Sophy Gray (Pre-Raphaelite muse)

Sophy Gray
Born Sophia Margaret Gray
1843 (1843)
Died 15 March 1882(1882-03-15) (aged 38)
Nationality Scottish
Known for Model for the pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais
Spouse(s) James Caird
Children Beatrice Caird (1874-1888)
Portrait of a Girl, Millais' 1857 painting of Sophy Gray

Sophia Margaret "Sophy" Gray (October 1843 – 15 March 1882), later Sophy Caird, was a Scottish-born model for her brother-in-law, the pre-Raphaelite painter, John Everett Millais. She was the younger sister of Euphemia (Effie) Gray, who married Millais in 1855 after the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin.

From the late 1860s she suffered from a mental illness which seems to have involved a form of anorexia nervosa. In 1873 she married the Scottish entrepreneur James Caird and together they had a daughter. She died in 1882, probably as a result of her anorexia.

Background

Sophy[1] Gray was born in October 1843 to Sophia Margaret Gray, née Jameson (1808–1894) and George Gray (1798–1877), a Scottish lawyer and businessman. Her grandfather, Andrew Jameson, became Sheriff-substitute of Fife.[2] Gray was the tenth of fifteen children, although five, including three daughters, pre-deceased her. Two of her three elder brothers alive in 1843 died before she was seven. Effie (1828–1897), known initially to the family as Phemy, was the eldest child. The Grays' second daughter, also named Sophia Margaret, died aged six in 1841.[3]

The family lived at Bowerswell, a housere-built in 1842 near the foot of Kinnoull Hill, south-east of Perth.[2] As a child Gray frequently visited and stayed with her sister Effie, who lived in London with her husband, the critic and artist John Ruskin. To an extent Effie, who was 15 years older than Gray, acted as a "second mother" to her. From a young age Gray was exposed to the increasingly strained circumstances of the Ruskins' unconsummated marriage.[4] In fact, through her increasing presence in the Ruskin household, Gray may, in some respects, have been a convenient chaperone for her elder sister, whose largely independent social life tended to attract comment.[5] According to Effie, Ruskin's manservant, Frederick Crawley, expressed to Gray his concern that other servants might spread gossip "all over Camberwell". Gray's governess of three years, a French woman named Delphine, appears to have been discharged by the Grays in March 1854 because of Gray's habit of confiding in her.[6]

Effie Gray's flight from Ruskin and marriage to Millais

On 25 April 1854 Effie left her husband on the pretence of visiting her parents in Scotland. Gray had been staying with the Ruskins, at their home in Herne Hill, since just after Christmas 1853 and appears to have been complicit in her sister's flight. She and Effie were seen off in silence by Ruskin[7] at the recently opened King's Cross station, where, accompanied by Crawley,[8] they boarded a train for Edinburgh. However, Gray alighted at Hitchin, Hertfordshire where her parents were waiting. Her mother took her place on the train, while she and her father returned to London to deliver a package from Effie to her solicitors. That evening a citation of nullity was delivered to Ruskin, together with certain effects such as Effie's wedding ring and her keys.[9] The following day Gray and her father returned to Scotland by steamer.

Effie was granted a decree of nullity on 20 July 1854.[10] The previous summer, she, Ruskin, and his protégé John Millais had spent four months together in the Scottish Highlands, during which time she and Millais formed a close and increasingly intimate bond.[11] In early 1854, Millais painted a portrait of Gray for her parents. Through her regular visits to his studio in Gower Street, London, where she impressed Millais by her patience,[4] Gray was able to act a go-between with Effie. During this period, Ruskin's mother (to whom her son was close) appears to have indulged Gray, while, at the same time, casting aspersions on Effie, who was under considerable stress.[4] For his part, Ruskin sometimes accompanied Gray on walks, in the course of which he too spoke slightingly of his wife, possibly seeking to turn Gray against her.[12] Effie's surviving letters to her parents suggest that Gray kept her well informed of such adverse criticism.

After the annulment of her marriage, Effie avoided Millais for some time. She and Gray, whose governess was not replaced, spent much of the summer at St Andrews, on the coast of Fife, with their younger sister, Alice (1845–1929).[13] They went for walks together and Effie, who had been well educated herself, acted as the others' teacher.[14] The following year, Effie eventually invited Millais to Bowerswell, where they were married in June 1855.

Gray as muse

Gray, centre, in Autumn Leaves. Alice Gray is on the left.

