Google Doodle honours Pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton

Today’s Google Doodle pays tribute to Jamaican-British artist muse Fanny Eaton.

During the 1860s, Eaton modelled for a number of notable painters and has been credited with challenging Victorian beauty standards. 

The timing of this Google Doodle — visible in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Iceland, and Greece — is significant. On this day in 1874, Eaton sat for life classes at the Royal Academy of London — these sessions were pivotal to the Pre-Raphaelite movement, per a Google blog post. 

The illustration was created by San Francisco-based artist Sophie Diao, who took inspiration for the Google letters from the illuminated manuscripts created by the Pre-Raphaelites. 

Eaton was born in Surrey, Jamaica in 1835, before moving to Britain in the 1840s with her mother. “In her 20s, she began modelling for portrait painters at the Royal Academy of London, and she soon captured the attention of a secret society of rising young artists called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” according to Google. “The group held Eaton up as a model of ideal beauty and featured her centrally at a time when Black individuals were significantly underrepresented, and often negatively represented, in Victorian art.” 

Simeon Soloman’s painting The Mother of Moses marked her public debut as a muse, and she later modelled for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and Rebecca Soloman, key figures in the  Pre-Raphaelite movement.  

Many people have been celebrating the doodle on social media. 

Nice one, Google.