Portrait of Mrs Oriana Fanning

(Thomas Woolner)

Third daughter of Dr G. A. Richardson of Jamberoo, in 1844 Oriana (d.1905) married an English merchant, William Fanning, who had settled in New South Wales and ran a successful business importing wine, spirits and tea. Oriana was the sister-in-law of the scientist T. H. Huxley, whom her half-sister Harriet Heathorn married in 1855. Oriana had two daughters and three sons. The family returned permanently to England in 1870.

This is an interesting example of one of Woolner’s Australian plaster reliefs in a frame of contemporary, colonial Australian manufacture. The sculptor subsequently took several such plasters to London for casting in bronze (see p. 37). A similar plaster relief has appeared on the art market paired with a medallion of William Fanning (Christie’s, London, 3 July 1985, lot 230). A cast of the latter is also known in bronze, but it is not known whether the medallion of Oriana was ever cast in this medium.

Joanna Barnes Fine Arts, London

A. Woolner, p. 337