Margaret Sarah Carpenter

Born Margaret Geddes in Salisbury, the artist was the daughter of an army officer of Scottish descent, who leased a cottage on the Estate of Lord Radnor. Her talents as a self-taught artist, supplemented by lessons from Thomas Guest of Salisbury, attracted the attention of Radnor who allowed her to copy paintings in his collection at Longford Castle.¹ She was eventually introduced to Sir Thomas Lawrence during her late teens and established herself as a professional artist in London by 1813. She exhibited no fewer than 243 pictures during her lifetime and is believed to have produced around 1,000 works in total. This remarkable output ranks Carpenter amongst some of the most successful female artists of her generation. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, the Society of Arts, The Society of British Artists, and even alongside Constable and Bonington at the Paris Salon of 1827. When considering her career, the artist William Powell Frith (1819–1909) wrote in his memoir that she 'far surpassed in merit most of her contemporary portrait-painters'.²

This painting shows a mother sitting on a distinctive Victorian oak Jacobean style chair reading to her child. The tone of the image is more suggestive of a genre painting than a more conventional group portrait; it is possible that the figures represent close family members of the artist, rather than the aristocratic sitters included within her clientele. In terms of inspiration, the richness of colour and nervous handling of drapery is reminiscent of the works of both Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Surviving works also show her inventiveness of reinterpreting other old masters, including a magnificent family portrait based on the Taddei Tondo by Michelangelo which had been in the collection of Sir George Beaumont.³

Signed and dated 1841, it is unlikely but not impossible that this is the same 'Mother and Child' exhibited by the artist at the Royal Academy in 1847. This painting falls comfortably within the decades described as the peak of her career.

¹ For the most substantial biography of the artist to date see R.J. Smith, Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1793-1872) A brief biography, Salisbury 1993.

² W.P. Frith, My autobiography and reminiscences, London 1888, vol. 3, p. 420.

³ This work was recorded with Julian Simon Fine Art, London, in 1998.