Eaton was born Fanny Antwistle or Entwhistle on 23 June 1835 in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica. Her mother was Matilda Foster, a woman of African descent, who may have been born into slavery. No father was named on Eaton's birth records, suggesting that she may have been illegitimate. Eaton and her mother made their way to England sometime in the 1840s. By 1851 she is recorded as living in London, with her mother, and working as a domestic servant. In 1857 she married James Eaton, a horse-cab proprietor and driver, who was born on 17 February 1838 in Shoreditch. Together they had 10 children.
Modelling
It was during this period of Fanny Eaton's life as mother and new wife that she began modelling for the Pre-Raphaelites. Eaton primarily modelled out of necessity; to augment her salary as a "charwoman" and provide sustenance for her 10 children. Her distinctive features were often used by artists to portray a variety of ethnicities and characters. The earliest studies done of her are pencil sketches by Simeon Solomon in 1859, and she appears to be used by other artists who were Solomon's friends, including William Blake Richmond and Albert Joseph Moore. This includes Richmond's painting The Slave, found in Tate's collection. These sketches were used as preparation for his Mother of Moses, now in the rich collection of the Delaware Art Museum. Two specific sketches from this series, depicted Mrs Eaton as the two Biblical figures of Jochabed and Miriam. The finished painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1860. In 1865, she was used by Dante Gabriel Rossetti for the figure of the one of the bridesmaids in his painting The Beloved. The painting Jephthah by John Everett Millais also shows Eaton standing on the right-hand side. Eaton appears in a black chalk drawing by Rossetti, now in The Cantor Arts Centre, Stanford University.
Impact
Although Eaton's modelling career for the Pre-Raphaelites seems to have been short, her impact has been undeniably intense. This impact is evident enough from the large body of work in which she features. In a letter to Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti praises Mrs. Eaton for her incomparable beauty and "very fine head", a not insignificant feat considering that the era is infamous for its rigid beauty standards and intense racial prejudices. Born in the British colonies and daughter of a former slave, Fanny Eaton's visual presence in artwork represented a social group outside of the traditional Victorian parameters. Her appearance in paintings and Pre-Raphaelite art focused attention onto the "Other" in Victorian society, challenging societal expectations of black women. Victorian art typically portrayed people of colour as decorative figures and they were rarely seen as models of idealized beauty. In 2018, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote, The Voice newspaper listed Eaton – alongside Kathleen Wrasama, Olive Morris, Connie Mark, Diane Abbott, Lilian Bader, Margaret Busby, and Mary Seacole – among eight Black women who have contributed to the development of Britain. In October 2019 to January 2020, she was one of 12 women included in the Pre-Raphaelite Sisters exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery.
Death
By 1881 Eaton had been widowed and was working as a seamstress. In the final years of her life, Eaton worked as a domestic cook on the Isle of Wight for a Hammersmith-based wine merchant and his wife, John and Fanny Hall. By 1911, however, Fanny is said to be residing with family in Hammersmith with her daughter Julia, son-in-law Thomas Powell and grandchildren Baden and Connie Powell. After a long life as a working-class émigrée, Fanny Antwisle Eaton died in Acton on 4 March 1924 at the age of 89 from senility and syncope.
