Florence Nightingale

Painting height: 66 cm
Painting width: 53.3 cm
Frame height: 97.5 cm
Frame width: 85 cm

A rare painting of ‘The Lady of the Lamp’. Watts’s oil sketch of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was painted when she was 48 years old. By this stage in her life, she had acquired a worldwide reputation as the founder of the modern nursing profession and for her social reforms in healthcare. Nightingale is believed to have objected to having her photograph taken or her portrait painted and so although incomplete, this painting is a rare example of where she has trusted an artist to capture her likeness. Sensitively rendered, this portrait portrays the humanity of the sitter, with her crimson lips and piercing blue eyes puncturing an otherwise subdued colour palette.

Believed to be fiercely against her likeness being captured by both photographers and artists, few authorised portraits of Florence Nightingale exist today. Although unfinished, Watt’s portrait of Nightingale can be regarded as a rare and important record.

By the time Watts met Nightingale in the 1860s, she was already a national hero. Dedicated to nursing and women’s rights, she was a reformer of the Army Medical Services. Soon after the outbreak of the Crimean War in October 1853, the British Secretary of State for War Sidney Herbert called on Nightingale’s help. As a result, she led a team of 38 volunteer nurses to assist in the warzone. It is here that Nightingale gained the affectionate moniker ‘Lady of the Lamp’ after a report in The Times which described her as ‘a "ministering angel" […] with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds’ [1].

Painted in three-quarter profile facing the right, Nightingale is presented in the same compositional format as the portraits which form Watts’s ‘Hall of Fame’ series. The face of Nightingale is well rendered, with the crimson lips puncturing an otherwise subdued colour palette. With her hair tied in a low-lying chignon, her shoulders and dress are executed in a handful of broad strokes of brown paint. Beneath the face, a blue ground is visible. Blue was often used as background colour for Watts’ female portraits, such as those of Violet Lindsay (COMWG.148, 1879), Maria Lockhart (COMWGNC.10, 1845) and Aileen Spring-Rice. The contrast of blue which was usually suggestive of a sky, resulted in a cooler flesh tone of the faces.

Nightingale’s illness, possibly a recurring bout of typhus which she is known to have suffered with in later life, may be to blame for the portrait being left unfinished. The disease, which effects patients’ circulation and body temperature, in this instance resulted in her face appearing ‘bloated’ and giving the impression of a ‘prematurely ageing nurse’ [2].

As the portrait was left unfinished, it is not listed in Mary Watts’s catalogue which she compiled in 1915. According to Mary, her husband always intended for four women to be included in his ‘Hall of Fame’ portrait series. They were: ‘Mrs Barrett Browning, whom he never had the good fortune to meet; Mrs George Lewes (George Eliot), whose portrait he was afraid to attempt, perceiving the difficulty it would have presented; Miss Florence Nightingale, whose portrait he found he was unable to complete’. [3] The fourth woman to be included in the series was the social reformer Josephine Butler. Watts was able to secure sittings with the elderly Butler in October 1895 and the completed portrait, the only one of the four he was able to paint, now resides in the National Portrait Gallery collection.

There are conflicting accounts as to why Watts was unable to finish the portrait of Nightingale. It is widely believed that she either refused or was unable to sit for further sessions. She had previously revealed that she had ‘a scruple against sitting’ for Watts prior to their first meeting [4]. Nightingale’s biographer, on the other hand, claimed that although Watts hoped for future sittings, he abandoned the idea when Sir William Richmond made a portrait’ [5]. However, it seems unlikely that Watts would have allowed another artist’s portrait of the nurse and one produced almost 20 years later, to prevent him from continuing his own series of work.

Explore:

Violet Lindsay [COMWG.148] 

Sympathy [COMWG.95]

Footnotes:

[1] Cited in Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. I, (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1913), p.237.

[2] Victoria Franklin Gould, G.F. Watts: the Last Great Victorian (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p.73.

[3] Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912), p.250.

[4] Letter from Florence Nightingale to Sir H. Verney, 26 August 1864, quoted in Lynn McDonald, Florence Nightingale: an introduction to her life and family (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001), p.567.

[5] Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. II, (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1913), p.469. The whereabouts of the portrait today is unknown. A reproduction of it is included as the frontispiece to Cook’s volume. It is a half-length portrait, with Nightingale propped against cushion, full-face, looking to right, wearing a long-sleeved plain dress and lace headscarf.

Further Reading:

Marks Bills and Barbara Bryant, G.F. Watts: Victorian Visionary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with Watts Gallery Compton, 2008).

Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. II, (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1913).

Victoria Franklin Gould, G.F. Watts: the last great Victorian (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004).

Lynn McDonald, Florence Nightingale: an introduction to her life and family (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001).

Leoneéand Richard Ormond, G. F. Watts: The Hall of Fame: portraits of his famous contemporaries, National Portrait Gallery (Compton, Surrey: Watts Gallery, 2012).

Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912).

Text by Dr Stacey Clapperton