Jane 'Jeanie' Elizabeth Hughes, Mrs Nassau John Senior (1828-77)
George Frederic Watts (London 1817 - Compton 1904)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1858 - 1858 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2050 x 1335 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
NT 1288949
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Jane 'Jeanie' Elizabeth Hughes, Mrs Nassau John Senior (1828-77) by George Frederick Watts OM, RA, (London 1817 - Compton 1904), 1858. A full-length portrait of a woman, turned to right, wearing a blue gown with loose trace-trimmed sleeves, kneeling on a crimson armchair, an ochre and red paisley shawl draped over the front corner of the seat. The woman waters lilies of the valley contained within a Chinese porcelain planter on a gilt console table, a fluted red glass stem vase beside the planter. Flowers and a carafe of water in the foreground; against a background of floral-patterned arsenic-green wallpaper. Jeanie Senior was the sister of Thomas Hughes, the Christian Socialist and author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and daughter-in-law of Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), the economist and creator of the 1834 Poor Law. She became the first woman Inspector of Workhouses and Pauper Schools (1874) and helped the co-founder of the National Trust, Octavia Hill, with the accounts of her housing schemes.
Provenance
By descent from the sitter to Oliver Nassau Senior (1901-1992), grandson of the subject, by whom lent to Wightwick from 1947, and from whom bought by National Trust with the encouragement of Lady Mander in 1955.
Credit line
Wightwick Manor, The Mander Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
George Frederic Watts (London 1817 - Compton 1904), artist
Exhibition history
G F Watts: England's Michelangelo, Watts Gallery, Surrey, 2017 Liberating Fashion: Aesthetic Dress in Victorian Portraits, Watts Gallery, Surrey, 2015, no.31 In Trust for the Nation, National Gallery, London, 1995 - 1996, no.14
References
Sketchley 1904 R. Sketchley, Watts, London 1904, p. 177 West and Pantini 1904 W. K. West and R. Pantini, G. F. Watts, 1904, pl. 54 Barrington 1905 Mrs Russell Barrington, G. F. Watts: Reminiscences, 1905, pp.2,7, pl. opp. p. 6 Bell 1905 Malcolm Bell, Watts, 1905, p.44, illus. p. 50 Watts 1912: M. S. Watts, George Frederick Watts: The Annals of an Artist's Life, 1912 (3 vols.), i, pp.174-5 Hare W. L. Hare, Watts, n.d., p. 47 Blunt 1975 Wilfred Blunt, 'England's Michelangelo', 1975, p. 102, pl. 14 Spielmann, 1886 Marion Harry Spielmann,'The Works of Mr George F. Watts, R. A., with a complete catalogue of his Pictures', Pall Mall Gazette, Extra Number, 22 Liberating Fashion: Aesthetic Dress in Victorian Portraits (ed. Rhian Addison and Hilary Underwood), Watts Gallery, 16 February- 7 June 2015, pp. 46-47, fig. 31
