Images of Agnes Loudon 

Agnes Loudon died at the age of 32. Bea Howe published images of Agnes and of her husband (Markham Spofforth) in her book Lady with Green Fingers.  It is possible that the portrait survives in a Spofforth attic.

The portrait of Agnes in Howe's book resembles the illustrations in Agnes Loudon's book, Tales of School Life and the Frontispiece to her story, The Falsehood. It is about a rich family in Egypt that sent their daughter (Laura Merville) to a boarding school in England). The illustrations are by John Absolon RI (1815–1895). He was born in Lambeth, the son of a tailor and military clothier. Encouraged by his father, by the age of fifteen he was earning a living as a portrait painter, and two years later he was working as a theatrical scene-painter, contributing the figures to stage sets at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Between 1832 and 1835 he lived in Paris. Over the following decades he travelled in France, Switzerland and Italy, and completed commissions to produce illustrations for editions of the poems of James Beattie and William Collins. Among Absolon’s most important projects was the series of ten pictures completed in 1868 for Guy’s Hospital in London, unveiled at the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, which comprised scenes of harvesting, haymaking, dalliance and churchgoing. Absolon was also a favourite of Queen Victoria, who organised performances of Shakespeare’s plays at Windsor with Absolon providing the painted scenery. He exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy and the New Watercolour Society, of which he became a member, as well as at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolors, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and Royal Society of British Artists. Examples of Absolon's figure studies can be seen in the V&A and British Museum collections.