Eliza Crosfield

Louis Pierre Spindler 1800 - 1889

Summary

This portrait, painted when the sitter was 36, is a pendant to a painting of William Crosfield, Eliza's husband, also in the collection of Manchester City Galleries (inv. no. 1971.62). Eliza Crosfield, née Ryley, is known to have been a self-educated and kindly woman, whose nonconformist religious convictions were as strong as those of her husband. She is seated on a plush armchair upholstered with a red and gold design, wearing a long-sleeved black dress. Her wedding ring is clearly visible on her left hand and a lace handkerchief is in her right. A diaphanous lace shawl covers her elegant, sloping, bare shoulders and a delicate lace bonnet is tied her chin. Her glossy black hair is styled in fashionable ringlets on either side of her face. Eliza's posture is relaxed, her arms and hands at ease, her gaze confident and friendly. She faces to her right, in the direction of her husband, who faces to his left - a convention adopted from Dutch 17th-century marriage portraits, which placed the woman on the husband's left (lesser) side. Spindler was born in 1800 in Huningue, Haut-Rhin, now a northern suburb of Basel on the French side. He exhibited portraits and genre scenes at the Paris Salon in the 1830s, giving an address in the Sorbonne quarter of Paris. His genre scenes included subjects inspired by Lamartine and Sir Walter Scott. Spindler exhibited under the title ‘M. Spindler' (Monsieur Spindler) at the Royal Manchester Institution from 1839 to 1845, giving an address in Hulme.