Louisa Ruth Herbert

Though he had seen Ruth Herbert on stage in 1856 and been much struck by her beauty, DGR seems to have met the actress only in mid-1858: in his diary entry for 2 June 1858 George Boyce notes that “R had induced, thro' intervention of Tom Taylor, Miss Herbert (rightly Mrs. Crabbe, though she doesn't live with her husband) to sit to him for a picture he had commenced”. The picture was Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee. She sat for him often during 1858-1859. The experimental watercolour in the Bancroft collection is especially notable. An interesting drawing made in July 1858 represents Miss Herbert seated amidst a group of admiring men.