Sara Page

Sara Page (1855 – 1943)

Sara Page was born in Moxley, Staffordshire, the fourth child of Samuel Page, a successful timber merchant, and his wife Sara Wells Page, the daughter of a wealthy local ironmaster. Her parents died in the 1870s leaving her and her siblings financially independent. From 1884-1891 she studied drawing at Wolverhampton School of Art and then travelled to Italy to continue her artistic education, making copies in oil after originals in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. She was photographed in Venice by the photographers Fratelli Vianelli.

In 1892, having been encouraged by Sir Frederick Leighton, Page went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian, under Bouguereau, Tony Robert-Fleury and Gabriel Ferrier. Male and female students received the same training which included drawing from live models, the sexes taught in separate ateliers. One of the ateliers for female students was at 5 rue de Berri. Page wrote that she ‘worked under the best French artists at the Académie Julian and found there both guidance and much interest in the companionship of many different nations, and as all the students (about 500) competed in efforts for the medal in painting and sculpture, life was animated’. Page received a medal for portrait painting.

In 1893 she exhibited at the Société des Artistes Français. The present portrait was presumably executed around this time and the board on which it is painted was from a local shop of artist’s materials, a short walking distance from the Julian which is still in the rue Berry today. There are two similar pastel portraits of young women in the collection of Poole Museum by the artist, one of which is on a board with the same label from the Papeterie F. Dupré.

Sara Page travelled to Brittany and in 1897 moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, an area popular with artists, and studied with Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois (1852-1923) and Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929) who had a studio at 73, boulevard Bineau. Page found a studio where she worked in rue Perronet. In 1913 she moved to 37 rue Charles Laffitte where she lived for thirteen years, also painting miniatures (In January 1910 The New York Tribune mentioned her exhibit at the George Petit Gallery of ‘a bright little group of Dutch children’,She also received a lengthy good review in Revue modern des arts et de la vie, 28 February 1921.

Page continued to exhibit her work in London, her agent Percy Young, a publisher, and importer and manufacturer of artists’ materials in Gower Street. She showed at the Society of Women Artists and the Royal Academy. Towards the end of her life Page returned to England and continued to exhibit at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

There are three works by her in the collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery and two in Poole Museum. Almost ninety works by her have been identified showing that she worked in different genres and techniques in the academic style.