This striking and engaging portrait by Shields is an excellent example of a work in watercolour and bodycolour by an artist who was a close associate of the Pre-Raphaelites and who worked in Rossetti’s studio. A devoutly religious man with a solitary and ascetic outlook on life, Shields nevertheless responded enthusiastically to female beauty, creating attractive and eye-catching female images in a quintessentially Pre-Raphaelite style.
Shields was born in Hartlepool on 14 March 1833, the eldest of four children of John Shields, a bookbinder and a printer and his wife Georgina Storey, a straw hat maker and the daughter of an Alnwick farmer. In 1839 the family moved to London, where Shields attended St Clement Danes parish school until he was fourteen. He showed an early talent for drawing and studied engraving at evening classes at the London Mechanics' Institute, winning a prize for figure drawing at the age of thirteen. After leaving school Shields studied in the sculpture galleries of the British Museum and attended classes at the School of Design at Somerset House and in October 1847 he was apprenticed to a firm of lithographers Maclure, Macdonald and MacGregor in London.
Shields’ early life was overshadowed by extreme poverty: in 1847 his father’s business failed and he returned to the north of England, his father sent for Frederic before he had completed his apprenticeship, as he could no longer afford to keep his eldest son in unpaid work. Shields endured several periods without employment, then after doing odd jobs, such as colouring in figures for advertising posters, he found employment in Manchester with the printers Bradshaw and Blacklock, and after they failed, for a lithographic printer designing labels and tickets. He described such work as the ‘extremist drudgery of commercial lithography’. He did however save enough money to attend classes at Manchester School of Design and eventually gained his first opportunity of commercial book illustration in 1856 contributing fourteen illustrations to a comic record entitled, A Rachde Felley’s visit to the Grayt Eggshibishun.
For many artists at this time, book illustration was a good source of income and Shields was a highly skilled illustrator, making important contributions during the Golden Age of book illustration in the 1860s. His first important commission was a set of wood-engravings illustrating John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1859) and for which he sought the advice of the author Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) and the critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), both of whom admired his work. Both Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) praised his illustrations for Daniel Defoe's Plagues of London (1863), undoubtedly his masterpiece in this field, the original designs for which are in Manchester Art Gallery. However, even before then, the artistic direction of Shields’ work had been determined when he was commissioned to make drawings of the exhibits at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857, which he described as ‘a marvellous unparalleled gathering of pictures’. According to Mills, ‘there he first saw Holman Hunt’s “Hireling Shepherd” and “Strayed Sheep”, some of Millais’ best early work, and Arthur Hughes’ “April Love” all revelations to his eager eyes. Here too, he first saw “Christ Washing Peter’s Feet”, by the artist who was later to become so dear a friend – Ford Madox Brown.’
In May 1864 Shields travelled from Manchester to London to attend the sale at Christie’s of William Henry Hunt’s (1790-1864) sketches and pictures and it was during the course of this visit that he first met Rossetti through a mutual acquaintance and an associate of John Ruskin, George Butterworth (fl.1865-1881). Shields wrote an account of their meeting many years later, ‘With trembling I showed him a few designs, he expressing admiration that he made me wonder…. He accompanied me to the street door, and as we parted, I said something to the effect of the incompetency of my strivings – never can I forget the impulsive generosity that responded – ‘Tut, tut, you design better than any of us, but cultivate your imagination.’ An introduction to Madox Brown followed, who said little to my work, and that wholesomely corrective of any feelings of elation.’ Rossetti offered him space in his own studio and helped and encouraged him with his work and Shields became a devoted, patient and lifelong friend to Rossetti. He arrived at Birchington-on-Sea, just before Rossetti died and sketched a tender portrait of him post mortem and he was commissioned by Rossetti’s mother to design two windows in his memory for All Saints’ Church, Birchington.
