“Josephine Elizabeth Butler (née Grey)” by George Richmond, RA (1809-1896)

Josephine Elizabeth Butler (née Grey), 1828-1906

George Richmond, RA (1809-1896)

1851

Pastel

24 in. x 18 3/8 in. (610 mm x 468 mm) overall

National Portrait Gallery, London

This well-known portrait of Josephine Butler was commissioned by her father, an Abolitionist or Anti-Slavery campaigner, long before his daughter became known for her own reforming zeal. It was commissioned to mark the occasion of her engagement, and cost her parents thirty guineas. Richmond's usual fee for such a portrait. She sat for it while visiting London for the Great Exhibition (see Marsh).

Formatting and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Commentary continues below. Mouse over the text for links, and click on the image to enlarge it.]

Although Butler (or Grey as she was then) had not embarked on public life, she was already of a spiritual and reforming cast of mind. As she wrote in her autobiography,

It was my lot from my earliest years to be haunted by the problems which more or less present themselves to every thoughtful mind. Year after year this haunting became more tyrannous. The world appeared to me to be out of joint. A strange intuition was given to me whereby I saw as in a vision, before I had seen any of them with my bodily eyes, some of the saddest miseries of earth, the injustices, the inequalities, the cruelties practised by man on man, by man on woman. [15]

Although Richmond brings out her femininity, something of this refined sensibility and injury to tender feelings comes through in his portrait. Jan Marsh shows some of the ways in which this was achieved, describing the likeness as

notable for the delicacy of its delineation in conveying the sitter’s fair complexion and giving a soft lustre to her hair. Comparison with a near-contemporary photograph ... suggests Richmond slightly modified the jutting angle of her nose. Butler’s gentle meditative expression is achieved through dark, slightly raised pupils. In addition, the drawing endows her with a gravity that seems to foreshadow her moral determination and political commitment. In execution it may be compared with Richmond’s portraits of Harriet Martineau (NPG 1796), Charlotte Brontë (NPG 1452) and Elizabeth Gaskell (NPG 1720); however, these three sitters were drawn as public figures, with publication as engravings in mind, whereas Butler’s likeness was for private consumption, drawn many years before her campaigning role began.

The portrait was used as the frontispiece to Butler's autobiography, and, March tells us, remained in the family possession for as long as a century and a half.

Related Material

Alexander Munro's bust of Josephine Butler

Source

Butler, Josephine E. Josephine Butler: an autobiographical memoir. Ed. George W. and Lucy A. Johnson. Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1909. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of California Libraries. Web. 29 February 2016.

March, Jan. "This Portrait" (extended catalogue entry for this drawing). National Portrait Gallery. Web. 29 February 2016.

Created 29 February 2016