"Henry Fawcett; Dame Millicent Fawcett," by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

Henry Fawcett; Dame Millicent Fawcett

Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

1872

Oil on canvas

42 3/4 in. x 33 in. (1086 mm x 838 mm)

National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 1603)

Bequeathed by Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Bt, 1911

On 17 July 1869, Millicent Garret earned a place in the history of women's suffrage by being among the first women to speak up for it at a public meeting in London. [Commentary continues below. Mouse over the text for links.]

The Battle for Women's Suffrage — A Timeline

Image © National Portrait Gallery, London. Commentary and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee [Click on the image for a larger picture.]

Millicent Garrett (1847–1929) had married Henry Fawcett, the blind MP and Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, in 1867. Despite a large age-gap (he was fourteen years older than she was), it was a very happy marriage. Both were disciples of John Stuart Mill. "'I cannot say I became a suffragist,' she later wrote. 'I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government'" (qtd. in Haworth).

As for the artist, 1872 was a difficult year for Brown, "so broken in upon by distressing illnesses and harassing cares that the item 'work of the year' dwindles down almost to the confines of nothingness, being restricted to the Portrait of Professor and Mrs. Fawcett, painted for and now in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke, and to the pastel portrait of Mrs. Madox Brown, called Convalescent" (Ford 271). Brown mentioned the double portrait in a letter to his friend, Fredrick Shields: "I am painting Fawcett, the blind member, and his wife in one picture for Sir Charles Dilke quite a pathetic-looking group" (qtd. in Ford 273).

The result is a masterpiece of colour and composition. The warm skin tones and touches of white in the collars (the wife's so much more feminine than her husband's) stand out against all the subtle variations of brown tones here. Millicent Fawcett "acted as her husband's guide and for some years as his secretary" (Haworth). Here, she pays full attention too him. The sheet of paper she holds, the blind scholar's sensitive finger, the clasped hands, the woman's hand on her husband's shoulder with pen at the ready to take down his words, all suggest their particularly close relationship. All are marvellously alive, too — even the sheet of paper, impeded by the folds of the gown, seems only temporarily still.

Bibliography

Ford, Ford Madox. Ford Madox Brown: A Record of His Life and Work. London: Longmans, 1896. Internet Archive. Web. 17 July 2019.

Haworth, Janet. "Fawcett, Dame Millicent Garrett [née Millicent Garrett], (1847–1929)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Web. 17 July 2019.

Created 17 July 2019