le Fay' (1864), one of the finest, and 'Cassandra' (1868). Two oil portraits, those of Mrs. Anderson Rose (1862) and Mrs. Jane Lewis (in the Academy of 1864), deserve a place among the great achievements of English painting. The two magnificent versions of 'Autumn,' of which the larger belongs to Mr. Russell Colman of Norwich and the smaller is in the Birmingham Art Gallery, are among other of the too rare examples of the artist's achievements in oil. In 1868 'Medea,' an oil painting generally regarded as one of Sandys's masterpieces, though accepted by the hanging committee, was crowded out from the Academy. The violent protests in the press, among which Swinburne's was pitched in his characteristic key, resulted in the picture being hung on the line in the following year, 1869. He continued to contribute to the Academy until 1886; and after 1877 to the Grosvenor Gallery, where he showed altogether nine works. But after ' Medea ' Sandys practically abandoned the medium of oil except for a few portraits.
From an early period Sandys had achieved a high repute among patrons and critics by his crayon heads, of which one of the best is 'Mrs. George Meredith' (1864). In 1880 he received a commission from Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for a series of literary portraits, which include Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, J. R. Green, and J. H. Shorthouse. They are hard and unsympathetic in treatment, though Sandys retained his old correctness and precision. In his last year he executed a series of crayon portraits of members of the Colman family in Norwich, representing five generations. In other works of his late period he succumbed to a sentimental and barren idealism.
Intemperate and bohemian modes of life seem to have atrophied his powers. He was a constant borrower and a difficult if delightful friend. His relations with most of his associates were chequered. In 1866 he accompanied Rossetti on a trip through Kent (Rossetti, Letters, ii. 189), but a quarrel followed. Rossetti considered that too many of his pictorial ideas were being appropriated by Sandys (W. M. Rossetti, Reminiscences, p. 320). The breach, which was healed in 1875, prejudicially affected the qualities of Sandys's imagination and technique. A friendship with Meredith lasted longer. Sandys often stayed with the novelist, who mentions him in a letter as a guest at Copseham Cottage in 1864. He was then painting the background of 'Gentle Spring,' shown in the Academy of 1865. At one time Sandys consorted a good deal with gipsies, one of whom, Kaomi, was a favourite model. She appears in Rossetti's 'Beloved,' and is the original of Kiomi in Meredith's Harry Richmond.' Sandys was a great ’bruiser' and the hero, by his own account, of a good many brawls.
In 1898 Sandys was elected an original member of the newly formed International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and through Mr. Pennell renewed his acquaintance with Whistler. In the intervals of long disappearances he was sometimes seen at the Cafe Royal in Regent Street, London, in company with Aubrey Beardsley and younger artists.
In appearance Sandys was tall and distinguished : in later life not unlike Don Quixote. He was always neatly dressed, whatever his circumstances, a spotless white waistcoat and patent leather boots being features of his toilet. Personal charm and the lively gift of the raconteur to the end reconciled friends to his embarrassing habit of borrowing. He died at 5 Hogarth Road, Kensington, on 25 June 1904, and was buried at Old Brompton cemetery. No tombstone marks the grave. The cemetery register records his age as seventy-two.
The earliest oil painting by Sandys was a portrait of himself, painted in 1848. This was offered for purchase to the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery and rejected by them. Mr. Fairfax Murray owns a miniature of him (aged six) by his father, Anthony Sands. Most of his pictures and drawings are in private collections in London and Norwich or in America. There is no example of Sandys's work at the Tate Gallery. At the Birmingham Art Gallery, besides the small version of 'Autumn,' are superb examples of his black and white drawings from the Fairfax-Murray collection. Five drawings are in the Print Room of the British Museum; two are in the Norwich Museum (Nos. 354, 377); a portrait of Mr. Louis John Tillett, M.P., hangs in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich. Some of his works, chiefly drawings, were collected at the Leicester Galleries in London in March 1904, and after his death there was another exhibition at Burlington House in the winter of 1905.
