Fanny Eaton: The Black Pre-Raphaelite Muse that Time Forgot The enigmatic model made her way to London from Jamaica in the early 19th century to sit for the Pre-Raphaelites, and her legacy lives on in their impactful work. Fanny Eaton was a black Victorian Londoner and, for some time, painter’s model. Born in Jamaica in 1835, Eaton was the daughter of an ex-slave and, it is suspected, a white slave owner. She came to London in the 1840s and began modelling in her twenties. It has been discovered that she was working as a regular portrait model at the Royal Academy, which is potentially where she caught the attention of the many renowned painters of the era she sat for.... In a short period, Eaton sat for John Millais, Joanna Boyce, Simeon and Rebecca Solomon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Frederick Sandys (with more continuing to be identified). Her career as a model lasted for around ten years. Much later a census finds her working as a domestic cook on the Isle of Wight at the age of 63, and another shows her back in London at the age 88, where she is known to have died. (http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8453/fanny-eaton-the-black-pre-raphaelite-muse-that-time-forgot)