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Lottie of Paradise Walk by William Orpen

Charlotte Annie Stafford (née Macrow) was born in Chelsea in 1883. Better known as Lottie Stafford, she sat as a model for the best known contemporary artists of the period 1904 -1910. These included William Orpen, William Nicholson, Walter Sickert, Augustus John and George Lambert. During her time as a model, Lottie lived with her husband and children in Paradise Walk, Chelsea which is recognised as being slum dwelling at the time. At least two of Orpen’s paintings are known simply as Lottie of Paradise Walk.

Personal Life

Lottie was born 07 April 1883 in Wood Street, Chelsea. Her parents were Walter Charles Macrow and Annie Susannah Macrow (née Scott). Her father was a house painter at the time of her birth.

Lottie married John Christopher Stafford as a teenager and the couple had seven children. Their children were, in order of birth – Elizabeth, Lilian, Florence (1903 – 1982), Molly, Biddy, Ivy and John.

John was gassed in World War I and needed to take an outdoor job, changing from a carman to a drayman.

During the early years of the marriage, Lottie's family lived at 2 Paradise Walk in Chelsea. This narrow street was the slum behind Tite Street – The Street of Wonderful Possibilities and the residence of Wilde, Whistler and Sargent. The area was documented by Devon Cox and reviewed in the Guardian by Anthony Quinn as below;

‘He (Wilde) was already aware of the dangers prowling outside. At the back of Tite Street ran an alley, Paradise Walk, consisting of slum tenements from which – as Wilde’s son Cyril recalled – “the sounds of brawling rose nightly”. That mixture of bohemian glamour and brooding violence would inform the composition of Wilde’s first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray’

Life was not easy for Lottie during her time in Paradise Walk. As Marguerite Steen writes in her biography of Nicholson: “Poor Lottie; she had children every twenty-five minutes, and came, as is the wont of her kind, on hard times”.

They would later move to Collingwood Street and then to Christchurch Street. Lottie was pre-deceased by her husband John and spent her final years living with her two unmarried daughters, Ivy and Biddy, at 58 Christchurch Street. She died aged 70 on 29 August 1953 in St Stephens Hospital. The cause of death was given as cerebellar haemorrhage due to hypertension

Artist Model (1904 – 1910)

What made Lottie such a compelling model? The feature most often referred to is her ‘swan neck’ as well as her naturalness. She was much in demand as a model, though she declined to pose in the nude.

“She had a remarkable physical presence. Her arms, her body, her neck and the turn of her head, all seemed to obey the purest rules of artistic posture, natural and statuesque at the same time. No matter what the disguise, she was a goddess, a Juno figure, robust, laughing, subtle and enormously warm.”

Bruce Arnold gives the following insight in his work on Orpen;

“Lottie had a beautiful neck, which Orpen emphasises so well in almost all his paintings of her. But it is principally the ease and relaxation of her whole body that so impressed the painter. His daughter, Kit, remembers Lottie’s complete physical and mental self-assurance. The way she stood or sat, the look in her eyes and the turn of her head, were always entirely natural, and yet at the same time always memorable. A cockney, with a ready tongue and a great capacity for capping any story, she was never at a loss for words. This presence she had come across vividly in the paintings of her. Her sensuality is pervasive; it is also subtle. There is the strange mixture of wife, mother and mistress in her personality”

Lottie was a chirpy character as noted by Marguerite Steen in her biography of Nicholson:

Whatever the conversation, it always ended with the same formula:

“Well, I must be puttin’ on me ‘at an’ get back to Paradise!”

Work with William Orpen

Resting by William Orpen

Lottie began modelling for Orpen in 1904, by which time she was in her early twenties, working as a washerwoman and already a married mother of three. Orpen painted her in the setting of the laundry but also as a flower seller in Lottie of Paradise Walk and a servant girl in The Idle Girl. The following is taken from the Bruce Arnold biography of Orpen;

“By one of those curious pieces of good fortune that occasionally befell the artist, Orpen, at the end of 1904, found a model who fulfilled exactly his needs at that time, a woman whose rich personality vibrates from every canvas he painted of her. She is an archetype in painting. Her name was Lottie. She was the washerwoman living in the slum cottages of Paradise Walk who had rinsed Orpen’s drawings out of his damask tablecloths.”

