1891, Mourning Dress for The Widow

“The Widow” or “The Waterloo Widow” was first shown in 1891 at the Royal Academy show in London with the title of “The Waterloo Widow” where the memory of the Battle of Waterloo was still widely remembered.  In 1892 the painting was sent to New York for the Academy of Design annual show.  Millet being sensitive in America that the Civil War was more relevant the title was shortened to just “The Widow.”

Unfortunately, the painting was partly damaged in a fire and has lost some of its original dimensions, but otherwise is still intact.

The model for the widow was Millet’s wife Lily, and the family still owns several of the items on the sideboard in the background and the sideboard is currently owned by a private club in Boston.  The dress was donated by Lily in 1912 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and their Costume Institute collection.

Millet often used the same people as models, or local residents of his Broadway, England home.

Some photographs of the modeling sessions for these paintings are known to exist, and it is clear to see that Millet was very concerned about getting the appropriate dress of the time period correct.  He is known to have had an original period costume collection numbering more than 2,000 pieces.  Some of the period costumes were donated to museums or universities by Lily following Millet’s death in 1912.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute has 26 pieces, including original Napoleonic period dresses, that they included in a special exhibition of Napoleonic dress, the mourning dress, Lily wore as model for Frank when he painted The Widow.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/The_Age_of_Napoleon_Costume_from_Revolution_to_Empire_1789_1815

Millet was widely known as the worlds expert on Greek/Roman dress. He gave presentations both in America and Europe.  A database, GenealogyBank, has approximately 2,000 clippings about Millet lectures.