Madox Brown’s self-portrait dates from about 1844, when the artist was in his early twenties. It was painted for his first wife, Elizabeth Bromley, whom he had married in 1841, and on her death in 1846 was given to Helen Bromley, the widow of Elizabeth's brother Augustus. When Helen died in 1886, it was returned to the artist, who gave it to his elder daughter, Lucy, and her husband, William Michael Rossetti. In her catalogue raisonné of Brown's work, Mary Bennett suggests a connection with the artist's likeness of himself in one of his most famous paintings, The Last of England (Mary Bennett, Ford Madox Brown: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale, 2010, volume 1, page 174). This self-portrait belonged to William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919), the younger brother of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and descended through his family to December 2010. William Rothenstein, who painted William Michael's portrait (National Portrait Gallery) in 1909, recalled in his reminiscences, Men and Memories (1931), how his sitter's house in Primrose Hill, 3 St Edmund's Terrace, was full of paintings and drawings by Dante Gabriel and Ford Madox Brown ... he [also] had countless small drawings by his brother put away in drawers, which he would bring out from time to time.
Given by the artist to Helen Bromley, his sister-in-law; on her death in 1886, bequeathed to: Ford Madox Brown (the artist); gifted by him to his elder daughter: Lucy Rossetti (née Madox Brown) and her husband, William Michael Rossetti; thence by descent to: Helen Rossetti Angeli; to her daughter: Mrs Imogen Dennis; by descent to 2010
London, Grafton Galleries, Works of Ford Madox Brown, 1897, number 22 London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Spring Exhibition, 1901, number 341 London, Leicester Galleries, Collected Works of Ford Madox Brown, 1909, number 2 Manchester, City Art Gallery, Loan Exhibition of Works by Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites, 1911, number 41 Manchester, City Art Gallery, D. G. Rossetti and Madox Brown: Family Portraits, 1920, number 41 London, Hampstead Central Library, Art Exhibition ... Chiefly of Works by Hampstead Artists, 1928, number 143 Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Ford Madox Brown, 1964, number 7 Manchester Art Gallery, Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer, October 2011 - January 2012, catalogue number 1; travelling to: Ghent, Museum of Fine Arts, February – June 2012 Salford, The Lowry, Lowry and the Pre-Raphaelites, November 2018 - February 2019
Ford Madox Brown, the artist's mss account book (Violet Hunt Papers, Cornell University) Ford Madox Brown, mss letter from the artist to William Michael Rossetti, 1889 (?) (Angeli-Dennis Collection, University of British Columbia, Vancouver) Helen Rossetti Angeli, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Friends and Enemies, London, 1949, illustrated facing page 42 Mary Bennett, Ford Madox Brown: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale, 2010, volume 2, page 381, catalogue number B31, illustrated