Talk:Frances C. Fairman

Moving Background/context section from article to talk page
Frances C. Fairman, an only child, was born into a financially comfortable family, capable of paying for her art training. She grew up on a farm where she had the opportunity to observe animals. Her father was Samuel Creed Fairman (Lynsted 1791 – Lynsted 24 April 1858), a farmer and magistrate of Millers House, Lynsted, who owned 340 acres and employed 21 men and five boys. Samuel Creed Fairman also owned Union Mill, a smock mill which stood in 1.5 acre at Lynsted until the early 1870s; it had two pairs of stones to grind flour. Storye book (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Fairman's mother was Christian or Christiana Gosselin (Birchanger ca.1798 – Kensington 28 September 1873). She married Samuel Creed Fairman on 30 January 1836 at Faversham. Christiana's father (F.C. Fairman's grandfather) was General Gerard Gosselin (1769 – 11 June 1859) of Mount Ospringe in Kent. Her uncle (F.C. Fairman's great-uncle) was Admiral Thomas le Marchant Gosselin. Christiana's grandfather (Frances C. Fairman's great-grandfather) was the Guernsey-based artist and engraver Joshua Gosselin (1739–1813). Storye book (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Christiana and Samuel Creed Fairman are buried in a vault under a transept of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Teynham. Storye book (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Please do not remove sections without discussion on talk page
Before removing a whole section, please discuss it here so that you can find out why the section is there in the first place.

All biographies of high-achieving individuals beg the question as to whether any part of their achievement was assisted by nature, nuture, something else, or a mix. Jack Kennedy is a good example of that. Knowing his family background helps us understand the man and his achievements, however many other contributory factors there may be.

In the modern Western world and especially in the US, family background has come to mean less in the making of a career, because social divisions such as class, trade or income have lessened considerably. However in 19th-century England and Ireland, class, trade and income were far, far more influential, and everybody knew that those things mattered. In Fairman's case, growing up on a farm might be influential to an animal artist, because she could learn to draw animals from a young age. She could watch them move, and learn how animals can express themselves with whole-body-movements, not primarily facial expression. You have to live with animals to learn that fully.

The family had money, both within the household, and in the hands of relatives who lived in big houses. If Fairman had not had that sort of background, it is far less likely that she could have studied painting in Paris. Without that study and without making that sort of artistic social connection, she would have had far less chance of achieving such a high-ranking customer base, whose existence in turn would have sold more pictures to others who could afford them.

Many families, then and now, discourage their children from studying art on the grounds that it is difficult to make a living that way. However this family would have known that they were descended from Joshua Gosselin, and that fact may have been influential in the family decision to allow Fairman to study in Paris. We have to remember that in the 19th century most unmarried women remained under the influence of their family even in adulthood.

Of course this information about the usefulness of the background section of the article has not been included in the article, because WP requires cited facts only. So we put the cited facts in there and allow the reader to reach their own conclusion. Without that basic information about her financially successful relatives and her farm background, the reader cannot begin to have a rounded picture of this biography subject.

When we write about 19th- or early 20th=century subjects, we understand that we cannot know everything about them, and also that their lives were lived differently and seen differently then. Much that the newspapers would tell us today, would be omitted from public reportage in those days. So the best thing we can do with the biography of someone like Fairman is to tell all that we can about them, leaving out as little as possible, in the hope that some details will lead to further research - then one day we may understand her better.

