The Coral Necklace (1871): Art, History and Details

The Coral Necklace (1871) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Frederick Sandys (British, 1829–1904).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: The Coral Necklace
• Date: 1871
• Creator attribution: Frederick Sandys (British, 1829–1904)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black, brown, and red chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 55.9 x 39.2 cm (22 x 15 7/16 in.); Secondary Support: 57.1 x 40 cm (22 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1997.7

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• O'Looney, Betty. Frederick Sandys, 1829-1904. Exh. Cat. Brighton: Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 1974.
• Ganz, Kate. Heads and Portraits: Drawings from Piero di Cosimo to Jasper Johns. Exh. Cat. New York: Jason McCoy Inc., 1993.
• Wildman, Stephen. Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England. Exh. Cat. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1995.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.