George William Joy was born in Dublin on 7 July 1844. He was the son of Dr William Bruce Joy and the brother of sculptor Albert Bruce Joy, descendants of an old Huguenot family which settled in Antrim in 1612. He was initially torn between the idea of pursuing a career as an artist or violin player. Joy settled upon art, and was educated in London’’ South Kensington School of Art and later at the Royal Academy under John Everett Millais, Frederic Leighton, Hubert von Herkomer and George Frederic Watts. From 1868, his artistic education continued in Paris under Charles-François Jalabert (1819-1901) and Leon Bonnat (1833-1922). Upon his return to England, Joy settled at Bayswater, London, where he experienced several tough, lean years, before his name became known and his work began to slowly attract the interest of clients. His paintings covered a variety of themes – genre pictures of contemporary life, historical pictures including a good Maid of Orleans (1880), classical nudes such as Truth, The Danaiads and Laodamia, and portraits. Joy’s mature work was largely concerned with the depiction of the human form in narrative and allegorical subjects from historical, Classical, literary and religious sources. His light-hearted but elaborate works on the theme of childhood, such as Thirty Years before Trafalgar: Young Nelson and his Grandmother (1883 untraced), gained a wide popularity. In his Reverie the faraway look on the young woman’s face suggests she has fallen into a daydream, or ‘reverie’. Joy is also, perhaps, having a little fun with the word, which can also refer to a gentle, sentimental piece of music, appropriate for his violin-playing sitter. Reverie was one of five works purchased on behalf of the Canterbury Society of Arts from the 1887 RA exhibition by Frederic, Lord Leighton. Joy is perhaps best-known for his iconic depiction of the final moments of General Charles George Gordon in the famous painting Death of General Gordon, Khartoum, 26 January 1885 (1894; Leeds City Art Gallery). In January 1885 Dervishes under the command of the Mahdi attacked Khartoum, capital of the Sudan and eventually overwhelmed the defences, slaughtering the defenders without mercy. Among the dead, was the charismatic General Charles Gordon. In Joy’s painting, the hero was depicted in full uniform, a revolver in his hand, standing at the top of a staircase, while a group of spear-wielding Dervishes advance towards him. The painting was Joy’s patriotic attempt to ‘awaken the conscience of the nation’ and was based on the account of a fellow named Bordeini Bey, who probably wasn’t even there. According to Bey’s story, Gordon never fired a shot, but stared contemptuously as a Dervish ran him through with a spear. Gordon was almost certainly cut down in much less heroic circumstances, but in Joy’s depiction, the followers of the Mahdi are frozen in awe before hurling their spears at him. His Rose, Shamrock, and Thistle (1889) depicting three idealised females was Joy’s personal response to the great agitation for Home Rule in Ireland, it formed the painter’s appeal for the unity of the sister kingdoms. It obtained great popularity in its reproduction in colours. Joy’s modern-life painting Bayswater Omnibus (1895; Museum of London), depicted the interior of a London omnibus and exhibited his powers of social observation at their keenest. In the farthest corner, sits a poor anxious mother of children, her foot propped on an untidy bundle; beside her, full of kindly thoughts about her, sits a fashionable young woman; next to her the City man in spats, absorbed in his paper; whilst a little milliner, bandbox in hand, presses past the blue-eyed, wholesome-looking nurse in the doorway. Painted in 1895, the picture was exhibited at the RA in the same year, at the Paris Salon in 1896 and was toured to Berlin, St Petersburg, Moscow, and the Brussels International Exhibition. Joy’s Cordelia Comforting Her Father in Prison may also be found in Leeds City Art Gallery. Joy’s output consisted principally of oil paintings, and a detailed account of his methods was included in his autobiography. He exhibited with the Royal Academy in the period 1872-1914, became a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1896 and also exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy.  His work was well received at the Salon in Paris. Tragically, both of Joy’s sons were killed in the Great War. George Joy died at Woodside, Purbrook in Hampshire on 28 October 1925.