So please discuss on the talk page before unilaterally deciding to remove whole background sections. Creators of articles tend to include material which they believe is relevant to the subject. If you do not see that relevance, it may well be because you do not yet understand it. Storye book (talk) 09:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In the absence of reliable secondary sources that detail these connections, unfortunately this presents concerns with regards to appropriate balance. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have removed the maintenance tag because the section does not unbalance the article, and it does not affect neutrality. With regard to the wording of the tag, the Background section's interest is not limited to a particular audience. There are now explanations in the section so that a US reader may understand and take interest in it. The original content of the section is of interest to the British reader who may already understand it. Contrary to the above comment, the section does contain a number of secondary sources, including newspapers, books and webpages. Yes, there are also sources which are considered primary by some WP editors (such as General Record Office indexes and UK Govt England censuses), but that can be covered by secondary sources added later, when they become available. Those sources are neither misused nor hidden. By removing this section, or large chunks of it, we would certainly unbalance the article, because we would no longer be able to see how on earth this 19th-century and early 20th-century woman could have risen so high in her field. Yes she had skill, but she would have needed more than that in those days. We cannot afford to lose information from this article just because someone thinks that a British artist's background would be of no interest to Americans. Storye book (talk) 16:20, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree. We are spending considerable space on material that is not about her directly, and where the sourcing doesn't seem to exist to draw the conclusions being made. For example, the article now claims that "Frances C. Fairman's background gave her barely-sufficient social class to allow Queen Victoria and the Royal Family to allow her into the periphery of their lives as an animal artist" - what source says this? For that matter, what sources actually about her detail the information in this section? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't like putting explanations into the text either, but I felt obliged to do so as you did not understand the importance of background in a biography of a middle-class 19th-century English person. I have deleted the comment about class, and moved the bit about the studio into the Royal commissions section. As I said above, today many people in the West do not understand the importance that family background once had, to one's acceptability into society. Most of the classic British 19th-century novels show evidence of the importance of parentage, especially in respect of the middle classes. At that time, almost the first thing that middle class or aristocratic people would ask each other when first introduced, would be the question of parentage. Fairman certainly lived in that world, especially since she had dealings with royal women who had to be careful about whom they were seen to have dealings with. Fairman would not have been allowed to have such direct dealings with royal women, let alone have the use of Princess Louise's former studio in Buckingham Palace, if she hadn't been descended from a family which included an admiral, a general and a respected artist.
 * Perhaps there is a misunderstanding about the use of ancestry in an article, here. In certain previous generations, amateur genealogy in the Western world was misused and gained a bad reputation. I remember old spinsters who did it because they wanted to be descended from someone grand, they wanted to hide skeletons in cupboards, and worst of all they wanted to deify their own ancestors. The result was a piece of work which could include a pack of lies and all the interesting scandal missed out. Today it's different. Amateur genealogists are learning proper historiographical technique, and many soon diversify into local history and other histories of interest to the general public. It is highly possible that many of our valued historians on WP have learned at least some of their trade years ago by doing their own family history.
 * What it comes down to, is that today, the ancestry of a WP biography subject is not about "doing family history" for its own sake in a self-serving and un-historiographical manner. it's about helping to understand the subject in an all-round manner. If the subject's family were rich, then that subject could afford to train and that's how they acquired their skill. Without that rich family they would probably not have achieved what they did. If the WP biographical subject came from a poor family or if they were an orphan, but they still achieved great things, then we can admire them for their success in spite of a challenging start in life. In that way, their family background is certainly all about them. But please note I'm talking about 19th-century UK here.
 * I'll repeat what I wrote above about the detail of Fairman's family, because you do not yet understand it. 1. Fairman was an animal artist. She grew up on a farm. Farms in those days all had animals, because whether agricultural or stock farms or both, they needed working horses, they needed dogs for herding or guarding, and all farms had feral cats or farm cats, attracted by mice and rats who in turn were attracted by animal feed and grain stores. Children draw animals. It doesn't take a genius to work out that growing up on a farm is all about Fairman's later career because she became an animal artist. Not everyone who grows up on a farm becomes an animal artist. But all animal artists have to have a long-term and close experience of animals of some type. A townie with no close experience of animals couldn't do it. 2, Fairman had an admiral and a general in her family. If you check the citations you will see that those men did good work for their nation - enough to impress anyone whom Fairman was introduced to, and enough to make Fairman socially acceptable in a minor way, in those days in England. That is certainly directly about Fairman, because it was part of her pathway to acceptance as an artist working within Buckingham Palace. Skill was a fine thing, but it was not enough. You had to be socially acceptable too. 3. Fairman had an artist in her family. That artist was well-enough known for the Gosselin family to have been aware of it. We don't know whether that fact made it more likely that Fairman's parents would morally and financially support her career training, but it's worth putting the information out there so that future researchers can consider the possibility. 