Sophie Anderson

Purchased from the artist by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–1898), Oxford, until his death;

Lady Isabel Violet Kathleen Throckmorton (née Manners) (1917–2008), Alcester;

From whom purchased by the present owner, 8 October 1980.

In 1864 Minnie Morton was bought from Sophie Anderson’s studio at Kensington Gate by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – better-known by his nom-de-plume Lewis Carroll. It was the first of several pictures he bought from Mrs Anderson who became his favourite artist. There are more than twenty references to Anderson in Dodgson’s journal between 1864 and 1869 and her charming depictions of childhood undoubtedly influenced his conception of girlhood and youth which was most famously expressed in Alice in Wonderland. A year after buying Minnie Morton he bought Anderson’s Girl with Lilac (Sotheby’s, New York, 30 January 2023, lot 614) and the two pictures can be seen on the mantlepiece in a photograph of Dodgson’s rooms at Christ Church, Oxford where he was a lecturer in mathematics – a position he held between 1855 and 1881. The model for Minnie Morton was Florence Braithwaite (born 1852) who Dodgson later discovered was the daughter of a friend his. The painting was so admired by Dodgson that he asked Anderson to paint a replica of it in 1869 as a wedding gift for his sister, Mary. He also liked the name Minnie enough to devise a character in a book he wrote in 1893, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded - this was the last book he wrote.