Madeline Wyndham, née Campbell (1835–1920) by George Frederic Watts RA (1817-1904). 1867-1871. Oil on canvas. H 53.3 x W 27.9 cm. Collection: Watts Gallery, Compton, accession no. COMWG 56, given by Lilian Chapman (née Macintosh), 1946. Image credit: Watts Gallery – Artists' Village. Reproduced via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-NC-SA). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Madeline Wyndham, née Campbell (1835–1920) was the daughter of a baronet, Sir Guy Campbell. An artist herself in various mediums, including enamel, watercolour and embroidery, she was married to the politician and art collector, Percy Scawen Wyndham (1835-1911), and the couple and later their three daughters were at the very heart of the artistic clique called the "Souls." Among her close friends were the artists Edward Burne-Jones and G.F. Watts. Veronica Franklin Gould writes:
At thirty-two, Madeline was in the prime of womanhood. She inherited the mysterious beauty of her grandmother Pamela Fitzgerald, wife of the Irish revolutionary Lord Edward Fitzgerald.... She also carried the French blood of her other grandparents, Louis Philippe "Egalité" Duc d'Orléans and his mistress, the educationalist Madame de Genlis, and she had the "wide-minded" indulgence of her Scottish father Sir Guy Campbell.... Watts's oil sketch shows her standing, her dress falling in voluptuous folds and decorated with sunflowers. There is a sense of magnanimity, mystery and suppressed passion — a key Wattsian characteristic — though Madeline herself was bursting with vitality. Her "speaking eyes" wrote [Wilfrid Scawen] Blunt, "betrayed each mood — joy, melancholy, passion, wit, anger, pity." She developed a lifelong rapport with the artist, recording "remembrances" of her children in Wattsian language. Madeline would give birth to two daughters before the portrait was completed. [87]
Particularly noteworthy (and, accordingly, often noted) is the way the finished portrait of her appears high above John Singer Sargent's painting, The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant, a tribute at once to their mother and to Watts himself, by the later artist. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Related Material
- Portrait of Miss Wyndham (one of the daughters), aged sixteen
- The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant
- Review of Sargent. Le beau monde et son revers, by Emily Eells, Isabelle Gadoin and Charlotte Ribeyrol
Bibliography
Gould, Veronica Franklin. G.F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Madeline Wyndham, née Campbell (1845–1920). Art UK. Web. 17 February 2026.
Created 17 February 2026