oil on canvas
90.5 x 70.5cm (35 5/8 x 27 3/4in).
Sold for £9,000 inclusive of Buyer's Premium
London, Grosvenor Gallery, 1883, no. 183 as 'Mrs Frederick Harrison';
Simon Reynolds, William Blake Richmond, An Artist's Life 1842-1921, Norwich, 1995, p.144
If William Blake Richmond's 1872 portrait of Princess Alexandra was considered by Queen Victoria to be a 'yellowy-greenery' failure, that of Princess Louise of 1881 received general acclaim. She wears a low cut dress, similar to that worn by Mrs Harrison in the present lot of 1882, a resplendent portrait of an 'Italianate' beauty, complete with a white lily in the foreground and a centrally placed red rose. Richmond continued to depict flowers adorning the cleavage of his languorous female sitters until the 4th Viscount Hood, in 1888, was outraged to recognise the artist's profile, conspicuous in a rose, admiring his wife Edith's cleavage; Lord Hood insisted on it's immediate removal.
The heavy latin eyelids depicted in this portrait re-appear in Mrs Ernest Moon, (Tate Britain) exhibited at the RA in 1888, after Richmond's election as an ARA. His portrait of Mrs J. A. Fuller-Maitland (City Museum, Lancaster), shown at the RA in the same year, reflects the same relaxed pose on a sofa, with an Arts and Crafts curtain as backdrop. The introduction to this sitter probably came from Richmond's friend the 9th Earl of Carlisle, and his wife Rosalind; the resultant portrait is an outstanding example of Richmond's lusciously composed depictions of beautiful society women, executed at the height of the artist's powers.
Ethel Bertha Harrison (1851-1916) was born at Highgate Hill, London on 27 October 1851. Her father was a wealthy West India merchant and Ethel was educated by French and English governesses both in London and France. In August 1870 she married her cousin Frederic Harrison (1831-1923), essayist and activist, and a leading figure in the Positivist movement. Ethel mixed easily with her husband's circle of intellectual friends which included John Ruskin, Beatrice Potter, George Eliot and Rosalind Howard, the future Countess of Carlisle. She wrote for The Positivist Review, founded in 1893, on topics such as education, patriotism, women and the empire.
Like her husband, Ethel was a prominent opponent of women's suffrage. She believed that biologically women were unsuited to political activities and this persuasion was reinforced by her Positivist beliefs. She served on the executive of the women's National Anti-Suffrage League, founded in 1908.
In 1912 the Harrison's moved to Bath where Ethel died on 6th June 1916.
We are grateful to Simon Reynolds for his assistance in cataloguing this lot
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