George Frederic Watts, O.M., R.A. 1817-1904

Alexander Constantine Ionides and thence by descent

Mary Watts, ‘MS Catalogue of [the] Works [of George Frederic Watts] compiled by his widow’, n.d., II, p.75;

Chariclea Euterpe Anthea Ionides was the fifth and last child of Alexander Constantine and Euterpe Ionides. Three years before her birth in 1844, George Frederic Watts had painted the splendid group portrait of the Ionides parents and their four eldest children, Constantine Alexander, Aglaia, Luke Alexander and Alecco which was sold at Sotheby’s on 7th June 2005 and which is now in the collection of the Watts Museum at Compton (see Fig.1). The present oval, which was painted in about 1849 when the sitter was approximately five years old, was probably regarded as a kind of postscript to the earlier work, as it of course shows the only family member not present in the group portrait.

The Anglo-Greek Ionides family were remarkable patrons of the arts. Alexander Constantine Ionides, Chariclea’s father, was a close friend of Watts, and in addition to commissioning works from him, relied upon him for recommendations as to which contemporary artists’ works he should buy. This he did with the utmost generosity and open-mindedness, particularly encouraging their patronage of the American painter James McNeill Whistler. Chariclea’s siblings were all great supporters of the arts. Constantine Alexander, relying on the advice of Alphonse Legros, formed a collection of old masters and works by contemporary French and British painters which was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum at his death in 1900. Alecco was to be a patron of Whistler, Rossetti and Watts, and was the pioneering collector of Hellenistic sculpture who seems to have led the cult interest in Tanagra figurines which swept through the Aesthetic circle in the 1870s. Aglaia, who married Theodore Coronio, a fellow-member of the Anglo-Greek business community, modelled for Burne-Jones’s The Mill. All lived in beautiful houses, stored with marvellous objects of contemporary and historical art. Constantine, Alecco, and Chariclea all employed Philip Webb – the most progressive of all British architects of the day – to build or adapt houses for them. In Chariclea’s case, Webb was commissioned to build the music room at their London house at 12 Orme Square.

Mary Watts remembered Chariclea as ‘beautiful and clever as a child, [and one who] attracted many adorers’. At a young age she met and fell in love with the pianist Edward Dannreuther (1844-1905). The Ionides family were opposed to the match until Alexander Constantine, ‘at last convinced of [Dannreuther’s] great future, ... permitted them to marry in 1871’ (quoted from Mary Watts, ‘MS Catalogue of [the] Works [of George Frederic Watts] compiled by his widow’, n.d., II, p.75). Edward Dannreuther, who had been born in Strasbourg but whose family had migrated to the United States in 1846, lived in England from 1863, that same year giving historic performances of Chopin’s F minor Piano Concerto and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concert in London. Dannreuther was a particular champion of Wagner, whom he came to know well, and founded the London Wagner Society in 1872. In the 1870s and 80s Edward and Chariclea Dannreuther arranged chamber concerts at Orme Square, at which works by Brahms, Scharwenka, Sgambati, Tchaikovsky, Rheinberger, Stanford, Parry and Richard Strauss were offered to English audiences.

CSN