Sir William Blake Richmond, R.A.

Edith was the younger sister of Alice Liddell, immortalised by Lewis Carroll as the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.  She was born in 1854, one of the nine children of Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.  The Liddell family met Charles Ludwig Dodgson (who wrote under the pen-name Lewis Carroll) in April 1856 when he was photographing the cathedral in Oxford.  He became a close friend of the Liddells until 1863 when a rift between them brought the end of their friendship - this may have followed an argument regarding Dodgson's feelings towards the Liddells' governess. Edith and her older sisters Lorina and Alice were told the story of Alice in Wonderland during a boat trip on 4 July 1862 when they pick-nicked at Godstow and Alice asked Dodgson to tell them a story - a story that would become a children's classic. It has been suggested that Edith, and not Alice, was the model for Dodgson's illustrations to the original manuscript version of the story given to Alice in 1864.  It has also been stated that Prince Leopold, youngest son of Queen Victoria was in love with Edith during his time at Christ Church. Tragically she died when she was only twenty-two on 26 June 1874 shortly before she was to be married to the cricketer Aubrey Harcourt; Leopold was a pall-bearer at her funeral.

Dean Liddell met the painter William Blake Richmond in the early 1860s at the home of their mutual friend Dr Henry Wentworth Acland, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. In 1864 Richmond painted a beautiful group portrait of Lorina, Alice and Edith (private collection) at their country house Penforfa near Llandudno, the same year that Dodgson had given Alice the manuscript of Alice in Wonderland. Richmond wrote of the girls' forbearance and good nature during the sittings; 'I was a most strict taskmaster, often beginning work before seven in the morning, but never a complaint fell from them during the long hours of sitting, for it was my custom to work eight and ten hours a day, and never to do a touch without the victim in front of me'.¹  This delicate drawing corresponds with the position of Edith's head in the painting and appears to have been made in the early stages of the portrait's preparation.

1.  Mrs A.M.W. Stirling, The Richmond Papers, 1926, p.191