Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Sandys, Frederick
SANDYS, FREDERICK (1829–1904), Pre-Raphaelite painter, whose full name was originally Anthony Frederick Augustus Sands, was born at 7 St. Giles's Hill, Norwich, on 1 May, probably in 1829. No baptismal entry or other record exists to attest the year. In the Norfolk and Norwich Art Union catalogue of 1839 a note to a drawing (No. 278) entitled 'Minerva, by A. F. A. Sands,' states that the artist was 'aged ten,' and thus makes him born in 1829, but in later years, when he was in the habit of giving friends somewhat varied and inconsistent details of his career, he represented 1832 as the year of his birth. His father, Anthony Sands, originally a dyer by profession, became a drawing-master in Norwich and subsequently a portrait and subject painter; examples of his work are in the Norwich Museum (No. 50) and in Mr. Russell Colman's collection at Norwich; he died in 1883. The mother's maiden name was Mary Anne Negus. An only sister, Emma, who was also a painter and exhibited at the Royal Academy, died in 1877. The spelling of the family name was changed from Sands to Sandys to suggest, it is said, a not well authenticated connection with the family of Lord Sandys. The grandfather was a shoemaker in Upper Westwick Street, Norwich.
Sandys was educated at the Norwich grammar school. His artistic training was presumably superintended by his father, for he acknowledged no other master. But George Richmond [q. v.] was an old friend of his family and a constant visitor to Norwich, and although Sandys repudiated any suggestion of Richmond's influence, analogies in the portraiture of both artists cannot be entirely dismissed. Sandys's first commissions were for illustrations to local handbooks such as 'Birds of Norfolk' and Buhner's 'Antiquities of Norwich.' He exhibited at local exhibitions until 1852. His first work seen at the Royal Academy was a crayon drawing of Lord Henry Loftus in 1851, when he was living in London at 21 Wigmore Street.
In 1857 he published anonymously in London a Uthographic print entitled 'A Nightmare,' which was a caricature of 'Sir Isumbras at the Ford,' Millais's well-known Pre-Raphaelite picture in the Academy of that year. The faces of Rossetti, Millais, and Hohnan Hunt were substituted for those of the girl, the knight, and the boy respectively; the horse of the original being transformed into a donkey labelled J. R., i.e. John Ruskin. The verses at the bottom of the print were by Tom Taylor, who was also the author of the mock mediaeval lines printed in the Royal Academy catalogue for the original picture. The print measures 13¾ inches by 19 ¼; a reduced facsimile is reproduced in Fisher's 'Catalogue of Engravings' (1879).
Dante Gabriel Rossetti [q. v.], on whom Sandys had called in order to obtain a likeness for the skit, was delighted. Sandys became an intimate and constant visitor at Rossetti's house, 16 Cheyne Walk. From this time (1857), Sandys associated with the artists, poets, and writers of the Pre-Raphaelite group, which then included Whistler. His painting and drawing grew definitely Pre-Raphaelite in character and handling, and he became an interesting link between the great school of his native place and the Pre-RaphaeHtes. He always resisted the imputation that he had seen Menzel's work, to which his own has been compared. There was perhaps a common origin in Dürer, or Rethel, whose prints were popular in England.
Sandys soon concentrated much of his energy on wood block designs in black and white, which appeared in 'Cornhill,' 'Once a Week,' 'Good Words,' and other publications between 1860 and 1866. Their technical accomplishment is unsurpassed by that of any contemporaries. They called forth from Millais the compliment that Sandys was 'worth two Academicians rolled into one'; while Rossetti with some exaggeration pronounced his friend the 'greatest Uving draughtsman.' On a draing by Sandys of Cleopatra, Swinburne wrote a poem called 'Cleopatra,' which appeared with the wood-cut after Sandys's drawing in ’Cornhill Magazine' in September 1866. (The poem was published in a separate volume the same year, but was never reprinted; cf. Nicoll and Wise, Lit. Anecdotes of Nineteenth Century, ii. 314-6.) Sandys illustrated poems by George Meredith [q, v. Suppl. II] ('The Chartist'), Christina Rossetti [q. v.] ('Amor Mundi'), and others in current periodicals.
