Louise Jane Jopling (née Goode, later Rowe), 1878

Louise Jopling (1843–1933) was a prominent portrait painter, teacher and suffragist. Jopling consistently advocated for women’s right to education on equal terms to men. She established a painting school for women in 1887, and in 1901 became one of the first women admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists.

This picture – in which Jopling holds a ‘defiant, rather hard’ expression, as she described it – was painted for her husband in John Everett Millais’ London studio. Jopling sat ‘with all the knowledge of a portrait painter’, which enabled the portrait to be painted quickly, requiring just five short sittings. Jopling noted in her 1925 memoir Twenty Years of My Life: 1867–87: ‘We had great discussions as to what I should wear. I had at that time a dress that was universally admired. It was black, with coloured flowers embroidered on it. It was made in Paris.’ The painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880, where James McNeill Whistler declared it ‘superb’.

National Portrait Gallery, London Purchased with help from the Art Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, 2002
© National Portrait Gallery, London