Edith Hipkins

(British, 1854-1945)

The window seat in Townshend House, 1885

Footnotes

Provenance
Sale including the contents of 17 Grove End Road, Hampton & Sons, London, 11 June 1913.
With The Fine Art Society, London.
The Irish News Collection (acquired from the above.)

Illustrated
Elizabeth Prettejohn & Peter Trippi, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, At Home in Antiquity, London, 2017, no. 98, p. 85.

Literature
Rudolph de Cordova, 'The panels in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's Hall', The Strand Magazine, Vol. XXIV, 1902, pp. 615-630, ill. p.621.

Edith Hipkins was the daughter of the musician and musicologist, Alfred James Hipkins. The Hipkins family were part of a social set that included painters, writers and musicians and were particularly close to the Tadema family. Her work was much admired (Burne-Jones offered to mentor her) and she was a proficient portrait painter who exhibited several times at The Royal Academy. Her portrait of her father is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery and is referred to in correspondence between Alfred Parsons and Alfred Hipkins: 'At the Royal Academy today, I saw an excellent likeness of you by Miss Hipkins.'¹.

Both Edith and her father acted as models for Tadema, and The Royal College of Music also hold several large albums in their collection which include sketches, anecdotes and letters that shed an interesting light on the social circle in which she moved. The current lots shows the hallway at Townshend House with some of the remaining pieces Tadema's extensive collection of blue and white porcelain that had survived the blast of 1874.

¹Edith Hipkins, Collection of British Artists' Letters, University of California, Riverside.