Shields also became a close friend of Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) and the two were frequent correspondents, Brown entreating the solitary Shields to join them for Christmas. The two artists were meant to jointly complete the murals for the neo-Gothic Town Hall in Manchester, but the twelve Manchester Murals were eventually completed by Brown alone in 1877.
Unsurprisingly due to family bereavements and the harsh deprivations of his early life, Shields suffered from bouts of depression and ill-health and a lifelong aversion to noise, suffering a nervous breakdown between 1865 and 1867. His health was a great concern to his friends, Rossetti writing to him in August 1870, ‘Let me again beg of you, before I conclude, that you will tell me without the slightest reserve of any way that may occur to you in which I could serve you at all. To know that you were happier would be a real encouragement to me.’ One reason for Shields’ depression at that period was that the secluded old house, Colnbrook Park (the address given on the back of the present picture), which Shields had hoped would be a permanent residence, was required for Government offices. Shields was most anxious to find a new, quiet abode, away from people, Rossetti wrote to him on 15 November 1871, ‘It is a most anxious matter, with your special necessities, to find a new nest now you have unluckily lost the old one. Of course, I feel inclined to advise London again, but the matter is much too serious for inclination to govern it and I am quite uncertain whether such a move would be good or bad for you.’ Shields eventually found living quarters in Salford’s Ordsall Hall and moved there sometime in 1872.
Shields’ favourite model was a young girl, Matilda ‘Cissy’ Booth (b. 1855/56), who had been modelling for him since she was a young child. Cissy is the model for the present work, executed 1870. From December 1872 Shields made frequent references in his diary to his model of a number of years, a strikingly pretty but totally uneducated girl who was by now sixteen. By the summer of 1874, Cissy was now eighteen and her family and Shields' friends were concerned about their relationship, it was made clear to Shields that Cissy was being compromised, he wrote in his diary for 11 August 1874, ‘A day of anxious irresolution with Cissy…’. Shields made his decision and, to the surprise of his friends, they were married on 15 August 1874 at Irwell Street Wesleyan Chapel. Shields’ approach to his new found status as a married man was idiosyncratic, his diary entry for the day reads, ‘Married at Irwell Street Chapel. Revd. Mr Codling. Off to Blackpool alone with Mac [McLachlan]. Did me wonderful good. Thank God'. Shields was forty-one and Cissy, left alone on her wedding day with the housekeeper, was eighteen. McLachlan returned home after two days but Shields stayed on in Blackpool for a week. Friends thought him uninterested in women and were astonished at his precipitate marriage, which had been kept secret for several months. His biographer, Ernestine Mills, an acquaintance of the artist, summed up the mis-match, ‘A life of rigorous self-denial, intense religious devotion, seclusion from worldly frivolities of every kind, and a necessarily rigid economy in expenditure, could hardly have been ideal for a high-spirited, beautiful, but entirely uneducated child … – and the mistake was dearly paid for by both the sufferers.’
Certainly, one factor which propelled Shields into marriage was a reforming zeal often prevalent in the Victorian era. No doubt his intention was to turn this uneducated girl in to a lady with high moral values, a story which has much in common with George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1912). Indeed, he also adopted her younger sister, Jessie. According to Mills, the early death of this ‘very lovely girl’ was ‘a terrible grief' to the artist. Nevertheless, his friends hoped that marriage would bring contentment. Brown speculated that ‘the agreeable society of your wife (and let us hope children) will do much to alleviate the nervous troubles and anxieties you suffered from.’ In reality the couple spent much time apart and it was a joyless union with echoes of Ruskin's marriage to Effie Gray (1848-1854). Although Shields’ devotion to Cissy seemed to be unquestionable it expressed itself in fatherly advice and spiritual guidance rather than romance. In his letters to his young wife, he recommends sermons and bible passages and criticises her spelling, whilst also complaining that she writes to him infrequently. In one letter, Shields writes ‘and may He who is the only refuge of Sinners – the God of all consolation – cleanse and deliver you from all sin and comfort you with His Holy Spirit…’ he continues, ‘I wish you could learn to spell little simple words better than you do, for you spell worse than you write.’
