Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, later Mrs George Bernard Shaw (1857-1943)
Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 - Rome 1932)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1895
Materials
Pastel on board
Measurements
629 x 594 mm (24 3/4 x 23.375 in)
Order this imageCollection
Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire
NT 1275288
Summary
Pastel on board, portrait of Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, later Mrs George Bernard Shaw (1857-1943) by Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 - Rome 1932), made in 1895. A quarter-length portrait, elbows resting on a ledge, hands together and head resting on them, slightly tilted to her right. Hair swept back. Wearing white dress with mandarin collar and leg-of-mutton sleeves. A green lizard crawls up the white wall on the right.
Full description
Pastel on board, Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, later Mrs George Bernard Shaw (1857-1943) by Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 -Rome 1932). 1895. A quarter-length portrait, elbows resting on a ledge, hands together and head resting on them, slightly tilted to her right. Hair swept back. Wearing white dress with mandarin collar and leg-of-mutton sleeves. A green lizard crawls up the white wall on the right. Shaw was very fond of this portrait of Charlotte which seemed to draw attention to her green eyes and fair Irish complexion, and it was given pride of place at the Shaws’ London flats. The portrait was among the artefacts he specifically asked his secretary Blanche Patch to bring to Ayot in 1945 from Whitehall Court: “when the car next comes up it can transport hither the big Sartorio portrait of C.F.S.” (Shaw to Blanche Patch, 19 September 1945, Collected Letters, vol.4, pp.751-52). Shaw placed it above the fireplace in the drawing room, and it appears there in photographs taken by the press in 1946 to celebrate Shaw’s 90th birthday. When Charlotte died in 1943, Shaw wrote to his friend Sidney Webb: “she is just like the portrait Sartorio made in Italy.” Born in Rome into a family of sculptors in 1860, Giulio Aristide Sartorio was the Italian Pre-Raphaelite painter par excellence. He had an immense knowledge of the English Pre-Raphaelite painters, and was thus appealing not only to Charlotte, but also to Shaw. Sartorio came to London in 1893 and 1895, visiting many artists and designers associated with Pre-Raphaelitism and the Arts & Crafts, such as Burne-Jones and William Morris. This portrait was commissioned by Charlotte in Rome in 1895 as a gift for Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor with whom she had formed an attachment. Charlotte at this time was still Charlotte Payne-Townshend (she would not meet Shaw until January 1896). Munthe however rejected the portrait, and it was not clear whether it had been returned to Sartorio’s studio. Shaw subsequently made efforts to locate the portrait, and shortly before their marriage in 1898 he wrote to Charlotte whilst she was in Rome: “you had better ask Sartorio what has happened to the pastel.” The portrait was eventually found and brought to London. It appears in a photograph taken by Shaw of the drawing room at Blen-Cathra in 1899. (This was one of the country houses in Surrey rented by the Shaws after their marriage). Charlotte also collected a number of landscapes by Sartorio, purchased before her marriage whilst she was in Rome in 1895. (8 pastels; 3 oil on cardboard). These landscapes by Sartorio (now at Shaw’s Corner) had previously hung in the drawing room at the Shaw’s London flat at Adelphi Terrace. Sartorio was in touch with the Shaws at least until 1914, and a book survives in the collection from Sartorio to the Shaws inscribed ‘Christmas 1914’. (Alice McEwan, 2020)
Provenance
The Shaw Collection. The house and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust by George Bernard Shaw in 1950, together with Shaw's photographic archive.
Makers and roles
Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 - Rome 1932), artist
References
Bernard Shaw through the camera : 1948., p.45