Rebecca Solomon

Louisa (Louie) MacDonald was one of a remarkable group of sisters, who linked three of the most significant men of their age. Her sisters Georgiana and Agnes married the painters Edward Burne-Jones and Edward Poynter respectively, whilst their sister Alice was the mother of Rudyard Kipling and Louie herself was the mother of Stanley Baldwin, who became Conservative Prime Minister.

Louie posed several times for Burne-Jones in the 1860s and appears with her sisters in Green Summer in 1865 (private collection). The present watercolour was painted by Rebecca Solomon, who in the 1860s often socialized, along with her brother Simeon, with Burne-Jones and Poynter and became close friends with Louie. Louie loved visiting her sisters in London and seeing ‘Becky’ Solomon who became a confidante. In 1870 the Baldwins moved to Wilden House in Worcestershire to be close to the family ironworks which were across the road from their substantial village mill-house. In rural Wilden Louie became increasingly stifled and lonely and frequently bed-bound or incapacitated in a bath-chair. Plagued by ill-health, which may have been psychological rather than physical, Louie found solace in reading and became an amateur novelist.