Backing this up, is the study of Orpen by Konody and Dark – William Orpen: Artist and Man, (Seeley Service, London, 1932)

“Coupled with this was Orpen’s good fortune and inspired choice of a number of remarkable models, both male and female, he found at that time. Foremost among these were Mr. Green and Lottie Stafford of Paradise Walk. The result was several series of significant and mature works.

From his study of Velázquez, Orpen derived economy in composition, and the simple but grand gesture that creates drama in the depiction of mundane subjects. Such qualities are prominent in his genre works of the next years. Foremost is the series (begun in 1904) modelled by Lottie Stafford, a Cockney washerwoman of remarkable physical presence. Orpen painted her repeatedly as a sensual, earthy, and motherly Juno figure, exuding easeful self-composure even amid the rigours of toil. Besides the two pictures entitled ‘Lottie of Paradise Walk’, the series includes ‘The wash house’ (National Gallery of Ireland), ‘Resting’ (Ulster Museum), and ‘The idle girl’.”

The work Resting is on display in the Ulster Museum

“The model used for 'Resting' was one of Orpen’s favourites, a young washerwoman called Lottie Stafford who lived in a decrepit street called Paradise Walk. The bored resignation of the young washerwoman, whose voluptuous beauty is unnoticed in the squalid setting of the steamy laundry, is reminiscent of the displaced young women who appear in Manet’s bars and music halls.” – Ulster Museum

Work with William Nicholson

The relationship between Nicholson and Lottie Stafford is recorded by Nicholson’s partner – the author Marguerite Steen - in her biography of Nicholson (William Nicholson, London: Collins, 1943)

Steen writes:

“Another model who came to him at The Pheasantry was the immortal Lottie, the original of Lottie of Paradise Row and of the equally well-known Girl with the Tattered Gloves. Lottie was a sunflower grown in a slum; she sat for all the contemporary painters – William (Nicholson), Orpen, Sickert, John – and her comments on her employers were frequently illuminating.”

There are two known works by Nicholson that have Lottie as the sitter. The sophisticated Mrs Stafford of Paradise Row (1906) which is now in a private collection. And the Girl with the Tattered Glove (1909), which is a highlight of the Fitzwilliam’s permanent collection and prominently displayed in its room of 20th-century British Art.

The Fitzwilliam’s notes have the sitter described as a ‘Cockney laundress’ called Lottie Stafford who also sat for Augustus John and Walter Sickert. ‘The world weary, somewhat melancholic, sitter stares resignedly into space as she inconspicuously displays her gloves, damaged goods: a metaphor, perhaps, for her life?’

Work with George Lambert

Lottie models for George Lambert in Lotty and a Lady (1906). This is on display in the National Gallery, Victoria, Australia. The notes for the painting are as follows;.

"The model for the lady was Thea Proctor . The model for ‘Lotty’ was Lottie Stafford, a Cockney washerwoman living in the slum cottages of Paradise Walk in Chelsea. She was a popular model on account of her naturalness, total self-assurance and subtle sensuality. She had a ‘swan neck’ which greatly appealed to William Orpen, and which he emphasised in the series of works he painted around 1905 – including The wash house 1905 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) – that deal with working-class themes. Lottie also posed for British artists William Nicholson and Walter Sickert"

Paintings

• Resting by William Orpen (1905) – Ulster Museum
• The Wash House by William Orpen (1905) – National Gallery of Ireland
• Lottie of Paradise Walk by William Orpen (1905) – National Gallery of Canada
• Lottie of Paradise Walk by William Orpen (1905) – Leeds Art Gallery
• The Idle Girl by William Orpen (circa 1905) – Guinness family art collection
• Mrs Stafford of Paradise Row by William Nicholson (1906) – Private Collection
• Lotty and a Lady by George Lambert (1906) – National Gallery of Australia
• Lottie and the Baby by William Orpen (1907) – Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
• The Girl with the Tattered Glove by William Nicholson (1909) – Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge

See also

Cover of Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys published by Penguin Books Ltd originally in September 1990

Irish artist Martin Driscoll (1939 – 2011) painted Washerwoman, a modern adaptation of The Wash House by Orpen.

A poem entitled Lottie Stafford’s Neck by Irish poet Tony Curtis. Published Literature in Contexts by Peter Barry

Reference section

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