-owning magistrate Henry Back (born 1811), on 7th July 1851, in Ewell, Surrey. The Lamprières were a Jersey family, and Millais had strong connections to the island, having lived there for the first nine years of his life. Later he spent a lot of time at Rozel Manor, St Martin, Jersey, home of Philip Raoul Lemprière, the brother of Fanny's father Captain William Charles Lamprière. It is said that Raoul (as he was known), gave the artist his first paintbox, and when Millais went to London to continue his training as a painter, he was befriended by Arthur and Harry Lemprière, two of Fanny's brothers. 'We always called him Johnny', said Arthur, 'and he constantly spent the holidays with us at our home in Ewell, Surrey. He always seemed to be sitting indoors, to have a pen, pencil, or brush in his hand, rattling off some amusing caricature or other drawing'. Indeed, Millais made a number of informal sketches of the Lamprière family, and Arthur later sat for one of Millais’ most famous paintings The Huguenot in 1852. In 1846 Millais sent two painted Valentines to Fanny, but we can only guess at subsequent events; just five years later there is a somewhat sad mention of her - the married lady - in the only diary the painter kept. He was staying near to Ewell, and had chanced upon his 'old flame' as she returned from church: "I wished myself anywhere but there; all seemed so horribly changed, the girl I knew so well calling me ‘Mr Millais’ instead of ‘John’, and I addressing ‘Fanny’ as ‘Mrs B’. She married a man old enough to be her father; he trying to look the young man, with a light cane in his hand … an apparently stupid man, plain and bald, perfectly stupefied at Mrs B asking me to make a little sketch of her ugly old husband. They left, she making a bungling expression of gladness at having met me."
