Harriet Pettigrew
Birthname: Harriet
Alias: Hatty, Bessie, Hetty, Hettie
Nationality: English
Date of birth: 7 March 1869
Place of birth: Portsmouth
Date of death: March 1953
Place of death: Croydon, Surrey
Category: model
Identity:
Harriet (mostly known as Hetty) Pettigrew was a professional model in London. She was the oldest daughter of William Pettigrew (b. 1819), a cork cutter, and Harriet Davis or Davies (1831-1918), a needleworker: they had married in 1853 and had thirteen children in all. In the 1861 census her name is given as 'Harriet A.', and in 1871 as 'Harriet S.' Hetty's younger sisters Rose Amy and Lily were also models.
She was the model and mistress of the artist Theodore Roussel. Hetty had a daughter, Iris, who was born in 1900, and was described in the 1911 census as Hetty's niece.
Life:
Hetty came to London around 1884 when she was just fifteen years old. She and her sisters Rose Amy and Lily were also models. They first posed for John Everett Millais' An Idyll of 1745 (Lady Lever Art Gallery) in 1884. Millais described them as 'three little gypsies... with the characteristic carelessness of their race, they just came when they liked'. The three girls also posed for Rudolph Onslow Ford, William Holman Hunt, Frederic Leighton, Edward Poynter, Val Prinsep, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer.
Hetty, like her sisters, posed for Whistler. Around 1890 Whistler painted Hetty's portrait, Portrait of Hetty Pettigrew y435, and also composed a number of pastels of her. The Arabian m1273, modelled on Hetty, was one of Whistler's most erotic drawings. Rose described Hetty as having 'soft straight hair, like a burnished chestnut, glorious skin, and big hazel eyes'. She also describes her sister as having a cruel wit and in this way being Whistler's 'perfect match'.
The sisters also posed for photographs by Linley Sambourne (1844-1910), which are in the Library of the Royal Borough of Kensington.
Hetty later became a sculptor (in 1901 and 1911 she gave her occupation as 'Artist. Sculptor'); she exhibited her work in, for instance, the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.
Bibliography:
Finlay, Ian Hamilton, Avenue Studios, Fulham Road : Rose Pettigrew, Dunsyre, 1990; Laughton, Bruce, Philip Wilson Steer, 1860-1942, Oxford, 1971; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 ; MacDonald, Margaret, 'Pettigrew sisters', in Jiminez, Jill Berk (ed.), Dictionary of Artists' Models, Chicago, 2001.
Walker, Dave, Category Archives: 'Edward Linley Sambourne, Mr Sambourne’s studio', The Library Archives, August 29, 2013, website blog.
Pettigrew, Neil, 'The Beautiful Miss Pettigrews', The British Art Journal, vol. 15, no. 1 (Autumn 2014), pp. 3-15, on jstor at https://www.jstor.org/stable/43490696.
