Margaret Sarah Carpenter

A young girl by Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1839)

Margaret Carpenter (1793–1872), born Margaret Sarah Geddes, was a British painter.

Very famous in her time, she mostly painted portraits in the manner of Sir Thomas Lawrence. She was a close friend of Richard Parkes Bonington.

Biography

Margaret Sarah Carpenter was born in Salisbury in 1793 the daughter of Captain Alexander Geddes, who was of an Edinburgh family. She was taught art by a local drawing-master. Her first art studies were made from the pictures at Longford Castle, belonging to Lord Radnor. One of her copies of the head of a boy was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Arts. She went to London in 1814, and soon established her reputation as a fashionable portrait painter. She exhibited a portrait of Lord Folkestone at the Royal Academy in 1814, and a picture entitled ‘The Fortune Teller’ at the British Institution. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy between 1818 and 1866. She also exhibited at the British Institution and at the Suffolk Street Gallery. Among her exhibited portraits were those of Sir H. Bunbury (1822), Lady Denbigh (1831), and Lady King (1835). Her last work was a portrait of Dr. Whewell. Three of her works are in the National Portrait Gallery, including portraits of her husband, Bonington and John Gibson, R.A.. There are also several 'leaving portraits' by her in the collection at Eton College. There is also one of her portraits at Frewen College, it has Helen Louisa Frewen and her son Edward. Her "Portrait of a Lady" hangs in the Neill-Cochran House Museum in Austin, Texas, and can be viewed during the museum's public hours or by appointment.

In 1817 she married William Hookham Carpenter, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum^[1] and on his death in 1866, Queen Victoria conferred on her a pension of £100 p.a. This award was partly based on her husband's service, but also in recognition of her own artistic merits.

William and Margaret's children included two noted painters, another William and Percy Carpenter who both travelled.^[2] She is also the maternal aunt of Wilkie Collins, 19th-century writer; and sister-in-law to Wilkie's father, painter William Collins (The King of Inventors. Catherine Peters).

Her portraits follow in the tradition of Lawrence, but Wood found them to be more fanciful and feminine character, particularly in her portraits of children.

She died in London, on 13 November 1872, in her 80th year.

References

1. ^  Carpenter, William Hookham (1887). "Carpenter, William Hookham". In Leslie Stephen. Dictionary of National Biography. 09. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 
2. ^ The Golden Temple at Amritsar, William Carpenter, Feb. 1854, Victoria and Albert Museum, ref IS.50–1882, accessed July 2010

• Art Journal, 1873 p. 6
• Bryan, Michael, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, 1903
• Clayton, E. C., English Female Artist, Volume 1 p. 386, 1876
• Ormond, R., Early Victorian Portraits, HMSO, 2 vols, 1973
• Redgrave, Samuel, A Dictionary of Artists of the English School, 1878
• Shaw Sparrow, W., Women Painters of the World, pp. 60, 66, 96. 100, 1905
• Wood, Christopher, Victorian Painters, 1. The Text, 2008

Her youngest living direct descendant to date resides still in the United Kingdom, Miss Sheridan Chlorisse Carpenter born 10 December 1996 with her mother Miss Desula Helen Carpenter born 10 April 1973.

External links

Persondata
Name	Carpenter, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1793
Place of birth
Date of death	1872
Place of death