A Singular Man

Frederick Sandys, born and educated in Norwich, had an artisan background. Bohemian by nature, though through necessity having to appear genteel and respectable to his clients, Sandys was disorganised and unbusinesslike, and preferred bachelor lodgings while struggling to support two separate growing families of illegitimate children. From youth, encouraged by his father, he developed prodigious skills as a draughtsman and painter, and enjoyed the support of the Norfolk gentry and prominent Norwich industrialists and bankers. Landscape painting and nature studies led to commissioned portraiture which became his main source of income. Moving to London and meeting Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates, Sandys kept a foothold in Norwich, drawing and painting both beautiful women in legendary disguises and meticulously-detailed portraits of elderly women, pioneering a new type of large-scale portrait drawing in chalks, for which he became well-known.