Biography of three artists closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites whose letters give a vivid insight into the dramas of their personal life. Joanna, George and Henry tells the story of the intertwined lives of three young artists in the 1850s. When the transcript of the material on which this group portrait is based came to light ten years ago, no one could haveimagined the drama within. They were family letters: letters from a young woman to her brother and later to her suitor - of interest chiefly because all three were painters, and all were active participants in the youthful Pre-Raphaelite revolution that swept England in the 1850s. They turned out to be a revelation - giving not only a comprehensive picture of what it was like to be an artist in the mid-19th century, but containing within them a powerful family drama and a most unusual love story. It is a love story, moreover, told largely from a woman's point of view. Joanna Boyce's dedication to her art was absolute: she studied in Paris under Thomas Couture and had her first painting exhibited at the Academy when she was only 24. She was headstrong, self-critical, opinionated and teasing - "an artist with her pen as well as her brush". She died tragically young. Between them, Joanna, her brother George and suitor Henry Wells knew all the artistic luminaries of the day, among them Ruskin, Millais and Rossetti (with whom George shared a great deal, including mistresses). They wrote to each other not just about art, butabout their friends, their favourite books, their travels, their illnesses, their passions and their quarrels. In this book, they tell their story in their own vivid words - a story which portrays the age in which they lived andthe powerful drama of their emotional and professional lives.

The first full edition of the correspondence, between three artists Joanna Boyce, her brother George P. Boyce and Henry Wells, who she eventually married. It dates from the period 1845 to 1861, and covers artistic life in both Paris and London, including the Pre-Raphaelites. This correspondence, between three artists Joanna Boyce, her brother George P. Boyce and Henry Wells, whom she eventually married, dates from the period 1845 to 1861. They were all friends of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite circle, but in addition Henry and Joanna both studied in Paris, and Joanna wrote extensively about her time there, training with Thomas Couture. She wrote for The Saturday Review as well as painting a small number of very interesting and much admired pictures. Her brother George established himself as a successful watercolourist and member of the Old Watercolour Society, having been encouraged both by David Cox on his Welsh sketching expeditions,and by Ruskin, whose letters advising him what to paint in Venice are included here. Henry Wells was primarily a portrait painter. At first he specialised in miniatures, and was commissioned to paint Mary, princess of Cambridge byQueen Victoria. There are vivid accounts of visits to country houses to carry out commissions from their owners. The three wrote constantly about techniques of painting and about the new colours that became available at this period, and about their visits to exhibitions both in Paris and London. They all contributed to the Royal Academy and other exhibitions. In addition, there is the extraordinary story of Joanna's and Henry's courtship and marriage, at first encouraged and then viciously opposed by Joanna's recently widowed mother. The correspondence survives only in an unpublished transcript made in the 1940s, as the originals were all destroyed in a bombing raid on Bath during the second world war. Excerpts from George P. Boyce's diaries were published in the 1930s, but the present edition contains a considerable amount of new material.