(b Kingston, Ont., 1859; d Newlyn, Cornwall, 1912). Wife of (1) Stanhope Forbes. She studied briefly at the South Kensington School of Art in London, then at the Art Students' League in New York (c. 1877-80), mainly under William Merritt Chase. After this she travelled around Europe with her mother, studied with Frank Duveneck and J. Frank Currier in Munich and spent several months in the artists' colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. A Zandvoort Fisher Girl (1884; Penzance, Penlee House Mus. & A.G.) was painted while spending the summer in Zandvoort with a group of Chase's students. In 1885 she moved to Newlyn in Cornwall and became involved with the Newlyn school, marrying its leading practitioner, Stanhope Forbes, in 1889. A frequent subject of her paintings is children, for example School Is Out (1889; Penzance, Penlee House Mus. & A.G.), and, like the other Newlyn artists, her paintings are characterized by a plein-air naturalism. Jean Jeanne Jeannette (c. 1892; Manchester, C.A.G.) was inspired by a second trip to Brittany in 1891 and shows the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage. A specially constructed mobile studio enabled Forbes to work from nature in all weathers. Her later paintings are more reminiscent of second-generation Pre-Raphaelites, depicting young girls, sometimes in medieval costume, in outdoor settings.

Part of the Forbes family

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.