Victorian Art in Britain

I was rather hesitant about including the hearty, earthy Fanny Cornforth in this part of the site, but after carrying out some research it was quite obvious that she was a major sitter to Rossetti, that she inspired his work, and that her character caused a change in his style for a time.

Fanny Cornforth was born in Sussex in 1824. She seems to have moved to London as a small child with her family. She met Rossetti in about 1857. Legend has it that the painter was walking along The Strand one evening, when his attention was attracted by a young woman noisily misbehaving herself-in fact she was cracking nuts with her teeth. On noticing that Rossetti was watching her, Fanny started throwing the nutshells at him. He was intrigued and amused by this behaviour, and straightaway decided to use her as a model. 

The situation of working class women unprotected by a family was very difficult at that time. The only real opportunity open to them was to work as domestic servants, which involved long hours, very low wages, and a virtually total loss of personal freedom. The result of this was an army of young women in London working as, and around the edges of prostitution. Quite often these women did not sleep with men on a regular basis, frequency being dictated by financial necessity. Such a young woman was Fanny Cornforth. It is quite wrong to simply describe these women baldly as prostitutes-collectively they were known as ‘dolly mops.’

At this time the relationship of Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal had cooled down from its former exclusive intensity, and Fanny was quickly installed in his house at Cheyne Walk as his mistress cum housekeeper. This relationship did not meet the approval of many of the painter’s friends. Fanny was noisy, hearty, earthy, and spoke in a broad cockney dialect. It is notable that Rossetti’s brother William, who quite obviously knew her well, did not mention Fanny in any of his copious writings about his famous brother, yet photographic evidence confirms they knew each other, and suggests they were on good terms. It would be wrong to assume, however that this hostility was shared by all his friends. She was on good terms with Swinburne, and George Price Boyce the painter was a great admirer of hers. He described her as having an ’interesting face, and an engaging disposition.’ 

In 1860 Rossetti became involved again with Lizzie Sidal, who was now seriously ill, and in May that year he married her. Fanny Cornforth was deeply offended, and was described at the time as frantic. Shortly after this she married one Timothy Hughes. On the night of February 10th 1862 the unhappy, sick, tragic Lizzie committed suicide, shortly following a full-term pregnancy, and a stillborn baby. Some time after this the relationship between Fanny Cornforth and the painter resumed, incidentally her new husband had also died. 

The cheerful, uncomplicated, earthy cockney girl was a great comfort to the guilt-ridden and seriously disturbed Rossetti at this time, which also marked the zenith of their relationship. This was also the time when Fanny became his major model and muse. Her personality also influenced the direction of Rossetti’s art at this time, as not even he could make her fascinating, and ethereal in a claustrophobic background.  His paintings of Fanny Cornforth were more literal than anything else he produced, and showed a woman who was sensual, and had a highly suspect past.  Rossetti’s many drawings and paintings of Fanny at this time usually refer, in the iconography he used, to that past, and they show as a her rather coarse, and very sexual beauty.

In about 1867 Rossetti’s obsession with Jane Morris gradually became the greatest factor in his life, both personally and artistically, and Fanny Cornforth’s role seems to have become mainly as his housekeeper. I think it reasonable to assume that her cheerful presence still exerted a positive influence in his increasingly disturbed and addicted life.

In 1879 Fanny Cornforth finally left Rosssetti to marry one John Schott, and she seems to have helped herself to some of his minor possessions and drawings at this time-I would imagine he accepted this in a wry and humorous manner. There is little evidence that he tried to reclaim any of his belongings from her. Fanny Cornforth and her husband became fairly successful publicans, running an inn in London. She died in 1906 aged eighty- two years.