There was a time when dealers wrote to museum curators for help on difficult paintings. I am told that some of them replied. But this hasn't been the case for many years and a few of us now write to museum curators to assist them with their own collections. These emails are not always well received and they are no doubt besieged daily with many other enquiries, of varying degrees of lucidity, from the sorts of people who still choose to communicate with public institutions. To rephrase the old Groucho Marx quote: I refuse to reply to those who were daft enough to write to me. Or perhaps more accurately: no sensible person would have chosen to use our enquiry form. I suspect they are often right.
These turned up in the Witt Library in the file for William Etty. The portrait of Jenny Lind is untraced. The portrait of the unknown woman is in the collection of York Art Gallery and was included in their 2011 exhibition on William Etty. A grand affair accompanied by a large catalogue, with seven different authors. It had a page to itself. William Etty was born in York and the gallery see themselves as the custodians of his legacy.
Both paintings were included in Dennis Farr’s catalogue of 1958 and were published side-to-side. The accompanying text describes how they were painted “about the same time” in “a very similar style” and were evidence of the “high-standard of portraiture” maintained by Etty in his final years.
William Etty, 1958, - Dennis Farr
William Etty; Art and Controversy 2011 - Dr Sarah Burnage, Laura Turner, Professor Mark Hallett, Martin Myrone, Richard Green, Sarah Victoria Turner, Jason Edwards.
Farr felt that Etty had been flattering with Lind’s “plain features”, with her “broad snub nose” painted to look “slim and elegant.” He had less to say about the portrait of the “unknown woman”, though could have mentioned that written on the stretcher was “35 Rue des Couteau” as well as “Mr. Simmons.” Which happens to be the address of Soyer’s relative in Brussels and a misreading of Simonau.
Unknown Woman, Oil on canvas, 59.7 x 49.5cm - York Art Gallery
Shortly before Soyer’s death in childbirth in 1842, her husband Alexis and stepfather Francois Simonau visited Belgium with a sample of her work to show to the King. In Brussels they stayed with Simonau’s brother, Pierre, and became acquainted with his son Gustave Simonau (1820-1870).
In an 1896 directory of Belgian photographers, a painter by the name of “Simoneau” is listed as living at “35 Rue des Coteaux” in Brussels. This almost certainly refers to Alfred Raphael Simonau (born 1860), the son of Gustave Simonau (1820-1870) and Mary Toovey. Toovey is recorded as living at the same address between 1882 and 1883. In 1873 the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium acquired two paintings by Francois Simonau from the widow of Gustave Simonau. The fact that the following painting remained with the family, suggests they were less interested in acquiring a portrait by a largely unknown English painter.
The portrait of Jenny Lind (1820-1887) is attributed to Etty on the basis of an inscription on the reverse, supposedly in Lind’s handwriting:
this painting by W. Etty RA., a portrait of myself. Becomes
the property of Dr. Baily [sic] at my death. 1858 Aug.
signed E. Bailey Jenny Lind.
Portrait of Jenny Lind - Eduard Magnus (1799-1872)
It is an unusual inscription on two accounts. Firstly as it suggests that Lind made arrangements for the dispersal of her paintings a few months after arriving in England (and three decades before her death in 1887), but secondly that she chose to give one of them to a “Dr. Bailey” to whom no other connection can be found. Aside from this is the more significant problem that the painting doesn’t look at all like the other known depictions of Lind. Nor does it resemble other paintings by Etty. Indeed the only stylistic comparison that Dennis Farr could produce, is a painting that happens to have the address of Soyer’s cousin on the reverse.
On the 2nd April 1965 the portrait of Jenny Lind was sold at Christie’s for 1600 pounds. An article in the Liverpool Echo more than a year later reports its sale to the Milwaukee Art Centre for 2500 pounds and the subsequent need for an export license. The same article mentions how the keeper at the Tate had advised that the painting should be saved for the nation.[1] Curiously the painting is now untraced, with no record of it ever entering the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum.
[1] (17th November 1966)