Eleanor Vere Boyle

Sale: Christie's, London, 11 June 1993, lot 63

Private collection, UK

Christopher Newall, Victorian Watercolours, 1987, p. 93-4, pl. 63

At first glance the present watercolour is a simple still-life, but there is something deeper and mysterious in the symbolism of the elements. Firstly, the scene appears to be reflected in the glass of a broken mirror, the frame of which juts disquietingly across the uppermost left corner – the mirror is referenced in the title, cast aside by the innocence of a child who does not care for vanity or self-reflection. A peacock feather is reflected, perhaps meant to refer to the sense of sight. The various insects seem carefully selected – a may-fly perhaps symbolising the fleeting fragility of life as they only live for one day in their adult form, the fly may refer to death and the butterfly was an ancient symbol of the soul. The decaying leaves contrast with the lush green of the ivy – a traditional symbol of clinging memory. In the centre of the composition, hidden behind the leaves and feather can be seen the black eyes of a harvest-mouse.

'And a neglected Looking-glass, And the Child cared nothing about the Looking-glass' was one of a series of detailed watercolours reproduced in engraved illustrations for Sarah Austin’s ‘The Story without an End’ in 1868. As Christopher Newall has pointed out, in this watercolour; ‘Realism is taken to such a degree of intensity in this watercolour that it arrives at a level of a fantasy.’ (Christopher Newall, Victorian Watercolours, 1987, p. 94).

The Hon. Eleanor Vere Gordon was from Kincardineshire in Scotland but spent most of her life in Southern England after she married Richard Boyle, a rector from Somerset. They lived at Huntercombe Manor, near Burnham Abbey in Buckinghamshire – the name of the house derived from the folklore of Herne the Hunter, the mythical spirit of the woods. It contains a Fourteenth Century beamed hall and a garden dating back to the Seventeenth Century where Boyle painted many of her delightful watercolours of fairy-folk and natural history. She was a prolific writer and book illustrator making watercolours based on the works of Tennyson and Hans Christian Andersen – the dark subject-matter of which suited her style. Rossetti admired her work which was heavily-influenced by Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail and whimsical romance.