Fanny Blood
British artist, teacher (1758–1785)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frances Blood (1758 – 29 November 1785) was an English illustrator and educator, and longtime friend of Mary Wollstonecraft.
1758
Fanny Blood | |
|---|---|
A plate from Flora Londinensis | |
| Born | Frances Blood 1758 |
| Died | 29 November 1785 (aged 26–27) |
| Burial place | British Cemetery, Lisbon Portugal |
| Spouse | Hugh Skeys |
| Children | William Skeys (d.1786) |
Early life
Blood was born in 1758, the daughter of Matthew Blood the Younger (1730–1794) and Caroline Roe (c. 1730–1805).[1]
Career
Blood was paid by the botanist William Curtis to paint wildflowers for his book Flora Londinensis. This created an income for her family. Blood was engaged to Hugh Skeys, a wine merchant of Dublin, but her fiancé had gone to sea to establish money that would finance their marriage.[2]
Fanny Blood and her brother, Lieutenant George Blood (1762–1844), were good friends with Mary Wollstonecraft. They met in 1774 after introductions by common friends, the Clares.[2] As Wollstonecraft's husband William Godwin wrote, Wollstonecraft "contracted a friendship so fervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of her mind".[3]
Blood, together with Mary Wollstonecraft and Wollstonecraft's sisters, Eliza and Everina, opened a school, first in Islington, which soon failed, and then in Newington Green.[4] The school was combined with a boarding house for women and their children.[5] On 24 February 1785 Blood married Skeys. When Blood married and left the school, Wollstonecraft left too, to take care of her friend. In their absence the second school failed as well.[6]
Blood died in childbirth in Lisbon, Portugal, on 29 November 1785.[1] She was buried in the British Cemetery in Lisbon with her son William Skeys.[7] Wollstonecraft was deeply affected by Blood's death, which in part inspired her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788).[8] Wollstonecraft named her daughter, Fanny Imlay (1794–1816), after her friend.