Meanwhile Sandys contributed a few notable subject pictures to the Academy. These included 'Oriana' (1861), 'Vivien' and 'La Belle Ysonde' (1863), 'Morgan le Fay' (1864), one of the finest, and 'Cassandra' (1868). Two oil portraits, those of Mrs. Anderson Rose (1862) and Mrs. Jane Lewis (in the Academy of 1864), deserve a place among the great achievements of English painting. The two magnificent versions of 'Autumn,' of which the larger belongs to Mr. Russell Colman of Norwich and the smaller is in the Birmingham Art Gallery, are among other of the too rare examples of the artist's achievements in oil. In 1868 'Medea,' an oil painting generally regarded as one of Sandys's masterpieces, though accepted by the hanging committee, was crowded out from the Academy. The violent protests in the press, among which Swinburne's was pitched in his characteristic key, resulted in the picture being hung on the line in the following year, 1869. He continued to contribute to the Academy until 1886; and after 1877 to the Grosvenor Gallery, where he showed altogether nine works. But after ' Medea ' Sandys practically abandoned the medium of oil except for a few portraits.
From an early period Sandys had achieved a high repute among patrons and critics by his crayon heads, of which one of the best is 'Mrs. George Meredith' (1864). In 1880 he received a commission from Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for a series of literary portraits, which include Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, J. R. Green, and J. H. Shorthouse. They are hard and unsympathetic in treatment, though Sandys retained his old correctness and precision. In his last year he executed a series of crayon portraits of members of the Colman family in Norwich, representing five generations. In other works of his late period he succumbed to a sentimental and barren idealism.
Intemperate and bohemian modes of life seem to have atrophied his powers. He was a constant borrower and a difficult if delightful friend. His relations with most of his associates were chequered. In 1866 he accompanied Rossetti on a trip through Kent (Rossetti, Letters, ii. 189), but a quarrel followed. Rossetti considered that too many of his pictorial ideas were being appropriated by Sandys (W. M. Rossetti, Reminiscences, p. 320). The breach, which was healed in 1875, prejudicially affected the qualities of Sandys's imagination and technique. A friendship with Meredith lasted longer. Sandys often stayed with the novelist, who mentions him in a letter as a guest at Copseham Cottage in 1864. He was then painting the background of 'Gentle Spring,' shown in the Academy of 1865. At one time Sandys consorted a good deal with gipsies, one of whom, Kaomi, was a favourite model. She appears in Rossetti's 'Beloved,' and is the original of Kiomi in Meredith's Harry Richmond.' Sandys was a great ’bruiser' and the hero, by his own account, of a good many brawls.
In 1898 Sandys was elected an original member of the newly formed International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and through Mr. Pennell renewed his acquaintance with Whistler. In the intervals of long disappearances he was sometimes seen at the Cafe Royal in Regent Street, London, in company with Aubrey Beardsley and younger artists.
In appearance Sandys was tall and distinguished : in later life not unlike Don Quixote. He was always neatly dressed, whatever his circumstances, a spotless white waistcoat and patent leather boots being features of his toilet. Personal charm and the lively gift of the raconteur to the end reconciled friends to his embarrassing habit of borrowing. He died at 5 Hogarth Road, Kensington, on 25 June 1904, and was buried at Old Brompton cemetery. No tombstone marks the grave. The cemetery register records his age as seventy-two.
The earliest oil painting by Sandys was a portrait of himself, painted in 1848. This was offered for purchase to the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery and rejected by them. Mr. Fairfax Murray owns a miniature of him (aged six) by his father, Anthony Sands. Most of his pictures and drawings are in private collections in London and Norwich or in America. There is no example of Sandys's work at the Tate Gallery. At the Birmingham Art Gallery, besides the small version of 'Autumn,' are superb examples of his black and white drawings from the Fairfax-Murray collection. Five drawings are in the Print Room of the British Museum; two are in the Norwich Museum (Nos. 354, 377); a portrait of Mr. Louis John Tillett, M.P., hangs in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich. Some of his works, chiefly drawings, were collected at the Leicester Galleries in London in March 1904, and after his death there was another exhibition at Burlington House in the winter of 1905.