Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue
Louise Jane Jopling (née Goode, later Rowe) (1843-1933), Portrait painter
- Gallery portraits
- All known portraits
- Biography and References
Portrait painter; born 16 November 1843, in Manchester, fifth of nine children of Thomas Smith Goode, railway contractor. Married Frank Romer 1861, separated 1871; studied in the Charles Chaplin studio, Paris 1868–9, and Leigh’s School of Art, London 1869; married Joseph Middleton Jopling, watercolour painter (d.1884) 1874; exhibited at Paris Salon, Royal Society of British Artists, Grosvenor Gallery 1870–90, and at the Royal Academy 1870–1916 – under all three names; set up school to train women artists ‘by demonstration’; first woman member, RSBA 1902; active as a political suffragist from 1880s; [1] married George William Rowe 1887; her memoir Twenty Years of My Life (1925) records boundless artistic (and social) energy, and the seriousness and economic necessity of her vocation; died 19 November 1933 in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire.
To be a woman, a wife, and a mother, and to work at an arduous profession besides, is as much as one person can undertake, and to endeavour not to fail in either capacity seems a Herculean task. [2]
My face must be rather of the india-rubber type, because I find no difficulty in making up like some one else. [3]
An artist can shut himself away from the ‘madding crowd’; he can enjoy that perfect solitude in which alone he can gather strength for further efforts. But in spite of these views, I should have loved to have been an actress. Impersonating another’s character strongly appeals to me, and the intoxicating feeling you can play upon people’s emotions, making them weep or laugh at your pleasure, quite obliterates all the petty discomforts one has to undergo. [4]
Carol Blackett-Ord
To be a woman, a wife, and a mother, and to work at an arduous profession besides, is as much as one person can undertake, and to endeavour not to fail in either capacity seems a Herculean task. [2]
My face must be rather of the india-rubber type, because I find no difficulty in making up like some one else. [3]
An artist can shut himself away from the ‘madding crowd’; he can enjoy that perfect solitude in which alone he can gather strength for further efforts. But in spite of these views, I should have loved to have been an actress. Impersonating another’s character strongly appeals to me, and the intoxicating feeling you can play upon people’s emotions, making them weep or laugh at your pleasure, quite obliterates all the petty discomforts one has to undergo. [4]
Carol Blackett-Ord
Footnotesback to top
[1] E. Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement 1866–1928, London, 1999, p.610.
[2] Jopling 1925, p.113.
[3] Jopling 1925, p.238.
[4] Jopling 1925, p.292.
Referencesback to top
Bromberg 2000Bromberg, R., Walter Sickert: Prints. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven, 2000.
Calloway & Orr 2011
Calloway, S. and L.F. Orr, eds, The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, exh cat., Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2011.
Clarke 2004
Clarke, M.E., ‘Jopling, Louise Jane (1843–1933)’, ODNB, Oxford, online ed., September 2004.
Codell 2003
Codell, J.F., The Victorian Artist: Artists’ Lifewritings in Britain, c.1870–1910, Cambridge and New York, 2003.
Denney 2009
Denney, C., Women, Portraiture and the Crisis of Identity in Victorian England: My Lady Scandalous Reconsidered, Farnham, 2009.
Funnell & Warner 1999
Funnell, P., and M. Warner, Millais: Portraits, exh. cat., NPG, London, 1999.
Furniss 1923
Furniss, H., Some Victorian Women: Good, Bad and Indifferent, London, 1923.
Gillett 1990
Gillett, P., The Victorian Painter’s World, Stroud, Glos., 1990.
Jopling 1925
Jopling, L., Twenty Years of My Life, 1867 to 1887, London 1925.
Maas 1984
Maas, J., The Victorian Art World in Photographs, London, 1984.
Millais 1899
Millais, J.G., The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 2 vols, London, 1899.
Nunn 1986
Nunn, P. Gerrish, ed., Canvassing: Recollections by Six Victorian Women Artists, London, 1986.
Rosenfeld & Smith 2007
Rosenfeld, J., and A. Smith, Millais, exh. cat., Tate, London, 2007.
Walery 1888–96
Walery [Stanislas Julian, Count Ostrorog], ed., Our Celebrities: A Portrait Gallery … Portraits by Walery, 5 vols (vol.1 ed. L. Engel), London, 1888–96