Robert Baldwin Ross

“ Jane Lewis (in the Academy of 1864) , deserve a place among the great achievements of English painting. The two magnificent versions of 'Autumn,' of which the larger belongs to Mr. Russell Colman of Norwich and the smaller is in the Birmingham Art Gallery, are among other of the too rare examples of the artist's achievements in oil. In 1868 'Medea,' an oil painting generally regarded as one of Sandys's masterpieces, though accepted by the hanging committee, was crowded out from the Academy. ”

“ But George Richmond [q. v.] was an old friend of his family and a constant visitor to Norwich, and although Sandys repudiated any suggestion of Richmond's influence, analogies in the portraiture of both artists cannot be entirely dismissed. Sandys's first commissions were for illustrations to local handbooks such as 'Birds of Norfolk' and Buhner's 'Antiquities of Norwich.' He exhibited at local exhibitions until 1852. His first work seen at the Royal Academy was a crayon drawing of Lord Henry Loftus in 1851, when he was living in London at 21 Wigmore Street. ”

“ Their technical accomplishment is unsurpassed by that of any contemporaries. They called forth from Millais the compliment that Sandys was 'worth two Academicians rolled into one'; while Rossetti with some exaggeration pronounced his friend the 'greatest Uving draughtsman.' On a draing by Sandys of Cleopatra, Swinburne wrote a poem called 'Cleopatra,' which appeared with the wood-cut after Sandys's drawing in ’Cornhill Magazine' in September 1866. ”