Elizabeth Lily Sumner Portrait of a girl

Signed and dated l.r.: E. Sumner/1899, black chalk

25 x 17.5 cm.; 9 7/8 x 6 7/8 inches

Provenance
Private collection U.K. until 2023

The artist of the work was known as Lily, the oldest daughter of the Rev. John Henry Robertson Sumner and his second wife Elizabeth Anne

(née Gibson). The family lived at Kelbarrow near Grasmere in the Lake District.

A collection of papers relating to the Sumner family are in the possession of the Cumbria Archive Centre. It includes numerous sketchbooks

by several members of the Sumner family including several of the Lake District and also of European subjects.

Her sister Maggie Sumner (1859–1919) was a correspondence pupil of John Ruskin and his letters contained detailed instructions aimed at improving her drawing. She was the only female artist to contribute to the first five issues of The Yellow Book, the fashionable magazine edited by Aubrey Beardsley. Her work was very detailed and meticulous in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. One of her sketchbooks, depicting landscapes surrounded by floral borders, has an inscription gifting it to her sister Lily for Christmas 1875 and is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (Karen Taylor, British Women Artists 1780- 1890, 2020, no. 18).