Grace Charlotte Rose (née Snow), Lady Rose

Lady Grace Charlotte Rose was the daughter of Captain Winterton Snow of the Madras Army and the wife of Sir William Anderson Rose, whose portrait Frederick Sandys also painted, along with several other members of the family. The armorial shield and crest in the top right of this picture carries the Rose family motto: “Constant and true.” Sandys was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and in this portrait, he bypassed the British portrait tradition exemplified by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough to draw on early Netherlandish and German paintings. Eclectic influences inform the details, from her gold jewelry and the jar in the foreground, which are modeled on antiquarian designs, to the traditional Japanese figures that appear on the screen behind her. These appropriations reflect Sandys’s sympathies with both Pre-Raphaelitism and aestheticism, including James McNeill Whistler and Albert Moore, who were similarly invested in strongly decorative effects and Eastern motifs.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016