Albany Fine Art : Biography of Margaret CARPENTER

Margaret CARPENTER

British, 1793-1872

Self Portrait 1817
© The British Museum, London

The leading female artist of her day and the first woman to be nominated for election to the Royal Academy for 76 years

Mrs Margaret Carpenter, as she was usually referred to, was the leading female artist of her day in the tradition of, and seen by many as the natural successor to, Sir Thomas Lawrence (British, 1769-1830). It is estimated that she painted some 1,000 works over a period of 50 years, of which 243 were exhibited during her lifetime. Of these 156 were exhibited at the Royal Academy, almost certainly a larger number than any female artist before or since.

Born Margaret Sarah Geddes into a well-connected artistic and literary family in Salisbury in 1793, she was the second daughter of Alexander Geddes, a retired Army officer of Scottish descent, and Harriet Easton, the daughter of an Alderman of Salisbury (she was not related to the Scottish portrait artist Andrew Geddes, 1783-1844). In 1798 her family moved to a cottage and smallholding at Alderbury, on the estate of Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 2nd Earl of Radnor. She showed a prodigious talent for drawing from an early age and took lessons from Thomas Robert Guest (British, 1754-1818). Lord & Lady Radnor took an early interest in her drawings and encouraged her to paint in oils, so that from the age of 12 or 13, she was copying the paintings in their extensive collection at Longford Castle in Wiltshire.

By the age of 19, in 1812, Margaret Geddes was already a practising portrait painter in chalks and oils and in great demand amongst the gentry of south Wiltshire and beyond. In the same year her father suffered financial ruin but Lord Radnor generously offered to pay for her to establish herself as a professional artist in London and to introduce her to several influential sitters.

Margaret Geddes moved to London in 1812, aged 19, and won a Society of Arts medal for a study of a boy's head the same year, a similar medal in 1813 (her award-winning painting being purchased by the Marquess of Stafford, one of the most influential art patrons of the time), and a principal gold medal in 1814. In the same year she exhibited at the British Institute and the Royal Academy for the first time, showing two genre paintings and a female portrait. She subsequently exhibited at the Royal Academy almost every year from 1818-1866, sometimes showing as many as five or six portraits, as well as at the British Institute from 1814-1853, the Society of British Artists, the Society of Female Artists, the Royal Institution of Edinburgh, the Paris Salon, alongside John Constable (British, 1776-1837), Richard Parkes Bonington (British, 1802-1828), and Lawrence, and at the Exposition Universelle (Universal Exhibition) of 1855.

In 1817, at the age of 24, she married William Hookham Carpenter, the son of a prosperous Old Bond Street bookseller, print publisher and art dealer. They were to have eight children, of whom three died in infancy.

Mrs Margaret Carpenter established a thriving career and undertook portraits of many notable people of her day, indeed the list reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the mid-19th century. Her Sitters Account Book lists nearly 600 different names and the list is probably not comprehensive. Her work was admired for its artistic qualities, independent of the subject's identity. When she exhibited Head of a Polish Jew (whereabouts unknown) at the British Institute in 1823, a reviewer wrote, “It very rarely happens that a specimen of art like this is produced from the hand of a lady: here are colour, strength and effect, and anatomical drawing”.

In 1830 she and her family moved to the fringes of Regent’s Park, which gave her much-improved studio space as well as a more fashionable address to which to attract clients. In the same year Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy, died and many of his clients turned to her. Importantly, at least one of Lawrence’s unfinished portraits was sent to her for completion. When the Portrait of Mrs Brandling was exhibited in 1832, the writer in Library of Fine Arts credited Carpenter for completing the work “in a manner that would prove that the late President did not possess any very exclusive powers … We trust Mrs Carpenter will be named for the honours of the Academy”.

Margaret Carpenter was a great friend of the artist Richard Parkes Bonington, a painter of great technical competence, and the person most often credited with awakening European interest in the importance of the English watercolour movement. Two of her pictures of Bonington, an oil painting and a chalk drawing, are displayed in the primary collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London and her 1836 painting of Ada, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, forms part of the Government Art Collection and hangs in 10 Downing Street.

The 1830s and 40s saw Carpenter at the peak of her powers and the artistic press gave complimentary reviews of her exhibited work from 1830-1860. In seven of the years between 1833-1849, her portraits, especially of women, were described as the best in the exhibition. But the highest praise was reserved for her pictures of children and the reviewers asked repeatedly why she was not a member of the Royal Academy. She also painted a long and attractive series of portraits of Eton school leavers.

In the 19th century women were not eligible to become members of the Royal Academy but eventually, in 1844 and 1845, she was nominated for one of the two or three vacancies for election to Associateship - the only woman among the 60-70 candidates. Male chauvanism seems to have been the main reason for her failure. This is somewhat ironic since two female artists, Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss, 1741-1807) and Mary Moser (British, 1744-1819) were amongst the founding members of the Royal Academy (founded by King George III in 1768, he chose the first 36 Academicians and fixed the number at 40). It would take 142 years before the next woman would be elected, in 1910.

In 1845 her husband was appointed Keeper of Prints & Drawings at the British Museum and, in 1852, they moved into one of the seven museum residences reserved for its most senior keepers and officers. By the late 1850s she was beginning to take life more easily yet, even in 1859, a reviewer commented that a portrait of her husband “will go farther than a volume of argument to compel the Royal Academy to acknowledge the ‘rights of women’ which they have always been disposed to ignore”.

William Carpenter died in 1866 and his widow appears to have been under some financial pressure. She sold 147 portraits exhibited at the Royal Academy, and some 70 others, and Queen Victoria showed her great favour by granting her a pension of £100 per annum. She died in London six years later, in 1872, and was buried next to her husband in Highgate Cemetery. In its obituary of January 1873, the Art Journal concluded, “Had the Royal Academy abrogated the law which denies a female admission to its ranks, Mrs Carpenter would most assuredly have gained, as she merited, a place in them; but we despair of ever living to see the ‘rights of women’ vindicated in this respect; the doors of the institution are yet too narrow for such to find entrance”.

Lionel Lambert notes in Victorian Painting that, "One artist who would certainly have become an Academician except for the disqualification of her gender was Margaret Carpenter..." (Phaidon Press, London, 1999, page 307). So why is she so little known today? Only a tiny fraction of her pictures is on show in public galleries and a great many must still remain within the families of the original sitters or they have been lost or misattributed. As one of the first female artists in Britain to distinguish herself as a talent equal to that of her male colleagues, it is to be hoped that her reputation will be restored to its rightful position in the history of 19th century British art.

Acknowledgement: With thanks to Richard J Smith, ‘Margaret Sarah Carpenter, A Brief Biography’, Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, 1993.

A TALENTED AND INFLUENTIAL FAMILY

In 1817 Margaret Carpenter married William Hookham Carpenter (1792-1866), who became Keeper of Prints & Drawings at the British Museum and was a Trustee of the Royal Academy. Both her sisters married artists: Harriet to John Westcott Gray and Catherine to William Collins, RA (British, 1788-1847), the well-known landscape and genre painter who was one of the most famous artists of his day. Harriet’s two sons, Margaret Carpenter’s nephews, were the novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins (British, 1824-1889) and Charles Allston Collins (British, 1828-1873), the Pre-Raphaelite painter and writer who was a close friend of Sir John Everett Millais, PRA (British, 1829-1896) and William Holman Hunt, OM (British, 1827-1910) and married Kate, the daughter of Charles Dickens, the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era. Three of Margaret Carpenter’s five surviving children also became artists.

Carpenter Family Tree