Lady Frances Balfour belonged to the highest ranks of the Scottish aristocracy. From an early age she knew the great political figures of her day, and her later involvement with church politics brought her the friendship of archbishops. Passionately devoted to Scotland, she was imbued with the Whig principles and the ardent loyalty to the Kirk that were traditional in her family. With her acute mind and trenchant style of utterance she might well have been, in a more eman- cipated age, a political leader herself. She was born in London in 1858, the tenth child of George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, who for more than twenty years was a member of Gladstone's cabinet. Her mother was the daughter of the 2d Duke of Sutherland, and her eldest brother, the Marquis of Lome, married Queen Victoria s sixth child, Princess Louise, in 1871. Much of her youth was spent at her family's two great houses in the Scottish Highlands, Roseneath Castle, Dunbartonshire, and Inverarary Castle, Argyll. In childhood she suffered from a disease of the hip joint that caused her years of pain and left her with a per- manent limp. Her most remarkable physical feature was her flaming red hair, a characteristic of the Campbell family. In 1879 Frances married Eustace Balfour (1854-1911), a nephew of Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who was leader of the Tory party and was to become Prime Minister in 1885, and the youngest brother of Arthur Balfour, a rising politician and amateur philosopher who was in due course to head a Conservative government himself. As pillars of the Tory establishment, Lowland Scots, connected with the Anglican Cecils, the Balfours embodied a set of values totally opposed to those of her own family. Nonetheless, the marriage was extremely happy. Eustace Balfour had opted for a career as an architect, a choice that puzzled his philistine father. He had studied under Basil Champneys (1842-1935), and allied himself with the men who represented the architectural dimension of the Aesthetic movement — Philip Webb, Norman Shaw, and W. A. S. Benson. Despite, or perhaps because of, a nineteen-year dif- ference in age, he had become a close friend of Burne-Jones, sharing with him the schoolboy humor that the artist never outgrew. Georgie records their visiting Brighton in 1877 (it was the occasion when Burne-Jones first set eyes on Rottingdean, where he was later to buy a house), noting that "together they visited the bazaar on the old chain-pier, and there fell in love with two owls which they brought back to London. Socrates and Eustacia we named them." 1 Not perhaps the public image of the man who that same year emerged as the high priest of Aestheticism at the Grosvenor Gallery. Meanwhile, Eustace's older brother Arthur had embarked on the more serious busi- ness of becoming Burne-Jones's patron. In 1875 he had com- missioned the Perseus series (cat. nos. 88-97) t0 adorn the music room at his London house, 4 Carlton Gardens (he was a passionate devotee of music, especially Handel), and in 1883 he would buy the definitive version of The Wheel of Fortune (cat. no. 52). Frances sat to Burne-Jones for her portrait in 1881, two years after her marriage. She herself gives the date as 1880, but the picture, which is undated, is twice recorded in Burne-Jones's own work list for the following year. She originally wanted Eustace to be painted, perhaps because W. A. S. Benson, who had trained with him in Basil Champneys's office, was cur- rently sitting to the artist for his portrait. However, as she recorded, when she sent Eustace to make the arrangements, he came back having arranged that I should sit. This was not at all to my liking or my intention, for I was wretchedly farouche in my new life and surroundings. How- ever, it was arranged and there was nothing to do but submit with grace and to hope that when B.J. had done my portrait, the gifted artist would turn his thoughts and his brush on to Eustace. The sittings were many Eustace was in attendance, and when the artist was weary of talk, he read aloud from Cranford, We all knew that work, and B. J.'s appreciation of its perfect humour was delightful to see. I think he worked slowly, and at times talked in a manner which made his brush idle. 2 The portrait captures something of Frances's "farouche" frame of mind at the time, her shyness, insecurity, painful awareness of her crippled leg, and jealousy of her independence. The picture was not exhibited during the lifetime of the artist or his sitter. [jc] 1. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 81. 2. Lady Frances Balfour, Ne Obiiviscaris (London, 1930), vol. i, p. 223. Mrs. Gaskell's novel Cranford had been published in 1853.
Fitzwilliam work list: 1881 ... portrait Lady Frances Balfour (only a single entry)