Frances Sally Day

She was the eldest daughter of Frances Rachel Day and Hamilton Smith Day, a portrait painter and photographer. She was born on 15 September 1815 and baptised at St Giles in the Fields, Holborn, on 4 February 1816. At that time, her parents were living at 38 Wellesley Street, St Pancras. Frances Sally Day had well over forty portraits and miniatures accepted for Royal Academy exhibitions between 1838 and 1858. One portrait was of Sheikh Ali Bin Nasser “envoy from his Highness the Imaum of Muscat” who had sent a ship full of gifts to the Queen. Another portrait was praised for its “brilliant handling of flesh tones”. In 1840 Day won the Silver Isis Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for a “portrait bust”. Until the mid-1850s she gave her address to the Royal Academy as 41 Camden Street, as did her father who had three portraits shown. Her address from 1856 to 1858 was 14 Piccadilly, an address used for the family photography business of Hamilton Smith Day & Son, but she was living elsewhere in 1861, the year when a partnership with three photographer siblings - Louisa, Thomas and Arthur - was dissolved “so far as regards T. Day”. In 1871 she was living with two sisters, a brother and a nephew, all artists according to the census, at 46 Albemarle Street, the address where her father had died the previous year.