European & British Art

European & British Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 18. Portrait of Catherine Muriel Cowell Stepney.

Property from Greystoke Castle, Cumbria

Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A.

Portrait of Catherine Muriel Cowell Stepney

This lot has been withdrawn

Lot Details

Description

Property from Greystoke Castle, Cumbria

Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A.

British

1829 - 1896

Portrait of Catherine Muriel Cowell Stepney


signed with monogram and dated 1880 lower left

oil on canvas

Unframed: 124.5 by 77.5cm., 49 by 30½in.

Framed: 143 by 96cm., 56¼ by 37¾in.

This Lot has been withdrawn from the sale.
Commissioned by the father of the sitter; thence by descent to the present owner
Academy Notes, 1880, p. 28
J.G. Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, two volumes, 1899, volume II, pp. 117-118, 479

The present portrait was referred to in Academy Notes in 1880; 'The pictures on the next wall are some of the best in the Academy; the first is the portrait of a child in black velvet.' (p. 28) By this period in his career Millais was famous for his portraiture, particularly of children with which he had a particular sensitivity and understanding. As Malcolm Warner has pointed out 'He found child portraits an especially sympathetic vehicle for his ideas about art - first about truth, then about beauty - and in them offered a view of childhood that was representative of the age in which he lived.' (Peter Funnell, Malcolm Warner, Kate Flint, H.C.G. Matthew, Leonée Ormond, Millais: Portraits, 1999, p. 105) Perhaps the most famous examples of this genre by Millais are Cherry Ripe (sold in these rooms, 1 July 2004, lot 21) painted a year before the present portrait and Bubbles painted six years later.


The sitter was the four-year old daughter of Sir Arthur Cowell-Stepney, 2nd Bt., Catherine Muriel Cowell Stepney (1876-1952). The portrait is recalled in Millais' son's account of his father's work where he uses her nickname 'Alcyone', the name of a character from mythology who was turned into the brilliantly-plumed kingfisher; 'The little child Alcyone was a difficult little bird to catch. She could only be taken on the wing, for, when perched on the dais, she was so frightened that there was nothing for it but to take her down again, give her some flowers to play with, and let her run about the studio at her own sweet will. Whatever details were wanted had to be got by catching her up now and then, and holding her for a few minutes at a time; and in this way a likeness was secured.' (J.G. Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899, two volumes, volume II, pp. 117-118).