Eustatia, 1853. Oil on canvas, 22 x 14 inches (55.9 x 35.6 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. NO3273. Click on image to enlarge it.
This three-quarter length portrait features a young woman standing just outside the door of a conservatory, with her face turned slightly to the right. It was obviously painted in wintertime. She is dressed in black except for a light-blue collar and she holds a white handkerchief edged in lace in her right hand. The model for Eustatia was was Eustatia Elizabeth Davy [Davie], likely a family friend or a neighbour from Kew. She was the daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and was aged thirty-three when she sat to Deverell for her portrait. In 1857 she married Walter Lawrence, a wealthy company director with family estates in Jamaica. The couple lived in Chelsea until her death in 1881. According to Barbara Bryant, “She is a personality whom we only know as a visual presence, but she dominated Deverell’s artistic output in 1852-53…Whatever her role in Deverell’s life, she brought her own sensibility to his art with her ambiguous and unreadable face and evident affinity with birds” Eustatia brought a “new current in Deverell’s work, representing contemporary women, derives from his encounter with Eustatia Davie, who might even be considered a new muse for him, a modern woman whose presence prompted him to try a new type of picture” (12, 15).
When this portrait was shown at the Society of British Artists W. M. Rossetti, the reviewer for The Spectator, was appreciative: “The two best painted and most pleasing single figures – ‘The Pet Parrot,’ and ‘Eustatia,’ by Mr. Deverell – are shabbily banished to the Water-colour Room…’Eustatia’ is yet better: the arch inviting beauty, the dress, all black, falling in long folds, and varied by a line of blue round the neck and by the white of the handkerchief, having just that peculiarity and piquancy which prove an artist’s vocation. The indication of background – a house-wall with window down to the ground, and a creeper trailed up it – is also nice” (326).
Bibliography
Bryant, Barbara. “Recovering Walter Deverell: Image, Identity and Portraiture in Pre-Raphaelite Art.” In Pre-Raphaelitism in Australasia Special Issue, Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies>, 22 (2018): 1-23.
Rossetti, W. M. “Fine Arts. Exhibition of The Society of British Artists.” Spectator 26, (1853): 326.
Last modified 9 March 2022