Many thanks to Bendor Grosvenor for bringing this one to my attention. It was left to the Rollins Museum in 2015 as a painting by Andrew Geddes (1783-1844), but happens to be a missing painting by Emma Soyer. Helpfully it is recorded in an engraving of 1846 and was shown at the British Society of Artists in 1838, before being sold at Christies in 1859. As things stand it is the only known example of the 5 paintings that Alexis Soyer tried to leave to the National Gallery before his death in 1858. He even took it to the Crimea in 1855, displaying it in his campaign tent.

In an alternate reality the painting would now be in the National Gallery and would have been there for the best part of two centuries, along with the four other paintings that together constitute a large enough sample for study. Perhaps Soyer would be reasonably well known, certainly we would have built a clearer picture of her life and career.

Engraving of “Young Bavarians” - Emma Soyer, published 1846.
Saltmarshe Collection: Sold at Christie's 4th June 1846

In the first line of his last will and testament Alexis Soyer instructed his executors to leave 5 of his wife’s pictures to the National Gallery. It was his last act in a 16 year-long attempt to preserve her legacy after her premature death in 1842. None would reach the National Gallery.

One explanation for this is the Great Exhibition of 1851, where his Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations (erected roughly where the V&A now stands), housed 2000 diners, served all cuisines and lost him 7000 pounds.

On the 22nd November 1851, his debts were acquired by the distiller David Hart. Just one of his inventions (gas stove, cafetiere… etc) should have shielded him against bankruptcy for at least 3 lifetimes, but he was easily distracted – restless – the idea of converting spectacular insights into workable businesses seems to have left him cold.

It is a short will, written on a single piece of paper, with a feeble signature and a yearly allowance for the grave in Kensal Green Cemetery. Dated 19th June 1858, it was annexed by David Hart on 23rd December 1858. The remaining works of Emma Soyer were dispersed at auction just 3 months later.

In the past year two of Soyer’s paintings have entered the collections of international museums. The rediscovery at the Rollins is another welcome addition to the 20 or so known paintings by Emma Soyer.

I tend to avoid describing an artist’s style, preferring to leave to high resolution photographs, what is difficult to convey in wiriting. But thankfully Soyer’s paintings are easy to recognise, largely, in my view, because they belong to no obvious antecedent. Broadly speaking there is a continuity in British figural painting, from Reynolds and Gainsborough to Lawrence and Wilkie, but Soyer belongs outside of this tradition.

She hasn’t reached the realism of Gustave Courbet; her paintings still rely on the fixed forms of the long 18th century, though the figures are closer to the canvas and there is a liveliness which brings them firmly into the modern period. The dusky red of the backgrounds is also unusual, and seems to capture the transition from painting inside to painting in the open air, one of the main artistic developments in the 2nd of half of the 19th century. Much like Dickens she captures the offcuts of the industrial revolution: chimney sweeps, street urchins… young children, the improbably old… Ocasionally she signs her works, though the polychrome white on the girl’s bonnet and dress (it appears grey from a distance) is about as close to a signature as we tend to get.