E-GALLERY

Thorne Photo's

Convent-educated Kathleen Irene Ashburnham Kelly - whose father Charles Kelly lived at Conisbrough - was born in 1854 and was aged just 16 when she set off for India to marry Isaac Newton, a surgeon in the Indian Civil Service.
On her way to India she met and fell for the charms of a Captain Palliser, and after a night of passion she fell pregnant.

Kathleen told her husband about the affair, but only after they were married. Mr Newton promptly started divorce proceedings and Kathleen returned home to England. A few months later, in 1871, 17-year-old Kathleen gave birth at her father's Conisbrough home to daughter Muriel Violet Mary.

Kathleen and her infant daughter went to live with her sister Mary and her husband, at their home in St John's Wood, London, close to Tissot's home.

One day Kathleen went out to post a letter and met Tissot. They fell in love and in 1876 she moved in to Tissot's house. On March 21, 1876, she gave birth to another illegitimate child, a son, Cecil George.

It is not known who fathered Cecil, but Tissot biographer and BBC TV Antiques Roadshow expert Christopher Wood doubts that Tissot was the father.

Tissot's domestic arrangements would not cause any fuss now, but the idea of him living with an unmarried mother of two illegitimate children shocked and scandalised strait-laced Victorian society and as a result Tissot and Kathleen were shunned.

Yet the couple spent six happy years together and Kathleen inspired some outstanding Tissot pictures.

According to one Tissot expert, the late Michael Wentworth: "For Kathleen Newton, whose chaotic romantic life had already taken her to India and left her with an illegitimate daughter, Tissot represented a second chance of a kind only too rare in Victorian England.

"Tissot, for his part, seems genuinely to have loved her and to have found inspiration in her gentle beauty that would last a lifetime."

Tissot produced Mavourneen, Portrait of Kathleen Newton 14 years after the 1863 composition of a popular Irish song, Kathleen Mavourneen. Mavourneen is an Irish term for "darling" or "my dear one".

Copy from Wikipedia, Sheffield Star

We're looking for new features, articles, and news stories written by budding Doncastrians - send to us here.