Bonham Carter, Joanna Hilary (1821-65; English)
Florence Nightingale
Parian ware, size unknown
Presented by George Bartrop, 1880
Unidentified; present location unknown
This work is recorded in the gallery’s Annual Report for 1880 as made of “Parian marble” – a type of porcelain. (An account of this medium, noting its introduction by Copeland’s at Stoke-on-Trent in 1842, was published in the English Art Journal in 1859). In the list of statuary de-accessioned by the NGV in 1943 (Annual Report 1943), this work was listed as presented to the city of Mildura. Its subsequent history is unknown.
The artist was the aunt of the sitter, the famous pioneer of modern nursing (1820-1910). Bonham Carter (an ancestor of the contemporary actress Helena Bonham Carter), also produced a drawing of Nightingale in about 1845: reproduced below.
A lithograph of Nightingale by Richard Lane (after Bonham Carter) was also published by Paul & Dominic Colnaghi in 1854.
[comparative photo: drawing of Florence Nightingale by Bonham Carter]
Refs.
AR 1880, p.74; SB p.418: as presented 10 Feb.1880; with added note: “transferred to Mr Frost 30/10/89”; NGV 1894, p.138 (VII.Cast Gallery, no.84); not listed in NGV 1905; AR 1943, p.38 (as by Carter, Hilary B., noting transfer to Mildura)
The artist is not listed in either AKL or Bénézit. For the drawing reproduced here, see http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/2011/04/hilary-bonham-carter-florence.html; the National Portrait Gallery owns several impressions of Lane’s lithograph of Nightingale: see https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp71190/joanna-hilary-bonham-carter (both accessed 26 Sept.2018).
For the family relationships, see http://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/193267/Helena-Bonham-Carter-related-to-Florence-Nightingale and https://everipedia.org/wiki/Bonham_Carter_family/ (also both accessed 26 Sept.2018)
For Parian ware, see “The Corridor of Statuary-Porcelain at Alderman Copeland’s, New Bond St.,” The Art-Journal London vol.5, 1859, pp.347-8 (available via Google Books)