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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

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

Sir John Everett Millais 1st Bt

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
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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

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