Mrs Nassau Senior, Jane Elizabeth Hughes (1828-77), 1856 (oil on canvas)

Sister of Thomas Hughes, the Christian Socialist and author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and daughter-in-law of Nassau William Senior, the economist and creator of the 1834 Poor Law, 'Jeanie' Senior also devoted herself to social causes. She became the first female Inspector of Workhouses and Pauper Schools (1874), and helped the co-founder of the National Trust, Octavia Hill, with the accounts of her housing schemes. Watts was taken with her seriousness and beauty, and she became his confidante. Here he paints her in the midst of profusion, beneficently watering a simple lily of the valley.