In the spring of 1890 Samuel Bancroft, Jr. received a letter from his British cousin, Alfred Darbyshire, that would change the course of his life. In the letter Darbyshire wrote, “You know the ‘Water Willow’ picture: it is one of the first portraits of Mrs. Morris, and the background is the old manor house where Rossetti & Morris lived together and where the ‘Earthy Paradise’ and some of R’s best things were written.” Darbyshire was referring to the painting Water Willow, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The work is a tender portrait of Jane Morris, artist and wife of arts-and-crafts pioneer William Morris, with whom Rossetti had an affair. Bancroft had likely seen the painting on a visit to Manchester in 1880, though he had no memory of it. Regardless, Bancroft wrote back to his cousin immediately that he wanted to purchase Water Willow, sight unseen (or, at least, unremembered). He also asked if there were other Rossetti works in America and if Darbyshire could send a photograph of it.
Darbyshire did not respond to Bancroft’s letter for two months (“my work is knocking me about just now and letters outside business get neglected”) which must have been torture for Bancroft, who was eager to purchase his very first Pre-Raphaelite painting. When Darbyshire finally responded he included “a rough blot” of Water Willow and a sketch of the frame, noting that, “the trustees did not like the idea of having it photographed.”
As the saying goes, “Nothing worth having comes easy,” and Bancroft’s acquisition of Water Willow was no exception. On September 1 Darbyshire informed Bancroft that the painting would be put on the RMS Teutonic for delivery to the United States, but it never arrived. Bancroft must have sent a frantic letter to Darbyshire (anyone who has tried to track a missing package can certainly commiserate with poor Samuel). What the letter said will probably never be known as there is not a copy of it in the Bancroft Manuscript Collection. Indeed, the fact that there is not a neatly typed carbon copy in Bancroft’s papers suggests that it was sent off with great haste and despair, perhaps even without the assistance of Bancroft’s meticulous secretary, Deborah Peacock, who saved a copy of every piece of correspondence. On September 22 Darbyshire wrote again to Bancroft, declaring, “Your letter received this morning plunged me into a ‘mortal funk.’” Thankfully, Darbyshire was able to get to the bottom of the mystery rather quickly, writing that, “It seems that through some ‘hitch’ the case could not get off per ‘Teutonic’, but it went by the ‘Aurania’ on Sep. 6th and is now no doubt waiting for you [ . . . ] and is lying at the ‘U. S. Express Parcel Co’ in New York I suppose.”
There is no further correspondence between the cousins about Water Willow, but the painting, unlike so many lost Amazon packages, did eventually make its way to Bancroft. If you look closely at this photograph of the drawing room in Bancroft’s home, you can spy the painting hanging to the right of the doorway, partially hidden by a sconce. For a better view of the painting, stop by the Pre-Raphaelite gallery to see it in person. And if you’d like to learn more about Samuel Bancroft, Jr. and his collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, I invite you to join Sophie Lynford, Annette Woolard-Provine Curator of the Bancroft Collection, and me for The Bancroft Bequest: Behind the Scenes on September 13.
Rachael DiEleuterio
Librarian & Archivist
Image: Letter from Alfred Darbyshire to his cousin Samuel Bancroft, Jr., dated June 13, 1890, regarding Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Water Willow. Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Manuscript Collection, Helen Farr Sloan Library and Archives, Delaware Art Museum.