Introduction

Summary

THE BOYCE PAPERS, EDITED by Sue Bradbury and published by Boydell & Brewer in 2019, made accessible to students and scholars for the first time the letters and diaries of the Boyce family artists: Joanna Mary Boyce, George Price Boyce and Henry Tanworth Wells. These cover the period 1850 to 1861 in detail and have already provided the artists’ remarkable personal stories, retold in Sue Bradbury's Joanna, George and Henry: A Pre-Raphaelite Tale of Art, Love and Friendship. Interwoven with that drama, there is a wealth of material which sheds light on the artistic world of the time and on artistic methods and concerns from whether pigments ‘fly’ to the perpetual search for patrons or buyers. The protagonists’ diaries and letters illuminate both their work as painters and other roles they played within the art world. Joanna Boyce was an art critic; her forthright pieces on major French, British and international exhibitions appeared in the newly founded Saturday Review. George Boyce formed an extensive and important art collection, dispersed on his death in 1897.3 Henry Wells contributed to the running of the Royal Academy of Arts, most notably as Deputy President in 1895, during Frederick Leighton's absence due to illness.

THE BOYCE FAMILY ARTISTS AND THE ART SCENE OF THE 1840S TO 1860S

Joanna and George's father, George John Boyce was a successful businessman – a pawnbroker and wine merchant, though in later years he described himself as a silversmith. He provided his children with considerable financial means, a pleasant home in London – the family residence by the time of Joanna's birth being a villa in Maida Vale – and a high standard of education, in private boarding schools. He built up a wide circle of contacts in the cultural and artistic world and had liberal views, allowing his children to choose their own careers and positively encouraging their early interest in art. For instance, it was Joanna and George's father, ‘a man of a most kindly and affectionate disposition’, who took them sketching in Wales in 1849 and Joanna to view art in Paris in 1852.