Sir Edward John Poynter, Bt., P.R.A., R.W.S.

Commissioned by the sitter and thence by descent to the present owner

The Worcestershire industrialist and politician Alfred Baldwin (1841-1908) was Edward Poynter’s brother-in-law and also a supportive friend, who bought several pictures from the young artist. Poynter and Baldwin married two of the remarkable MacDonald sisters, Louisa and Agnes, on the same morning in August 1866 at the fifteenth century church of St Peter in Wolverhampton. It was a small wedding as the Reverend George MacDonald, the father of the brides was unwell and stayed at home with his wife nursing him and few of the Poynter family attended. Louisa and Agnes’ sister Georgiana, wife of Edward Burne-Jones, did not attend for reasons that are unclear, choosing to go on holiday instead. ‘Louie’ and ‘Aggie’ were devoted to one another and the severing of the sisters' bond when they married was a source of great anxiety for both of them, neither being of robust health. Neither of their marriages were blissfully happy as both husbands worked so hard that they had little time for their wives or children. In 1867 Louie gave birth to her son Stanley and it is said that after his birth the family cook took the new-born infant up three flights of stairs where she stood on a stool and held him aloft in the hope that he would rise high in the world (a Worcestershire superstition) – the child grew to become Prime Minister.