For the next few years Gray continued to sit for Millais. After he and Effie moved to Annat Lodge, close to Bowerswell, she was readily available for this purpose, but it seems also that she was beginning to displace Effie herself as a favoured subject.[15] In the words of art historian Suzanne Fagence Cooper, whose biographical chapter about Gray (2010) provides the fullest account of her life, Gray "changes before our eyes from a child to a stunning teenager".[4] This change can be traced in three works by Millais: Autumn Leaves (1855–56), Spring (or Apple Blossom) (1856–59) and, most strikingly, in a small,[16] but "unnerving"[4] portrait of her at the age of 13, entitled Portrait of a Girl, or simply Sophy Gray (1857). Charles Edward Perugini also painted a portrait of Gray as a young woman; the date is not known with certainty[17] and for some years it was attributed mistakenly to Millais.[18]

Millais' Spring (Apple Blossoms), with Gray on the far left.

Autumn Leaves and Spring

In Autumn Leaves, Gray is one of four girls beside a smoking bonfire of leaves. Her sister Alice was also in this picture, together with two local girls procured by Effie.[4][19] Of the four, only Gray appears to be verging on womanhood.[20]

Spring is in some ways a complementary work. Eight girls (whose ages ranged from 12 to 15) recline in an orchard. Gray is depicted in profile, wearing a colourful, striped robe, with long flowing hair, while Alice lies a somewhat provocatively with a blade of grass in her mouth.

Sophy Gray and Gray’s relationship with Millais

Sophy Gray is a sensual, "knowing" and direct image, which, almost inevitably, has provoked questions about the nature of Millais’ relationship with his sister-in-law. There was undoubtedly a strong affection between them, which may well have grown into mutual infatuation. According to Mary Lutyens, who researched the lives of Effie, Ruskin and Millais,[21] it was rumoured that Effie had to send Gray away because of concerns that she and Millais were growing too close, however there is no clear evidence of a more intimate relationship between them. Gray's parents were content for Millais to chaperone her – for example, on an overnight train to London – and, whatever the truth of any rumour, Effie remained close to her sister and often invited her to stay after she and Millais moved back to London in 1861.[4] When Gray later became ill, Effie visited her frequently.[12]

Unlike Millais' 1854 portrait of Gray, his later work was not kept by the family. It was sold to George Price Boyce, a friend of Millais' pre-Raphaelite "brother", Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who painted a portrait of Fanny Cornforth, a lover he shared with Boyce,[22] to hang alongside that of Gray.[4] Entitled Bocca Baciata ("the mouth that has been kissed") after a theme in Boccacio's Decameron, Rossetti's picture (1859) was described by William Holman Hunt, another member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as "remarkable for gross sensuality of a revolting kind ... I see Rossetti as advocating as a principle the mere gratification of the eye".[23] As Cooper has remarked, this "after-life" of Sophy Gray demonstrated its "erotic potential".[4]

In 2012 Autumn Leaves and Sophy Gray, the latter in a private collection, were displayed alongside each other in Tate Britain's major exhibition of Pre-Raphaelites, Victorian Avant-Garde.[24]

Mental illness and marriage

In 1868 Gray became unwell. It is clear from letters at the time that she was suffering from anorexia nervosa. She also became restless and obsessed with music, especially piano playing. Her speech was often incoherent. In March 1869 Millais wrote to William Holman Hunt that Gray had "been ill a whole year, and away from home, with hysteria".

At the request of the Grays, Millais placed Gray at Manor Farm House, Chiswick under the care of Dr Thomas Harrington Tuke (1826–88), a leading practitioner in mental illness.[25] Tuke had treated Millais' friend, the painter Edwin Landseer,[4] and, a year or so after Gray came to him, was involved in the case of Harriet Mordaunt, respondent in a scandalous divorce action.[26] Gray lived with the family of one of Tuke's colleagues until she was well enough to move to lodgings in Hammersmith in 1869 and then back to Bowerswell.[4] Although the state of her health fluctuated, it was to remain a problem for her and a concern to others for the rest of her life.

Marriage to James Caird

On 16 July 1873 Gray married James Key Caird (1837–1916), a Dundee jute manufacturer[27] who had courted her for several years. Caird was disliked by her family, who thought him two-faced and were still mindful of Effie's disastrous marriage to Ruskin. They would have been aware also that the port of Dundee had, for some time, been taking trade away from Perth.[28] However, attempts to dissuade Gray from going ahead with the wedding were muted by fears of triggering a further collapse of her health.[4]

The Cairds' only child, Beatrix Ada, was born in 1874.[29] The father was notably absent during Gray’s confinement, thereby intensifying bad feeling with her family. In 1875, he forbade Gray from staying with Effie on her way to France[4] and, generally, at a time when his business was expanding, he seems to have been both inconsiderate and uncaring towards her.

