1871
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Coral Necklace is a 1871 by Frederick Sandys, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a dark dress holds a string of red coral beads. Her face is pale, her lips slightly parted. Sandys drew this with chalk on rough paper, letting the texture show through. The low spots of the sheet stay white, making the skin glow. He never married the woman in the picture, though she modeled for him for years and had his children. Look up *sfumato*—the way soft edges blur, like her cheeks here.
Closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Frederick Sandys was a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and played an active role in the bohemian artistic, literary, and theatrical circles of the day in London. This is a portrait of Mary Emma Jones, the artist’s favorite model, mistress, and mother of his nine children. An extraordinarily skilled draftsman, here he worked in tone rather than line, delicately drawing in chalk on a rough textured sheet and leaving the low points of the paper untouched to produce a stippled, hazy effect.
Frederick Sandys and his mistress, Mary Emma Jones, the sitter for this portrait, adopted the names "Mr. and Mrs. Neville" to mask the unconventional nature of their relationship.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (born Antonio Frederic Augustus Sands), 1 May 1829 – 25 June 1904, usually known as Frederick Sandys, was a British painter, illustrator, and draughtsman, associated with the Pre-Raphaelites.
See the richer artist page
