Louise Jopling - Early Life

Early Life

Louise Goode was born in Manchester, fifth child of railway contractor T. S. Goode. She married at seventeen to civil servant Frank Romer. The Baroness de Rothschild, a connection of Romer's, encouraged Louise to pursue and develop her art. In the later 1860s, she studied in Paris with Charles Joshua Chaplin and Alfred Stevens, and first exhibited her work at the Salon. She entered works into the Royal Academy shows, 1870–73 (as Louise Romer). After Romer's 1872 death, she married Vanity Fair artist Joseph Middleton Jopling in 1874, who in 1888 was best man at Whistler's wedding to Beatrix Godwin.

She achieved fair success in her career: her painting Five O'Clock Tea was sold for ₤400 in 1874. Her Five Sisters of York was shown at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, and her The Modern Cinderella at the Paris Exposition of 1878. Yet she was not immune to the gender discrimination of her time: in 1883 she sought a portrait commission for 150 guineas, but lost it to Sir John Everett Millais, who was paid 1000 guineas for the same project.

She joined the Society of Women Artists (1880) and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (1891); she became the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists (1901). During the years of her marriage with Jopling, she became the primary earner of the family. It is said that, "She found this responsibility weighty and stressful, necessitating constant production, regular sales and a continual search for commissions and clients. In 1879, despite her own illness and that of her son Percy, she produced eighteen works."