Final years

Millais' 1880 portrait of Gray

During her final years, Gray spent much of her time alone with Beatrix, mostly living between Dundee and Paris. In 1880 Millais painted a final portrait of her, which was exhibited at the new Grosvenor Gallery. Mary Lutyens wrote of it that Millais "perhaps more than anyone, knew the secrets of Sophie's [sic] short life, and in her hauntingly sad expression portrayed an old sadness of his own."[17]

By then Gray had become increasingly emaciated (the effects largely hidden from others by the weight of late Victorian clothing) and in 1882 returned to the care of Tuke.[4] She died on 15 March 1882, aged 38. Tuke gave the cause of death as exhaustion and "atrophy of nervous system, 17 years". Rumours that Gray committed suicide have never been substantiated.[12]

Gray's daughter, Beatrix Caird, who Millais painted in 1879,[30] died in 1888. James Caird subsequently used his wealth to support Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914–17, and was a significant benefactor to the city of Dundee.[29] He became a baronet in 1913.[31]

In Emma Thompson's film, Effie Gray, completed in 2013, the part of Gray is played by Polly Dartford. The film was delayed by legal proceedings about copyright, and was released in October 2014.[32]

References

  1. ↑ This is the spelling preferred by Sophy's father and that used by Suzanne Fagenece Cooper who has researched original papers relating to the Gray family. "Sophie" has often been used by other writers.
  2. 1 2 Mervyn Williams (2012) Effie
  3. ↑ See family tree in Suzanne Fagence Cooper (2010) The Model Wife: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, Ruskin and Millais at pp 240–1
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Suzanne Fagence Cooper (2010) The Model Wife: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, Ruskin and Millais, chapter 12
  5. ↑ Robert Brownell (2013) Marriage of Inconvenience; Mervyn Williams, op. cit.. Brownell makes this point rather more forcefully, suggesting that Sophy's parents had deliberately placed her as a chaperone in her sister's household because they were concerned about Effie's flirtatious behaviour. Sophy was ten years old in 1853.
  6. ↑ Brownell, op.cit.
  7. ↑ Brownell, op.cit.; Mervyn Williams, op.cit.
  8. ↑ Ibid.
  9. ↑ Phyllis Rose (1983) Parallel Lives, "Effie Gray & John Ruskin". Crawley, who probably had a prior inkling of what was afoot, remained on the train with Effie and her mother: Brownell, op.cit.; Williams, op.cit.
  10. ↑ Rose, op. cit.
  11. ↑ Franny Moyle (2009) Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites. A revisionist view of Effie's relationship with the wealthy Ruskin is that Effie, never short of male admirers, married him because her family was in financial difficulty and that, subsequently, Ruskin encouraged her relationship with Millais as a means of ending the marriage, threatening divorce if proceedings for annulment were not begun: Robert Brownell (2013) Marriage of Inconvenience; Michael Prodger in You, Mail on Sunday, 28 April 2013. It was even rumoured that the wedding between Ruskin and Effie has been brought forward to forestall baliffs: Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times Saturday Review, 23 August 2014.
  12. 1 2 3 Mervyn Williams, op,cit.
  13. ↑ Alice Elizabeth Gray, married George Stibbard 1874
  14. ↑ Mervyn Wiliams, op,cit,
  15. ↑ Effie had first sat for her future husband's The Order of Release in March 1853 and previously for other artists.
  16. ↑ 30 x 23 centimetres: see Barringer, Rosenfeld & Smith (Tate, 2012) Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
  17. 1 2 Kendall Smaling Wood, Christies catalogue, Victorian and Traditionalist Pictures, 2008.
  18. ↑ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5089471
  19. ↑ Autumn Leaves is now in the Manchester Art Gallery and is still used frequently to illustrate autumnal themes and/or bonfires: see, for example, Country Life, 23 November 2011.
  20. ↑ Barringer, Rosenfeld & Smith (Tate, 2012) Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
  21. ↑ Daughter of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, Mary Lutyens edited three books of Effie Gray's letters between 1965 and 1972.
  22. ↑ J.B. Bullen in Oxford Today, Michaelmas Term 2011, vol 24, no 1
  23. ↑ Letter to Thomas Combe, 12 February 1860, quoted in Laurence des Cars, The Pre-Raphaelites: Romance and Realism (New Horizons translation, 2000)
  24. ↑ Barringer, Rosenfeld & Smith, op,cit.
  25. ↑ Br Med J 1888 June 23; 1(1434):1364
  26. ↑ Br Med J, loc.cit.; Elizabeth Hamilton (1999) The Warwickshire Scandal
  27. ↑ The James Caird Society "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 11 April 2011.
  28. ↑ Mervyn Williams, op.cit.
  29. 1 2 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 11 April 2011.
  30. ↑ http://preraphaelitepaintings.blogspot.com/2009/03/john-everett-millais-portrait-of.html
  31. ↑ As a result, both Effie and Sophy Gray married men who received baronetcies, Millais having been granted his in 1885 (in Effie's lifetime).
  32. ↑ Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times Saturday Review, 23 August 2014
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