Louise Jane Jopling (née Goode, previously Romer and later Rowe) (

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

16 November 1843 – 19 November 1933) was an English painter of the Victorian era, and one of the most prominent female artists of her generation.

Early life

Louise Jane Goode was born in Manchester, the fifth of the nine children of railway contractor Thomas Smith "T.S." Goode and his wife Frances. She married at seventeen to civil servant Francis "Frank" Romer. The Baroness de Rothschild, a connection of Romer's, encouraged Louise to pursue and develop her art. In the later 1860s, she studied in Paris with Charles Joshua Chaplin and Alfred Stevens, and first exhibited her work at the Salon. She entered works into the Royal Academy shows, 1870–73 (as Louise Romer). After Romer's 1872 death, she married '' Vanity Fair'' artist Joseph Middleton Jopling in 1874, who in 1888 was best man at Whistler's wedding to Beatrix Godwin. Of the children from her first marriage only one son, Percy Romer, survived childhood. She had another son, Lindsay Millais Jopling, by her second marriage; the child was named after his two godfathers Sir Coutts Lindsay, founder of the Grosvenor Gallery and

John Everett Millais Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, ( , ; 8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest ...

. Jopling achieved fair success in her career: her painting ''Five O'Clock Tea'' was sold for £400 in 1874. Her ''Five Sisters of York'' was shown at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, and her ''The Modern Cinderella'' at the Paris Exposition of 1878. Yet she was not immune to the gender discrimination of her time: in 1883 she sought a portrait commission for 150

guineas The guinea (; commonly abbreviated gn., or gns. in plural) was a coin, minted in Great Britain between 1663 and 1814, that contained approximately one-quarter of an ounce of gold. The name came from the Guinea region in West Africa, from where m ...

, but lost it to Sir John Everett Millais, who was paid 1000 guineas for the same project. Jopling exhibited her work at the

Palace of Fine Arts The Palace of Fine Arts is a monumental structure located in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, originally constructed for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art. Completely rebuilt from 1964 to ...

and The Woman's Building at the 1893

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

in Chicago, Illinois. She joined the

Society of Women Artists The Society of Women Artists (SWA) is a British art body dedicated to celebrating and promoting fine art created by women. It was founded as the Society of Female Artists (SFA) in about 1855, offering women artists the opportunity to exhibit and ...

(1880) and the

Royal Society of Portrait Painters The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is a charity based at Carlton House Terrace, SW1, London that promotes the practice and appreciation of portraiture. Its Annual Exhibition of portraiture is held at Mall Galleries, and it runs a commissi ...

(1891); alongside

Lucy Kemp-Welch Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch (20 June 1869 – 27 November 1958) was a British artist and teacher who specialised in painting horses. Though increasingly overlooked after the Second World War, from the late 1890s to the mid 1920s she was one o ...

she became the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists (1901). During the years of her marriage with Jopling, she became the primary earner of the family. It is said that, "She found this responsibility weighty and stressful, necessitating constant production, regular sales and a continual search for commissions and clients. In 1879, despite her own illness and that of her son Percy, she produced eighteen works."

Social life

Jopling "painted portraits of titled sitters, wealthy financiers and actresses" and, to operate in this social milieu, she maintained a fashionable lifestyle, with a Chelsea studio at 28 Beaufort Street, designed by

William Burges William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoc ...

. She moved in a social circle that included James McNeill Whistler,

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

Kate Perugini Catherine Elizabeth Macready Perugini (''née'' Dickens; 29 October 1839 – 9 May 1929) was an English painter of the Victorian era and the daughter of Catherine Dickens and Charles Dickens. Biography Born Catherine Dickens and nicknamed ...

(née Dickens) and

Ellen Terry Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and tour ...

. Augustus Dubourg dedicated his 1892 play ''Angelica'' to her. In 1887 the society magazine ''

The Lady’s World ''The Woman's World'' was a Victorian women's magazine published by Cassell between 1886 and 1890, edited by Oscar Wilde between 1887 and 1889, and by Ella Hepworth Dixon from 1888. Foundation In the late nineteenth century, the market for per ...

'' described her social circle,

One year we have her portrait, magnificently sketched by Millais, adorning the walls of the Grosvenor; next season she figures as the heroine of a ‘society’ novel from the pen of a popular writer. One week we see her salon drawn by Mr. Du Maurier in Punch, with sketches from the life of herself and her friends; the week after she appears under another name as the heroine of one of those quasi-malicious town and country tales which amuse the readers of a society paper… Over the mantelpiece hangs the portrait, by her old friend Sir John Millais, which made such a sensation at the Grosvenor a year or two ago…Here Mr. James Whistler and Mr.
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
are always to be found, discussing the eternal problems of art; while Sir John Millais, Mr. Sargent and Mr. George Boughton are sworn allies of the subject of our sketch. The Ladies Archibald and Walter Campbell rarely miss a party.

It was at an 1883 party at the Joplings' house that Whistler had a famous exchange with

. In response to a witticism of Whistler's, Wilde remarked, "How I wish I had said that." Whistler replied, "You will, Oscar, you will." Like some other women painters (

and

Marie Spartali Stillman Marie Stillman (née Spartali) (Greek: Μαρία Σπαρτάλη; 10 March 1844 – 6 March 1927) was a British member of the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Of the Pre-Raphaelites, she had one of the longest-running caree ...

are examples), Jopling also served as a model and subject for other artists. Both Millais and

James Abbott McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...

painted portraits of her. Whistler praised Millais' picture as "a great work" and "a superb portrait."

Later life

Joseph Jopling died in 1884 and Louise married lawyer George W. Rowe in 1887 continuing to use Jopling's name professionally. She established her own school of painting for women and, also in 1887, wrote several pieces on the subject of art teaching. She championed the right of female art students to work directly from live models as the Royal Academy only allowed its female students to observe male models "carefully draped" in 1893, and her friend Whistler distributed the prizes at her school. Louise Jopling was a long-term supporter of the National Union of Women's Suffrage, and active in

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

causes. She served as a vice-president of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, a short-lived organization promoting dress reform during the 1890s and early 1900s. She published a book of art instruction, and an autobiography, ''Twenty Years of My Life''.Louise Jopling, ''Twenty Years of My Life, 1867–1887'', London, John Lane, New York, Dodd, Mead, 1925. She also wrote some poetry and journalism.

References

External links

Louise Jopling research project

ArtNet: More works by Jopling.
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jopling, Louise 1843 births 1933 deaths 19th-century English painters 20th-century English painters 19th-century English women artists 20th-century English women artists Artists from Manchester English women painters Members of the Royal Society of British Artists