Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, Mary Magdalene

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Date: c. 1858-60
Technique: Oil on panel, 33.5 x 28 cm

Mary Magdalene is a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Frederick Sandys. Mary Magdalene was the only character from the Bible that Sandys ever painted. Having sharp features reminiscent of Lizzie Siddal (though the model is unknown), Mary is depicted in front of a patterned forest-green damask. She holds an alabaster ointment cup, a traditional attribute which associates her with the anonymous sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet in Luke 7:37. Like other Pre-Raphaelite painters, Frederick Sandys gave Magdalene a sensual look.

Dante Rossetti accused Sandys of plagiarism, because of the resemblance to his Mary Magdalene Leaving the House of Feasting, but when Rossetti came to paint Magdalene some twenty years later, it was his painting that resembled Sandys. Mary Magdalene was acquired in 1894 by Samuel Bancroft Jr., the most important American collector of Pre-Raphaelite art, whose family donated his collection to the Delaware Art Museum in 1935. Bancroft bought it from Charles Fairfax Murray, an artist in the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, Medea

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

Date: 1868
Technique: Oil on canvas, 61.2 x 45.6 cm

Medea is an oil painting on canvas by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Frederick Sandys which was created in 1868. The painting was submitted to the Royal Academy of Arts for display in the Summer Exhibition of 1868 but it was rejected - most likely for political rather than artistic reasons. The picture was accepted the following year and reviewed very favourably by The Times, which commented pointedly on its previous failure to win a place.

Medea was modelled on Keomi Gray, a gypsy woman whom Sandys had met in Norwich, England, and taken back to London to sit for many of his paintings. According to a contemporary critic it shows the enchantress Medea "...in the act of incantation, the baleful light of her chafing-dish playing in the folds of her robe, and making the pale cheeks look paler, and the ashy lips more ashy, and kindling the array of foul ingredients and witch's properties that surround her tripod - foul toads and strange roots, and images of strange gods, and quaint shells filled with evil compounds."

In 1911 the picture was among paintings representative of the best British art sent to Italy for the international exhibition at Rome held in honour of the jubilee of the Italian republic.

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Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, Morgan Le Fay

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Date: 1864
Technique: Oil on panel, 62.9 x 44.5 cm

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