Lady Tennyson, 1885

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron? (1852 - 1911) and J.C. Smith?

RA Collection: Art

Emily Tennyson was forty-nine when George Frederic Watts painted this portrait in 1862. She had married Tennyson in 1850, having known the Tennyson family for many years. Alfred's courtship of her took place over a long period and was often from a distance. It was only when his reputation was growing and when his finances had improved that they finally married. When he met her, just after her marriage, Coventry Patmore was to describe Emily as 'very charming', and being 'highly cultivated, but her mind seems always deeper than her cultivation, and her heart always deeper than her mind, - or rather constituting the main element of her mind.' Once established with her husband and her two sons at Farringford, Emily was to take care of correspondence, instruct staff and arrange invitations to the many guests who came to stay. Though she considered herself to have looked at the world through "such a very small chink all my life" she understood Tennyson was stimulated by company. After Alfred's death in 1892, Emily helped compile a memoir with her son Hallam. She died in 1896.

Watts' portrait is in the collection of the Usher Gallery, Lincoln.