Joanna Mary Boyce (7 December 1831 – 15 July 1861) was a British painter associated with the

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

. She is also known by her married name as Mrs. H.T. Wells, or as Joanna Mary Wells. She produced multiple works with historical themes, as well as portraits and sketches, and authored art criticism responding to her contemporaries. She was the sister of

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

watercolourist George Price Boyce.

Life

Early life and education

Joanna Mary Boyce, born in

Maida Hill Maida Vale ( ) is an affluent residential district consisting of the northern part of Paddington in West London, west of St John's Wood and south of Kilburn. It is also the name of its main road, on the continuous Edgware Road. Maida Vale is p ...

, London was the daughter of George Boyce, a former wine-merchant who had found prosperity as a

pawnbroker A pawnbroker is an individual or business (pawnshop or pawn shop) that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. The items having been ''pawned'' to the broker are themselves called ''pledges'' or ...

, and his wife Anne. Support from her father and her older brother George Price Boyce helped Joanna Mary Boyce achieve an early and rigorous education in the visual arts. She began a formal study of drawing by the age of eleven with Charles John Mayle Whichelo, and filled multiple sketchbooks as a young teenager. At the age of eighteen she entered Cary's art academy, and afterwards worked under

James Mathews Leigh James Mathews Leigh (1808 – 20 April 1860) was an English art educator, painter, writer, dramatist and critic. He is best known as the founder of a popular private art school in London known as "Leigh's Academy", which eventually became t ...

, at his school in Newman Street, London. In 1855, she took an extended trip to Paris, where she studied in Thomas Couture's atelier.

Career

Boyce first exhibited her artwork publicly in 1855 at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

. Though Boyce exhibited two pieces, it was her painting ''Elgiva'' that won Boyce the admiration of such critics as John Ruskin and Ford Madox Brown. In it, Boyce depicted model Lizzie Ridley as a tragic heroine from Anglo-Saxon historical legend, possibly following the precedent of Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais who had depicted Elgiva eight years prior. Following the exhibition, Ruskin praised Boyce's painting:

The dignity of all the treatment—the beautiful imagination of faint but pure colour, place this picture, to my mind, among, those of the very highest power and promise. Complete achievement there is not in it as yet ... but if this artist, looking always to Nature and her own thoughts for the thing to be expressed, will strive to express them, with some memory of the great Venetians in her treatment of each separate hue, it seems to me that she might entertain the hope of taking place in the very first rank of painters.

Following her first exhibition, Boyce continued to pursue artistic excellence through extensive sketching and international art-viewing expeditions. She spent 1857 in Italy, and in December of that year married miniaturist

Henry Tanworth Wells Henry Tanworth Wells (14 December 1828 – 16 January 1903) was an English miniature and portrait painter. He was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle though he painted in the academic style. His most popular painting was ''Victoria Regi ...

(later a Royal Academician) in Rome. Boyce used her time in Italy to work on paintings such as ''The Boys' Crusade'' and ''La Veneziana'', a portrait of a Venetian lady. In addition to her own artistic practice at this time, Boyce also continued a lifelong practice of seeking out and analyzing the artwork of her contemporaries. Boyce published some of this analysis as art criticism in the ''Saturday Review'', wherein she lauded the "sincerity" and principles of the Pre-Raphaelite art movement, and noted the positive influence of John Ruskin on the English art world. Boyce Joanna Mrs

Final years

Boyce's later works include ''Head of a Mulatto Woman'', a portrait of Jamaican immigrant and popular artists' model

Fanny Eaton Fanny Eaton (23 June 1835 – 4 March 1924) was a Jamaican-born artist's model and domestic worker. She is best known as a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle in England between 1859 and 1867. Her public debut was in Sim ...

. Boyce died on 15 July 1861, after the birth of her third child. Her last completed painting, ''A Bird of God,'' was left on her easel.

Legacy

At the time of her death, contemporaries remarked on Boyce's talent as an artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti described her as "a wonderfully gifted woman", and another obituarist called her a genius. Later critics have observed that Boyce’s reputation was somewhat constrained by her early death, but her art has been highlighted in exhibitions up until the present day. One early posthumous exhibition was held in the Tate in 1935. Select artworks by Boyce, along with portraits by and of other women significant to the Pre-Raphaelite movement, were exhibited in London’s

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

in 2019 in an exhibit entitled "Pre-Raphaelite Sisters". Not all of Boyce's artworks survive, as some were destroyed in bombings during World War II. Despite Boyce’s frequently mentioned association with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, commentators have noted that Boyce was not simply an acolyte of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The art historian Pamela Gerrish Nunn notes that Boyce drew comparisons to the Venetian old masters from contemporary critics. Writer Simon Poë additionally observes that Boyce's time at Couture's atelier impacted her work with influences from the Classical Academic and

Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...

traditions.

Gallery

File:Joanna Boyce Rowena Offering the Wassail Cup to Voltigern 1856.jpg, alt=Half-body portrait of a young woman in medieval dress, holding a cup aloft in front of her, Joanna Mary Boyce, ''Rowena Offering the Wassail Cup to Voltigern'' (photographic reproduction), 1856 File:Boyce Joanna The Departure.jpg, alt=Painting of a woman in medieval dress embracing a small child, while an older child and a man stand behind her., Joanna Mary Boyce, ''The Departure: An Episode of the Child's Crusade 13th Century,'' 1857-1861 File:Boyce joanna sidneywells1855 oc tate.jpg, alt=Head and shoulders portrait of an infant boy wearing a white bib, Joanna Mary Boyce, ''Portrait of Sidney Wells'', 1859 File:Boyce gretchen unfinished oc tate gallery.jpg, alt=Full-body portrait of a young woman with long blonde hair, in medieval dress, Joanna Mary Boyce, ''Gretchen'' (unfinished), 1861 File:Boyce bird of god 1861 0c.jpg, alt=Head and shoulders portrait of a young woman with red hair, a white robe, and white angel's wings, Joanna Mary Boyce, ''A Bird of God'', 1861

References

Sources

*Bradbury, Sue. ''Joanna, George and Henry: A Pre-Raphaelite Tale of Art, Love and Friendship''. London: The Boydell Press, 2012. *Cherry, Deborah. ''Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists''. Routledge, 1993. *Marsh, Jan and Nunn, Pamela G. ''Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists''. Manchester Art Gallery, 1998. *Nunn, Pamela G."Making a Centre on the Margins" in ''Re-Framing the Pre-Raphaelites'', Ellen Harding ed., Scolar Press, 1996: 43-60. *Nunn, Pamela G. "Artist and Model: JMB's Mulatto," ''Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies'' 2.2 (Fall 1993): 12-15. Attribution: *

External links

*
J. M. Boyce on ArtnetJoanna Mary Boyce's sketchbooks in the British Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boyce, Joanna Mary 1831 births 1861 deaths 19th-century English painters English women painters British genre painters English landscape painters Deaths in childbirth Pre-Raphaelite painters People from Maida Vale Painters from London 19th-century British women artists 19th-century English women Female Pre-Raphaelite painters