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Frank Holl RA
Portrait of Miss Tonks, Signed and dated 19th Century Oil

1882

About the Item

Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right 1882 Image size: 36 x 29 inches (92 x 74 cm) Gilt Watts frame LITERATURE The Life and Work of Frank Holl, Ada Holl Reynolds, 1912, Methuen & Co, pp. 191- 193. 'A Daughter's Story: Frank Holl and Women' in Frank Holl: Emerging from the Shadows, Mark Bills, 2013, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, p.85. The sitter of this compelling portrait is Miss Tonks, the sister of W. H. Tonks and Edmund Tonks. The entire family was painted by the artist Frank Holl, one after another in the early 1880s. The portrait of Edmund Tonks is currently in the collection at The Birmingham Museums Trust. This portrait of Miss Tonks, along with a portrait of W. H. Tonk's wife, were the first women portraits attempted by Holl and were only carried out at the express wish and earnest persuasion of Mr Tonks himself, one of Holl's loyal patrons. Frank Holl painted over 200 portraits, however only a handful of these were of women. Holl initially had an eversion for taking on a female subject and had noted 'Well, you know, if anything goes wrong I can't fling my brush at my sitter's head, nor indulge in any strong language to ease my mind a bit!'. Nevertheless, women came to play a significant part in the art of Frank Holl. They were central figures in his subject paintings, which dealt almost exclusively with aspects of women's suffering in Victorian society. Furthermore, it is a women writer (his own daughter Ada) that we turn to for the most important source of information about his life. Ada discusses this portrait of Miss Tonks in her book 'The Life and Work of Frank Holl'. She notes that Miss Tonks was a 'striking-looking woman with a fine head, remarkably like her brother's'. Undeniably, Holl's most successful female portraits were in the instances when the sitter had pronounced and strongly marked features, such as is the case here. Ada notes that the Tonks portraits 'possessed of almost Rembrandtesque physiognomy, grim and full of character, presenting to my father as none of his previous sitters had done, the true type of his ideal, and the very echo of the man who was, to him, the greatest painter the world has ever known.' Indeed, for the artist old Miss Tonks was the literal embodiment of a real Rembrandt, resembling in almost every particular the actual type of the Dutch gentlewoman of Rembrandt's day. Indeed, Holl's distaste for painting a woman's portrait was removed at the first sight of Miss Tonks and he realised the opportunity before him. Ada finally notes that 'the portrait still remains one of my father's masterpieces, and might almost have come from the brush of the great master himself'.
  • Creator:
    Frank Holl RA (1845 - 1888)
  • Creation Year:
    1882
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 36 in (91.44 cm)Width: 29 in (73.66 cm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    1 of 1Price: $9,876
  • Medium:
    Canvas,Oil
  • Movement & Style:
    Victorian
  • Period:
    19th Century
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    London, GB
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU52410529542

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