BROWNING (ROBERT, 1812-1889, AND ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1806-1861, poets) IMPORTANT ALBUM AMICORUM OF THE BROWNINGS' ACQUAINTANCE IN ITALY, GEORGINA FORBES, their near-neighbour in Florence, containing a fine drawing attributed to Simeon Solomon, a pasted-in carte-de-visite photograph of Robert Browning signed on the leaf below by Browning ('Robert Browning, Rome, March 1860') and also inscribed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning ('Given by Elizabeth Barrett Browning') and on the following leaf a carte-de-visite photograph of E. B. Browning and her son Pen inscribed by Georgina Forbes in pen and ink over pencil ('Mrs Browning Casa Guidi Florence June 19th 1860'), together with other photographs including one of Holman Hunt (signed and dated by him above), inscriptions, signatures, musical quotations, drawings (by Simeon Solomon and others), water-colours (Lady Waterford and others), illustrated letters, poems and poetical quotations by a wide-range of writers, artists and friends from the Brownings' circle in Italy (described below), c. 70 leaves with items written or pasted on them including loosely inserted items (anecdotes about Browning and Holman Hunt and a poem about Georgina Forbes by Lord Lindsay), the album deriving from Germany to judge from printed waste in the binding, one or two leaves evidently removed, others loose, slight unobtrusive spotting on some leaves, numerous unidentified entries not described below, some clipped signatures (Ruskin), ownership inscription and various items addressed to or annotated by Georgina Forbes throughout, embossed calf, worn, clasps missing, octavo, 1858-1869
The album spans the years 1858 to 1869 and has the ownership inscription of Georgina E. Forbes dated Dresden 1858, with entries made there and later at Anvers, Edinburgh, Oxford, Rome, Siena, Old Aberdeen, and Florence. Georgina Elizabeth Forbes, who was born on 17 October 1818 and died in London on 15 October 1895, travelled and lived abroad with her elder sister Christina Francis [sic] (1810-1899). They were the daughters of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Forbes from Old Aberdeen, where they lived at 10 The Chanonry. They are listed in Robert Browning's address book as living in Casa Grazzini in Florence and mentioned in a letter by Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Ann Bruen [7 July 1860 -- see references to the photographs of the Brownings below]. The sisters are described in Katherine Trail, The Story of Old Aberdeen, 1937, as: 'two delightful ladies of the old school, cultured and artistic, who spent their winters in Italy and brought home to the little Old Town a breath of a wider air.' There are three portraits of young women (two clearly of the same person) in the album which are probably of the Misses Forbes.
Carte-de-visite photographs include those mentioned above of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the first inscribed below by both of them being by the Roman photographer Alessandri (stamped on the verso and another example reproduced in G.E. Wilson and A.J. Armstrong, 'Robert Browning's Portraits...', Baylor University Browning Interests, Series Fourteen, 1943, p. 72). The photograph of E.B. Browning and her son is reproduced by Vivienne Browning in My Browning Family Album, 1979, p. 55. It is almost certainly to the present photographs that E.B. Browning refers in her letter to Mary Ann Bruen written from Florence [7 July 1860]: '...I send you the photographs -- except Robert's, his being at present exhausted, -- though I teaze him to get others from Rome -- I could not send it to Mrs Eckley, who asked for "the photographs", meaning of course all. Miss Forbes seems to have spread the fame of these -- I, (like the devil & the emperor Napoleon) am not quite as black as I am sun-painted, but I rebel less against the divine Apollo than against some earthly portrait-painters -- Except for the blackness too, there's no great reason for complaint -- & if there were -- ee how it has been made up to me in my Penini!...'. Other photographs are of the American historian James Lothrop Motley (inscribed), Odo Russell, Secretary of the Legation at Florence (1829-1884, inscribed), the painter James Giles and Holman Hunt.
Pencil and pen and ink drawings include four sketches and portraits (one perhaps a self-portrait, another with a long inscription) by [Theodore] Valerio (1819-1879, French artist); a study of a child reading a book by William Charles Thomas Dobson (1817-1898, English painter); a charmingly illustrated letter by J[ames] Giles (1801-1870, landscape painter), and an illustrated card by Patrick W[illiam] Adam (1854-1929, Scottish painter).
Water-colours include 'Winter' and a religious figure by Lady Waterford (Louisa Anne, Marchioness of Waterford, 1818-1891) both attributed in the handwriting of Georgina Forbes, the head of a girl in red washes evidently by Simeon Solomon with the outline of another portrait on the verso, and a scene depicting the assaulting of nuns by G[eorg] Cornicelius (1825-1898, German historical painter).
Special mention should be made of a tipped-in leaf bearing the signatures of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, their constant friends and correspondents William Wetmore Story (1819-1895, the American sculptor) and his wife Emelyn (d. 1893), Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864, author of Imaginary Conversations), and Hamilton Gibbs Wilde (1827-1884, American portrait, genre and landscape painter, who painted a portrait of Pen Browning), dated July 1859 at the Storys' Villa Belvedere in Siena.
The signatories (some with inscriptions and some on inserted leaves) include Longfellow; the English sculptor John Gibson (1790-1866); the artists Simeon (1840-1905) and Rebecca (1832-1886) Solomon, John Phillip R.A. (1817-1867), Julius Hubner (1806-1882, German historical painter), [Johann] Fr[iedrich] Overbeck (1789-1869, religious and portrait painter), J[oseph] Noel Paton (1821-1901, English artist) and J[ean] Gudin (1802-1880); Thomas Combe (1797-1872, Oxford printer); Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882, German novelist); Elizabeth M[issing] Sewell (1815-1906, author); Mary Somerville (1780-1872, scientific writer); T[homas] R[omney] Robinson (1792-1882, astronomer); Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin); Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876, American actress); John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895, Professor of Greek at Edinburgh); Charles C. Perkins (1823-1886, American art critic); and Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821-1891, German historian).
In the 1860s Simeon Solomon was one of the most influential young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and was a close friend of Swinburne, whose poems 'Erotion' and 'The End of the Month' were inspired by Solomon's drawings. He was in Italy in the company of Oscar Browning. By 1873 he headed the avant-garde symbolists with Rossetti, but was arrested on a charge of homosexuality and his career was ruined. He subsequently led an irregular life, relying financially on relatives and friends and after 1884 lived intermittently in St. Giles's Workhouse. His work has regained increasing respect in recent years.
(Browning to his American Friends, edited by G.R. Hudson, 1965; The Aberdeen Directory; Katherine Trail, The Story of Old Aberdeen, 1937; The Records of Old Aberdeen, edited by A. M. Munro, 1909)
£5,500