Primrose Day

Frank Bramley, RA (1857-1915)

1885

Oil paint on canvasW

Size: support: 502 × 351 mm; frame: 765 × 615 × 110 mm

Collection: Tate, ref. TO3962

Presented by Arthur Grogan, 1985

The painting commemorates Disraeli's death on 19 April 1881, by showing a young woman lost in reverie. With a framed portrait of Disraeli looking down on her, she has filled a vase of primroses, and still has others that she had gathered. Disraeli was known to love these flowers, and, with this in mind, the Primrose League had been started in 1883 to promote Conservative principles. [Mouse over the text for links. Commentary continues below.]

Image kindly released under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence. Commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee.