Mrs. Fanny Eaton (coloured chalks on paper)

Jamaican-born Fanny Eaton settled in Britain with her mother in the 1840s, taking up work as a maid and a cook before she began modelling for the Pre-Raphaelites from about 1859. Her distinctive features appear in many of their works, including a series of sketches produced by Simeon Solomon, Frederick Sandys and Walter Stocks in November 1859. Solomon's three sketches of Fanny, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, are dated 7, 8 & 11 November 1859; based on both her pose and the particular styling of her hair, it is presumed that Sandys' drawing, currently in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was executed during the very same session in November 1859. The following year Fanny also sat to Solomon for The Mother of Moses, to Rossetti for The Beloved and to Millais for Jepthah. In August 1865 Rossetti responded to an enquiry from Ford Madox Brown about Mrs. Eaton saying 'She has a very fine head & figure - a good deal of Janey [Morris]' (quoted, W.E. Fredeman et al (eds), The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Cambridge 2002-, III, p.322).