Frederick Sandys
Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (May 1, 1829, Norwich, England—June 25, 1904, London), usually known as "Frederick Sandys", was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter, illustrator and draughtsman, of the Victorian era.
He received his earliest lessons in art from his father, who was himself a painter. His early studies show that he had a natural gift for careful and beautiful drawing. In 1846 Sandys attended the Norwich School of Design. In the same and next year his talent was recognized by the Society of Arts. He displayed great skills as a draughtsman, achieving recognition with his print parodying John Everett Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford in 1857. The caricaturist turned the horse of Sir Isumbras into a donkey labelled J. R., Oxon. (John Ruskin). Upon it were seated Millais himself, in the character of the knight, with Rossetti and William Holman Hunt as the two children, one before and one behind. Rossetti and Sandys became intimate friends, and for about a year and a quarter, ending in the summer of 1867, Sandys lived with Rossetti at Tudor House (now called Queens House) in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. His own works were profoundly influenced by those of Rossetti. He focused mainly on mythological subjects and portraits.
By this time Sandys was known as a painter of remarkable gifts. He had begun by drawing for Once a Week, the Cornhill Magazine, Good Words and other periodicals. He drew only in the magazines. No books illustrated by him can be traced. So his exquisite draughtsmanship has to be sought for in the old bound-up periodical volumes which are now hunted by collectors, or in publications such as Dalziels' Bible Gallery and the Cornhill Gallery and books of drawings, with verses attached to them, made to lie upon the drawing-room tables of those who had for the most part no idea of their merits. Every drawing Sandys made was a work of art, and many of them were so faithfully engraved that they are worthy of the collectors portfolio. Early in the sixties he began to exhibit the paintings which set the seal upon his fame. The best known of these are Vivien (1863), Morgan le Fay (1864), Cassandra and Medea. Sandys never became a popular painter. He painted little, and the dominant influence upon his art was the influence exercised by lofty conceptions of tragic power. There was in it a sombre intensity and an almost stern beauty which lifted it far above the ideals of the crowd. The Scandinavian Sagas and the Morte d'Art/fur gave him subjects after his own heart. The Valkyrie and Morgan le Fay represent his work at its very best. He made a number of chalk drawings of famous men of letters, including Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and James Russell Lowell.
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