1841 - 1904 (63 years)
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Name |
Frances Mary Douglas |
Birth |
1841 |
Gender |
Female |
Death |
1904 |
Person ID |
I105309 |
My Genealogy |
Last Modified |
2 Jan 2016 |
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Notes |
- Frances had been the only child of the London surgeon Joseph Douglas. When she was 17 (1858), she went to Paris to study art at the Institute Fournier, and stayed for two years. She apparently returned to London by the summer of 1859 and was married to Thomas Vickers by the end of the following year. After their marriage the couple traveled over the years on vacations to places such as Paris and Florence taking their children with them.
She kept at her drawing, though mostly as a hobby, documenting family life in pen and ink sketches, writing little notes in perfect penmanship of what it was at the margins, as well as landscape scenes in watercolors. In James Hamilton's book "The Misses Vickers, The Centenary of the Painting" he documented some of her drawings and paintings. She seems to have encouraged her daughters in drawing and painting, giving them the same sort of education that she had. At least "Mildred" took it up, and by 1920 she was a better artist than her mother.
When Frances traveled to Paris for the Salon of 1883 for the purpose of selecting an appropriate artist for the family, she would have a fairly decent understanding of the city and its art scene. She must have been taken by the acclaimed painting of the Four Daughters of Edward Darley Boit done by a young American artist. All of Paris was abuzz by this painting, and her own three daughters deserved no less an artist.
Life at Bolsover Hill (which was their home at Sheffield) seems to have had its' moments of playfulness. Frances's mother, who was widowed, also lived with them. So if you consider the six kids, the two adults, and the widowed grandmother: Emma Douglas, it all made for quite a family. For example, papers from the Vickers Family Trust revealed a theater program the family printed in 1880 called "Theatre Royal, Bolsover Hill." This particular program proclaimed "Tuesday and Wednesday 13th and 14th January" as the dates for a particular show and even listed a "season" of three playlets written by the daughters and performed by the "Distinguished Company."
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