In 1875 Shields announced that he was moving to London, and a farewell exhibition of his work, including the present watercolour, was held in Manchester and a dinner given in his honour. The move was delayed until January 1877 and followed a four-month study visit to Paris and Italy, during which time Cissy was placed in a boarding-school in Brighton. On his return Shields and his wife set up home in Lodge Place, St John's Wood. She left him in 1891. Cissy is certainly the model in the present work, she was described
in the Life and Letters as ‘a girl of unusual beauty, with abundant auburn hair, finely cut features, and fair delicate complexion, the model, both before and after their marriage, for many of his most beautiful subjects’. The present watercolour was executed 1870 before her marriage to Shields, the label on the backboard gives the address as 'Cornbrook Park' where Shields resided from the late 1860s until at least December 1871, when he moved to Ordsall Hall. It is stylistically similar to A Song of Spring, dated 1870 (Private Collection) for which Cissy was also the model.
The watercolour shows the strong influence of Rossetti upon Shields’ work, the pose of the model resembles Woman Combing her Hair (1865) and Lady Lilith, 1866-68 (Delaware Art Museum). Like Rossetti’s pictures, Shields’ watercolour is essentially a portrait, although it is not intended as such, by placing the sitter close to the viewer and showing her looking down, running her fingers through her unfilleted golden hair, the viewer is drawn into the picture and thus a sense of intimacy is created. There is a lack of emotion in her expression which creates a tension between the remoteness of the sitter and the viewer’s engagement. On the back of the frame there are verses that accompany the picture:
With drooping lids
Veiling her clear sweet eyes
And heavy fall
Of golden hair unfilleted.
These verses have not been traced and it is possible that Shields composed them himself, inspired by his young model.
Shields’ later work had a more singular vision, developed through his work assisting Brown and inspired by Carracci's frescoes. He established his reputation as a talented decorative artist, his two most substantial commissions were stained glass windows and mural decorations for the Chapel of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, seat of the Dukes of Westminster with the theme of Te Deum Laudamus. His last commission and his magnum opus was the Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater Road, commissioned by Mrs Russell Gurney, widow of the Recorder of London, and designed by Herbert Horne in 1887. The commission was in keeping with his rigorous piety, he decorated the interior with the principal scenes of Christ's Life and visited Italy in 1889 to gather material for the commission. The works were painted in oil on canvas and affixed to blocks of slate riveted to the walls, a process that enabled the artist to begin work on the paintings while the Chapel of the Ascension, as it was known, was being built. The project was to occupy Shields for over twenty years and was finished in July 1910. Unfortunately, the chapel no longer exits, having been destroyed by enemy action during the Second World War.
Shields died on 26 February 1911, he had begun a diary (now lost), in 1847, which he kept up (with hiatuses) until he died. It detailed his work and daily life and was quoted from extensively in Ernestine Mills’s, The Life and Letters of Frederic Shields 1833-1911 (1912) and provides insights not only into the thoughts of the introspective personality of Shields, but also into the lives of his artist friends. In his will he left a small annuity to Cissy, although the pair had not lived together for many years.
The present watercolour was owned by Sigismund James Sterne (1807-1885) a German-born merchant in the Manchester cotton trade, later active in banking in London. In 1842 he married Margaret, fifth daughter of Thomas Sharp of Manchester. After their move to London they owned Little Grove house and estate in East Barnet. Margaret Sterne owned many British works including David Cox's Sun, Wind, and Rain (1845; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) and her sale at Christie’s, 19 June 1908 included two works by Shields, Going to the Spring: Lantern-light and A Wet Day, but the present work was not included.
This decorative work by Shields, depicting his favourite model before she became his wife is an example of Shields’ earlier, less austere style and shows the influence of Rossetti upon his work, a testament to the two artists’ close friendship.
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