This sheet comes from a group of metalpoint drawings of women and children in contemporary Victorian dress which are very probably portraits of members and friends of the Prinsep family, with whom G. F. Watts lived for nearly thirty years.

According to Mary Seton Watts, the artist's wife, when he lived in the Prinsep household during the 1850s he 'carried in his pocket a small notebook of indelible paper with a metal point in the sheath, and when his eye fell on any particularly beautiful arrangement in posture or line he would call out, with a gesture of his hand, "Oh, pray, stay where you are for a moment," and the notebook was taken out to receive a monumental outline on the tiny page. These drawings, perhaps the least well-known of his artistic expressions, may be placed, I venture to say, beside his greatest. They are chiefly drawn from Mrs. Prinsep, Lady Dalrymple, Mrs. Jackson and her three daughters Adeline, Julia and Mary, who from their childhood were much at Little Holland House'. (from Mary Seton Watts, The Annals of an Artist's Life, London, 1912, Vol I, p. 157-8)

All objects in this group