Image: The Illustrated London News, 21 May 1892.

• Title(s): Portrait of Agathonike Sabina Craies (this web site) / Agathonike, daughter of W. Craies, Esq. (New Gallery catalogue, 1892) / The Pink Frock (Alpine Club, 1956, assuming “The Pink Frock / Lent by Miss Craies” is the same work.)
• Description: “In pink frock, with blue background” (New Gallery catalogue, 1892).
• Media: ?
• Dimensions: “21 ins. by 26 ins.” (Alpine Club, London, 1956, assuming “The Pink Frock / Lent by Miss Craies” is the same work.)
• Signature/date/other text: “AGATHONIKE SABINA CRAIES” at bottom of black-and-white image, suggesting it it painted at the base of the actual work.
• History:
  • 1892 May – Exhibited New Gallery, no. 288, “In pink frock, with blue background” (New Gallery catalogue, 1892, p21); image in the The Illustrated London News, 21 May 1892, as on display in the New Gallery exhibition.
  • 1956 Mar – “The Pink Frock” exhibited Alpine Club, London, no. 35, “Lent by Miss Craise” (catalogue; private communication, assumed here to be the same work).
• Location: ?

Agathonike Sabina Craies (1885-1947), daughter of William Fielden Craies, a London barrister, and Euterpe Ionides, daughter of a wealthy Manchester cloth merchant and supporter of the arts. Agathonike would have been 6 or 7 at the time of the portrait.

Exhibited in the New Gallery, 1892, with the catalogue description “In pink frock, with blue background.” A painting, stated to have been ‘lent by Miss Craies’ called “The Pink Frock” was exhibited at the Alpine Club, London, in 1956 and is assumed here to be the same work.

… we do not like, “Agathonike, daughter of W. Craies, Esq.” (288). There seems to be in it a conscious striving after the odd and unusual, and the result is not happy. The bearer of this long Greek name is a little child, with thick masses of dark brown hair. She is dressed in a deep red frock, and faces us, her head ad bust forming almost an equilateral triangle, an unpleasing composition, which is very much accentuated by being forced out of the frame by a sapphire blue background devoid of graduations. Birmingham Daily Post, 7 May 1982, p9.

Mrs. A. L. Swynnerton’s … portrait of Mr. W. Craies’s child … is full of vivacity and childlike grace, and combines with facial resemblance the more often absent qualities of an artistic composition. The Illustrated London News, 21 May, 1892.

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Page last updated 21 May 2025.