Joanna Boyce Wells NOW PUBLISHED

UP TO  30 JUNE, these volumes are available from publisher Boydell & Brewer for £50 plus postage.   Go to     Boydell & Brewer website    and QUOTE BB711

The Boyce Papers: The Letters and Diaries of 
Joanna Boyce, Henry Wells and George P. Boyce

The first full edition of the correspondence, between three artists Joanna Boyce, her

brother George P. Boyce and Henry Wells, whom she eventually married, will be published in April 2019. Edited by Sue Bradbury with Richard Barber, it spans the period 1845 to 1861, and covers artistic life in both Paris and London.

This correspondence, between three artists Joanna Boyce, her brother George P.

Boyce and Henry Wells, whom she eventually married, dates from the period 1845 to

1861. They were all friends of Rossetti and his circle, but in addition Henry and

Joanna both studied in Paris, and Joanna wrote extensively about her time there,

training with Thomas Couture. She wrote for The Saturday Review as well as painting a number of very interesting and much admired pictures.

Her brother George established himself as a successful watercolourist and member of

the Old Watercolour Society, having been encouraged both by David Cox on his Welsh

sketching expeditions, and by Ruskin, whose letters advising him what to paint in

Venice are included here.
Henry Wells was primarily a portrait painter. At first he specialised in miniatures, and was commissioned to paint Mary, princess of Cambridge by Queen Victoria. There are vivid accounts of visits to country houses to carry out commissions from their owners.

The three wrote constantly about techniques of painting and about the new colours

that became available at this period, and about their visits to exhibitions both in Paris

and London. They all contributed to the Royal Academy and other exhibitions. In

addition, there is the fascinating  story of Joanna's and Henry's courtship and

marriage, at first encouraged and then viciously opposed by Joanna's recently

widowed mother.

The correspondence survives only in an unpublished transcript made in the 1940s, as

the originals were all destroyed in a bombing raid on Bath during the second world

war. Excerpts from George P. Boyce's diaries were published in the 1930s, and the

present edition contains a large amount of new material.

Contents

General Introduction

Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855

Letters and diaries 1855

Letters and diaries 1856

Letters and diaries 1857

Letters and diaries 1858

Letters and diaries 1859

Letters and diaries 1860

Letters and diaries 1861

Epilogue: 1862 onwards

Essays by Alice Street

Reviews

G. P. Boyce's Diaries, 1848-1875

Appendix I: The Short Memoir

Appendix 2: List of entries not in The Diaries of George Price Boyce

Bibliography