FEATURED PICTURE

 

Frank Miles (1852-1891)

 

Brown Study

 

Oil on canvas; signed twice verso, on canvas and stretcher.

 

20 x 24 inches

 

 After exhibiting his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1874, Frank Miles established himself as one of London’s most fashionable portraitists. His Chelsea home became ‘the haunt of Society’, frequented by Oscar Wilde and the Prince of Wales, along with scores of society girls and actresses; his portraits of Ellen Terry and Lillie Langtry were much admired and widely reproduced. The sitter here is the photographer Eveleen Myers (née Tennant), sister of the painter Dorothy Tennant and wife of the poet, classicist and founder of The Society for Psychical Research, Fred Myers. Miles had drawn her on a separate occasion in 1876 as Jonathan Swift’s Vanessa (National Portrait Gallery); she also sat to Millais in 1874, and to George Frederic Watts in 1876 and 1880.