Helen Bromley
Ford Madox Brown (Calais 1821 - London 1893)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
circa 1870
Materials
Chalk on paper
Measurements
275 mm (Diameter)
Order this imageCollection
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
NT 1287970
Summary
Black chalk drawing, Helen Bromley by Ford Madox Brown (Calais 1821 - London 1893), inscribed "FMB to ECC Dec 6", mongrammed, circa 1870. A circular portrait of the sister-in-law of Brown's first wife Elizabeth (d.1846), head and shoulders, full face, in a black dress and lace cap, an elderly woman.
Full description
This is one of a number of Rossetti and Madox Brown family portrait studies from Mrs. Angeli's collection which are among the most interesting pictures at Wightwick. In the 1870s Madox Brown's style was becoming broader and more decorative than his earlier precise, hard-edged Pre-Raphaelite manner. The face is subtly modelled, the details of the cap and collar more broadly done, the dress suggested by outline and broad hatching. It is a sympathetic portrait: Mrs. Bromley's serene look expresses intelligence and good nature. Helen Bromley was Madox Brown's sister-in-law: her husband Augustus Bromley was the brother of Madox Brown's first wife, his cousin Elisabeth. Augustus died aged 28 in 1843 leaving his widow with four children. Elisabeth died in 1846, and their three-year-old daughter Lucy went to live with her aunt Helen who was setting up a school in Gravesend. Mrs. Bromley is shown aged about 55. In a letter to Sir Geoffrey Mander (18 November 1952) Helen Rossetti Angeli discusses the portrait: "The drawing of 'Aunt Helen' (after whom I was named.... she brought up my mother after her own mother's death) was presented by him [Madox Brown] to Helen Bromley's daughter - Elizabeth Bromley - on her marriage in about 1870 to Mr. Samuel Cooper, an Anglo-Indian." "Elizabeth Cooper died in about 1875, when on a visit to her mother, in London. It was no doubt after that (or more probably after Aunt Helen's death in about '85) that the picture came into my mother's hands; it remained in the family ever since." (adapted from author's unpublished property catalogue, Stephen Ponder, Wightwick Manor, circa 1995)
Provenance
Elizabeth Bromley, Mrs Samuel Cooper; Mrs Helen Bromley (sitter); Lucy Madox Brown, Mrs William Michael Rossetti; Mrs Helen Rossetti Angeli, by whom loaned 1949. By descent to her daughter Imogen, Mrs Dennis (d. 1993) and thence to Mrs Dennis' daughter Helen, Signora Guglielmini; given to National Trust by her in November 2001.
Marks and inscriptions
FMB (monogram) to CAC (monogram) Dec 6. (signed bottom right)
Makers and roles
Ford Madox Brown (Calais 1821 - London 1893)