Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Fanny Eaton other

Fanny Eaton was born in Jamaica, then a British colony, in 1835. After her mother, Matilda Foster, was freed from slavery, following the implementation of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1834, Foster and an infant Eaton travelled to London, England in the 1840s, where Eaton remained, becoming a popular and celebrated artist's model, particularly for the Pre-Raphaelites. Her likeness can be found in many renowned works of art around the world today.

Born: 1835 Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica

Died: 1924 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1840

Other name/s: Fanny Antwistle, Fanny Entwhistle


Biography

Artist’s model Fanny Eaton was born in Jamaica, then a British colony, in 1835. Very few written records about her life remain, but it is likely that her mother, Matilda Foster, had been born into slavery. Her father was not identified on birth certificates, but it has been suggested that he could have been a British soldier, James Entwistle. The Slavery Abolition Act had come into effect ten months prior to Eaton’s birth, which declared slavery illegal in the British colonies, although it took several years before most enslaved people were completely emancipated. Eaton’s mother, Foster, was likely freed around the time of Eaton’s birth and together brought Eaton to live in England in the 1840s. They initially settled in London, and as Eaton was a child at the time of their emigration, she grew up in the city. Records show her as being employed as a domestic servant for a family in London in 1851, aged just sixteen.

It has not been entirely established how she came to be employed as an artist’s model and it is likely she initially began the work to supplement her income, but records from the Royal Academy’s cash books suggest that she began sitting as a life model for them from around 1859. She first appears in sketches by Anglo-Jewish artist, Simeon Solomon from this date, and these later informed Solomon’s painting The Mother of Moses. This was the first exhibited painting to feature Eaton’s likeness, and was displayed at the Royal Academy in 1860. Solomon took inspiration for his painting from the biblical story of Moses, alluding to his Jewish heritage, and Eaton was the model for both Moses’s mother, Jochebed, and sister, Miriam. The painting met with a mixed reaction, as it contrasted with the usual depictions of Bible characters that Victorian English viewers had come to expect. Eaton modelled frequently throughout the next decade, representing a variety of identities, including Jewish, South Asian or Middle Eastern figures. Throughout this time she cemented her status as a favourite muse for artists who formed part of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the 1850s, and for those who were influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. She appeared in paintings and drawings by Charles Landseer, Albert Joseph Moore, Joanna Mary Boyce, William Blake Richmond, John Everett Millais, and founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Black people were marginalised in European artworks at the time, but Eaton became a prominent and important person of colour who featured in many popular and celebrated artworks, sometimes eliciting compliments and fascination because of her ‘exotic’ features, sometimes being subjected to racism. Although there are no surviving comments from Eaton to indicate directly how she felt about modelling and her experience of it, Roberto C. Ferrari, Curator of Art Properties at Columbia University, has suggested that as she featured in a number of narrative paintings portraying particular characters, the relationship between artist and model may have been nuanced and involved creative input from Eaton in interpreting the artists' visions and requests (Ferrari, 2024).

Eaton does not appear in any paintings after 1867, and so it is presumed that she stopped modelling around this time. Eaton met her partner, Londoner James Eaton, in 1857. They married, or at least cohabited, and together they had ten children. He died a premature death in 1881, leaving Eaton with their children, and records show that she moved to work for a family on the Isle of Wight in 1901. She later moved back to London in 1911, where she remained for the rest of her life until her death in 1924. Although she modelled for a relatively short period, her impact and legacy cannot be underestimated: she was a prominent and popular model for artists at a time when beauty ideals praised paleness, and Black people in England and the rest of Europe faced discrimination and racism. The works that feature her challenge the expunging of Black and working class women from the history of art. In 2022 a blue plaque was unveiled in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, where she died, to honour her cultural legacy as an important London resident. Her face can be found in paintings in important collections worldwide. Images of her form part of many public collections in the UK, including the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; and Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Related books

  • Roberto C. Ferrari, '“Far too black”: Fanny Eaton, Simeon Solomon, and The Mother of Moses', Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Volume 23, Issue 1, 2024
  • Caroline Bressey, 'The Next Chapter: The Black Presence in the Nineteenth Century', in Gretchen H. Gerzina (ed.), Britain's Black Past (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), pp. 315-330
  • Matthew Francis Rarey, "And the "Jet" Would Be Invaluable": Blackness, Bondage, and "The Beloved"', The Art Bulletin, Vol. 102, No. 3, 2020, pp.28-53
  • Jan Marsh et al., Pre-Raphaelite Sisters (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2019)
  • Julia Dudkiewicz, 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti's collection of Old Masters at Kelmscott Manor', The British Art Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2015), pp. 89-100
  • Elizabeth Prettejohn, 'Solomon, Swinburne, Sappho', Victorian Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2008, pp. 103-128

Public collections

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Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Fanny Eaton]

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Publications related to [Fanny Eaton] in the Ben Uri Library