Anna Brownell Jameson, née Murphy (1794–1860) was a writer and art historian who was born in Dublin on 19 May 1794. She was the eldest of five daughters of Denis Brownell Murphy (d.1842), an Irish miniature artist, and his English wife, Johanna (Minnie, d.1854). The family were itinerant, moving first to Whitehaven in Cumberland in 1798 and then Newcastle in 1802, before eventually settling in London near Pall Mall in 1806. To support her impoverished family, from 1810 Jameson was employed as a governess, initially by the Marquess of Winchester, then by the Rowles family of Bradbourne Park, Kent and finally by the Littleton family (the future Lord and Lady Hatherton) of Teddesley, Staffordshire.
Considered England’s first female art historian, over a thirty-year literary career, Jameson’s major publications included art criticism, Shakespearean criticism, travel writing, history and biography. As a governess, she travelled to Italy with her young pupil and wrote Diary of an Ennuyée (1826), an ‘autobiographical’ account featuring insightful descriptions of the art she encountered. She also visited Germany in 1829 and 1833, where she met prominent museum professionals, art historians and artists whose modern perspectives on art interpretation shaped her own views. Throughout her life, Jameson maintained a wide-ranging social network, with close connections to figures like Ottilie von Goethe, Lady Byron and the Brownings.
Following her Loves of the Poets (1829) and Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831), it was Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical and Historical (1832) that established Jameson’s reputation as a writer and advocate for women’s roles in history and literature. Her ill-fated marriage led to her travels around Canada between 1836 and 1838, experiences which she recorded in her travelogue Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838). This publication, in which she began to write more openly about the condition of women, confirmed her literary reputation and remained in print at the end of the twentieth century.
After 1838, art dominated Jameson’s publications. In 1842, she published Handbook to the Public Galleries, a survey of and approachable guide to important public art collections in and around London. Its sequel, Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London (1844), underscored her belief in the value of British art collections, while offering a particular defence of the newly instituted wider collecting policies of the National Gallery, which included acquiring early Italian art. Her constant advocacy for this originally unpopular type of art continued through a series of biographies published in the Penny Magazine between 1834 and 1845, later republished as Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters (1848).
Apart from her influential writings on late medieval and early Renaissance art, Jameson is best known for her writings on iconography. In later years, Jameson focused on producing a six-volume series on Christian art and symbolism, originally titled Sacred and Legendary Art. Following her death, the final volume was completed by her close friend Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (1809–1893), an accomplished author and art critic, who encouraged her husband Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865) – the first Director of the National Gallery – to acquire early Italian paintings for the Gallery’s collection. Alongside this series, Jameson continued to review exhibitions and contributed to The History of the Painters of All Nations (1852).
The idea to commemorate Jameson with a bust originated with her friend, Miss Susan Homer, who organised a fund and wrote to John Gibson (1790–1866) in May 1860, asking him to undertake the commission. Gibson, though rarely agreeing to create busts, accepted both the task and a reduced fee of £50, in recognition of his friendship with Jameson whom, he wrote, ‘had honoured me in print’. Homer also wrote to Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875) to secure permission for the bust’s temporary display at the South Kensington Museum (V&A). On 22 June 1860, Lyell replied that Prince Albert (1819–1861) ‘wishes in this & other cases that there should be inscribed on the pedestal not only the name but some statement of the merits of the individual commemorated which he thinks too much neglected in our public statues’. Miss Homer accordingly devised an inscription and sent a printed copy to Gibson. The final version reads:
ANNA JAMESON./1794-1860./A DISTINGUISHED CRITIC,/AND WRITER UPON ART./ENDOWED WITH POETIC GENIUS/AND/A VIGOROUS UNDERSTANDING,/SHE THREW NEW LIGHT/ON THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS/WHICH INSPIRED/THE PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS OF THE PAST,/AND AWAKENED/A CLEARER COMPREHENSION/OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY/IN ART/AS WELL AS IN NATURE./IN HER LATER YEARS/SHE ROUSED PUBLIC ATTENTION/TO THE SUFFERINGS OF EDUCATED WOMEN,/VAINLY ENDEAVOURING TO EARN/A COMPETENCY,/AND TO THE NECESSITY OF IMPROVING/THEIR CONDITION;/BY REMOVING UNFAIR OBSTACLES,/AND BY RENDERING/LABOUR AS HONOURABLE AS WEALTH./THIS BUST/IS ERECTED BY THOSE/WHO ESTEEM/HER GENIUS AND VIRTUE,/AMONG WHOM IS HER FRIEND/THE SCULPTOR,/WHO EXECUTED THE WORK IN HER HONOUR -/JOHN GIBSON, R.A., OF ROME.
‘Your inscription cannot be better’, Gibson told Homer in a letter from 10 August 1860. By April 1861, Gibson had modelled the bust, receiving praise from Jameson’s sister Louisa Bate (d.1871), the poet Robert Browning (1812–1889) and others for its likeness and expression. Due to Gibson’s absence from Rome, the marble bust was completed only in autumn 1862.
On 9 September, Gibson, who was staying in London with the painter (and future National Gallery Director) William Boxall (1800–1879), helped Susan Homer with arrangements to place the bust in the South Kensington Museum. It remained there until 1883, when Homer, displeased with its neglected location, arranged its transfer to the National Portrait Gallery. She remained involved in its care, expressing concerns about its display as late as 1898. Almost a century later, in 1989, and separated from its plinth, the bust made its way with other Victorian works to Bodelwyddan Castle, North Wales under a regional partnership arrangement. It was reunited with its plinth in 2013, after which the work was returned to London, once the partnership discontinued.
