Fanny Matilda Antwistle (later Eaton) was born in St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica, on 23 June 1835, to a formerly enslaved mother and a father of European or mixed descent.
Fanny Matilda Antwistle — later known as Fanny Eaton — was born on 23 June 1835 in St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica, just one year after the formal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean and during the transitional 'apprenticeship' period that followed. Her mother, Matilda Foster, is understood to have been a formerly enslaved woman of African descent, while records of her father's identity are less certain, with some sources suggesting European or mixed heritage.
Her birth came at a pivotal historical moment: the British Empire was reshaping its Caribbean colonies in the wake of emancipation, and Jamaica's society was undergoing profound social change. Fanny's early years in Jamaica would have been shaped by this transitional world, though few details of her Jamaican childhood survive in the historical record.
She emigrated to England as a young woman, arriving in London by the mid-1850s, where she would go on to become one of the most striking — and historically significant — Black models of the Victorian era, sitting for numerous artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her birth in colonial Jamaica and subsequent life in Victorian Britain make her a uniquely important figure for understanding the intersections of race, empire, and art history in the nineteenth century.