Robert Louis Stevenson, and His Wife

Most children, even today, are familiar with one or more of the famous tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, for instance Treasure Island, or Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde but what did the man look like?Here below from the Crystal Springs Museum collection is a painting done by the American artist John Singer Sargent. And it is indeed a good likeness, as you shall see.

Stevenson’s reaction to the painting of himself and his wife Fanny in 1885 was as follows— “It is, I think, excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my wife in this wild dress, and looking like a ghost is at the extreme other end. All this is touched in lovely, with that witty touch of Sargent’s, but of course it looks damn queer as a whole.”