Frederick Sandys | Pre-Raphaelite painter | Tutt'Art@ | Pittura * Scultura * Poesia * Musica

From: Tate Gallery

Sandys, born Anthony Frederick Augustus Sands at Norwich, studied under his father Anthony Sands, a drawing master and portrait and subject painter.

He was educated at Norwich Grammar School and at the Government School of Design at Norwich.

An early patron was the Revd James Bulwer, Rector of Stody and a former pupil of Cotman.

Sandys made architectural and antiquarian drawings for him and etched his drawings.

He exhibited drawings at the Norwich Art Union from 1839 and won Royal Society of Arts medals in 1846 and 1847.

By 1851, the year he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, he had moved to London.

He married Georgina Creed, the daughter of a Norwich artist, in 1853.

He changed the spelling of his name from Sands to Sandys in about 1855.

A precocious draughtsman, he worked mainly as an illustrator and portraitist, but in the late 1850s and early 1860s he also painted in oils.

Sandys first became acquainted with the Pre-Raphaelites in 1857, while working on his engraving A Nightmare, a parody of Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford.

He called on Rossetti in order to get an accurate likeness for the engraving, and they became friends.

He was thereafter much admired but remained on the fringes of the group.

His first independent illustration appeared in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860.

He visited Holland and Belgium in 1862.

For most of 1866 he stayed with Rossetti at 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and went on a walking tour with him in October that year, but they afterwards fell out.

He began living with Mary Jones (the actress Mary Clive) in the late 1860s; she bore him nine children.

Among his later works was a series of chalk portraits of writers commissioned in 1880 by Alexander Macmillan.

He showed regularly at the Royal Academy from 1851 to 1886, and at the Grosvenor Gallery, London from 1877.

He became a founder member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in 1898.

He died in London. | Source: © Tate Gallery

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (nato con il nome Antonio Frederic Augustus Sands), ma più noto come Frederick Sandys, (Norwich, 1º maggio 1829 – Londra, 25 giugno 1904) è stato un pittore e disegnatore Britannico appartenente al movimento dei Preraffaelliti.

Ricevute le prime lezioni di disegno dal padre, anche lui pittore, dimostrò doti naturali nella cura e nella bellezza del disegno. Nel 1846 Sandys frequentò la Norwich School of Design e nello stesso anno il suo talento fu riconosciuto dalla Society of Arts.

Dimostrò le sue doti di disegnatore ottenendo un riconoscimento con la sua parodia del Sir Isumbras at the Ford di John Everett Millais nel 1857.

Nel disegno il cavallo si era trasformato in una scimmia marchiata con la scritta J. R., Oxon riferita a John Ruskin, sopra questa c'era la figura del cavaliere che era rappresentata da Millais e dei due bambini che erano Dante Gabriel Rossetti ed William Holman Hunt.

Rossetti e Sandys divennero amici intimi e per più di un anno, fino all'estate del 1867, Sandys visse con Rossetti alla Tudor House (ora Queens House) nel Cheyne Walk a Chelsea.

Il lavoro di Sandys fu profondamente influenzato da quello dall'amico concentrandosi maggiormente su soggetti mitologici e ritratti.

A quel tempo cominciò a disegnare per diversi periodici come Once a Week, Cornhill Magazine e Good Words, ma lavorò solo per riviste e non per libri illustrati.

Negli anni 60 cominciò a esporre le sue opere pittoriche, le più conosciute sono Vivien del 1863, Morgan le Fay (la fata Morgana) del 1864, Cassandra e Medea del 1868.

Sandys non divenne mai un pittore popolare e dipinse poco.

Produsse una serie di ritratti di famosi letterati con il gesso tra questi ci sono quelli di Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold e James Russell Lowell.

Si sposò con Georgiana Creed, ma il suo matrimonio durò solo tre anni, sebbene in verità non si siano mai divorziati.