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Notes
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Keeping her breath and peering – (firm she stood
Her slim shape balanced on tiptoe – )
Into a nest which lay below,
Leaves shadowing her brow.
Thomas Woolner (1825–1892), the only sculptor to have been a member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, wrote these lines in 1863, a year before he married Alice Waugh. He commissioned the painting from the artist and it was paid for by his friend Sir Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897), a civil-servant poet, as a wedding present.
This beautiful picture showing the combination of a tall, slender young woman and lovingly delineated vegetation recalls Hughes' most celebrated painting, 'April Love' of 1855–1856.
Title
Mrs Thomas Woolner, née Alice Gertrude Waugh (1845–1912)
Date
1864–1865
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 86 x W 44.5 cm
Accession number
830873
Acquisition method
accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of inheritance tax and transferred, 2002
Work type
Painting