Though she was but four years old when she showed up at a fancy-dress ball in London in 1879, blue-eyed Edie Ramage melted the hearts of her beholders. Reason: she wore a frilled white mobcap and dress, pink sash and shoes similar to those made famous by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his portrait Simplicity. So charmed was her uncle, Graphic Founder and Editor William Luson Thomas, that he commissioned Painter John Everett Millais to do a portrait of Edie in that same costume. Thomas paid a fancy $5,000, but used the finished canvas in the Graphic, made 600,000 color reproductions and...
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