Alice Mary Chambers 1855 - 1920. Sanguine Red Chalk Drawing Portrait Of Rebecca Paddon

Alice Mary Chambers.
English ( b.1855 - d.1920 ).
Portrait of Rebecca Porter Paddon 1850 – 1915 (nee Somerset).
Red Chalk on Paper
Signed with monogram upper left.
Image size 17.9 inches x 14.8 inches ( 45.5cm x 37.5cm ).
Frame size 25 inches x 21.9 inches ( 63.5cm x 55.5cm ).

Available for sale from Big Sky Fine Art in the English county of Dorset, this original sanguine red chalk portrait drawing on paper is by the English female artist Alice Mary Chambers and dates from around 1880 to 1885.
It is presented and supplied in a glazed frame dating from the 1990s which uses a backboard and mount from the 1960s (which is shown in these photographs). 
This antique drawing is in very good condition. It is supplied ready to hang and display.
The drawing is signed with the artist’s monogram upper left.
Provenance: By descent through the sitter’s family.

Alice Mary Chambers was part of the ‘aesthetic’ phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement of the late nineteenth century. He was a close friend of Charles Howell, Whistler and Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, whose influence can be seen in her work.

She was born in Essex, the daughter of a controversial figure in the Anglican Church, she was brought up largely by her mother and attended a school in Sydenham. 
Alice was known as an artist by 1875 and exhibited her works at the major galleries, including the Royal Academy between 1881-1894. She specialised in drawings of female and mythological figures. 

Alice became a close friend, and possibly lover, of the infamous collector and artists’ agent Charles Augustus Howell, through whom she made connections with other contemporary artists. She lived for some time at an address used by other Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, W.H. Deverall, and Edward Burne-Jones.
In 1913 Chambers donated Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s plaster death mask to the National Portrait Gallery.

This truly beautiful original red chalk drawing on paper by Alice Mary Chambers (1855-1920) is a half-length portrait of Rebecca Porter Paddon, nee Somerset, (1850-1915). It is signed with the artist’s usual monogram in the upper left section. Chambers was well-known for her red chalk studies, and this is a very fine example of her work.

The beautiful young woman who is the subject of this drawing is Rebecca Porter Somerset Paddon and her own story merits telling too:

Rebecca was born at Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire in 1850, the daughter of Edmund Thomas Somerset and Mary Ann Somerset. She married Charles John Paddison on 24 June 1874, but three years later she filed for divorce on the grounds of his cruelty and adultery. She also sought custody of their son, born in 1875. The divorce became final in 1879. Until the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act it was essentially impossible to obtain a divorce without the passage of a private Act through Parliament. Even after 1857 divorce was extremely rare in England, and for a woman to divorce her husband was virtually unheard off. The fact that Rebecca was courageous enough to initiate and see this process through speaks volumes of her character.

Two years after her divorce Rebecca married again, on 17 May 1879. Her second husband, Samuel Wreford Paddon was a diamond merchant and art collector. They went on to have three children together ; Eva, Stanley and Philip. Samuel Paddon was an associate of Charles Augustus Howell, and through him was introduced to Whistler. At this time the Paddons were living in Reigate, Surrey. Rebecca is known to have liked pastel drawings, and bought one from Whistler, possibly from the Venice Pastels exhibition of 1881. During the 1880s the Paddons lived at 55 Earls Court Square, London. Samuel Paddon eventually fell out with Howell over some black Chinese ware he had bought from him, which Howells had described as very rare. However, Paddon had discovered the same pots in an Oxford Street shop for very little. There was also a dispute, published in 1882 in correspondence known as the Paddon Papers: The Owl and the Cabinet. This concerned the ownership and whereabouts of a Chinese cabinet. This marked the end of relations between Paddon and Howell. In 1885 Paddon took legal action against Howell for fraud (and Alice Mary Chambers provided promissory notes on behalf of Howell.). 

Rebecca Paddon died on 9 August 1905 (aged 54-55) in Hamstead in the borough of Camden, London. She is buried at West Norwood Cemetery, Lambeth.

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