4. Fairman's parents and relatives had sufficient money to pay for her training. Without that money she would not have had the skill, technique and artistic connections to do her job to that standard. So you see, everything that has been included in the Background section is directly about Fairman. Storye book (talk) 11:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You do not yet seem to understand my objection: the conclusions presented are not made by secondary sources, and the sources available about the subject do not detail her background. Thus the section is trending into original research, and is not proportional. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes I understand you. There are secondary sources in that section, as I have already said: newspapers, magazines, webpages. Fairman's background is her family's background, and the sources detail that, therefore it is about her. I am currently sending for the BMD certificates which will connect her parents and herself together, and can quote from them, but they are expensive as a set at £11 each, and I have been hesitating to do that. However, now that you have put me under pressure I have sent for them. The GRO is also under pressure due to the pandemic due to staff being on furlough during the lockdown, so there may be some delay in their arrival. I shall add the information as it arrives. The section is necessary in order to put the subject into context. As for proportion, well the section is only two paragraphs in a long article - so it is neither disproportionate nor non-functional. A 19th-century English woman has to be put into her context so that readers will not read her as a modern American woman. Storye book (talk) 17:19, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * No secondary source presented says anything about the significance of having an admiral and a general in her family. No secondary source presented indicates that the burial place of her parents is important to an understanding of her. Same for the fact that someone said her grandfather had good manners, and so on. These are intricate details about her extended family, and disproportionate to what is presented in "the body of reliable, published material on the subject" (WP:BALASP, my emphasis). Nikkimaria (talk) 20:35, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have removed the comment about General Gosselin. The class significance of the admiral and general, in the context of her dealings with the royal family, of which I've already explained the significance, should be obvious. We don't need a citation for that. The burial place is useful for future researchers, because the gravestones will be evidence of the relationship of the parents to each other and of their dates, if not of Fairman as well. If Fairman had come from context of industrial towns only, and poverty only, there would be no contesting the relevance of evidence of those towns being industrial or of prevailing poverty. You would not need anything beside the fact that she lived there. This is context in exactly the same way, showing in this case that there was money to pay for her art training, and sufficient class for some sort of acceptability as an animal artist using Princess Louise's old studio at Buckingham Palace. I think that the objection here is excessive. WP rules are to be used with common sense. This is a nearly new article, and new articles expect development, not destruction. There is something to be built on here, and that something is context. Due to the tag, the article will now have to be withdrawn from DYK. Wouldn't it have been better to wait until after DYK before adding the tag? Now WP will lose the DYK entry. What a pity. Storye book (talk) 21:19, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The class significance of the admiral and general, in the context of her dealings with the royal family, of which I've already explained the significance, should be obvious. We don't need a citation for that. It's not obvious, and if it's believed to be significant to this subject, then yes we will need a citation for it. The burial place is useful for future researchers, because the gravestones will be evidence of the relationship of the parents to each other and of their dates. But that is not the purpose of this article. If one or both of the parents are notable, they can have their own articles to house details like these; if they are not, it does not belong. Due to the tag, the article will now have to be withdrawn from DYK... Now WP will lose the DYK entry. That is not a requirement of the DYK process; the article could run with the tag in place, and doing so might help draw other perspectives into this conversation. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:48, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I have already requested removal from DYK. The tag would get a lot of unwarranted attention from people not primarily interested in the article content. I know what happens, I've been there. The section, if not parts of the rest of the article as well, would be diminished or even decimated. I want to improve the article, not see it destroyed. I have removed it from DYK to give me that chance of improving it, while I'm still working on it. I believe I can find a suitable citation for the significance of class (represented by the admiral etc.) to Fairman's career, but I need to think about it. Please don't expect me to work under pressure. Now please could I have a rest from this hounding, so that I can take time to work properly to improve that section? Storye book (talk) 21:59, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * @ As you see, I have removed the disputed section to the talk page for future improvement away from the article. I have done this so as to be able to remove the tag away from the attention of a certain type of editor, not interested in the subject of 19th-century British artists, who may be delete-happy. I have had bad experiences in the past from that type of editor, who has insisted that artists' commissions are not art (Michelangelo's commissions?) and collaborations are not art (Gilbert & George?), and would not let me replace examples of commissions and collaborations which they had deleted. The Fairman article has now been removed from the DYK queue (see DYK nomination discussion above). I am hoping that this step of removing the Background section to the talk page might allow the article to remain sufficiently stable for it to be re-entered into the DYK approved page, subject to DYK admin approval of course. Please would you kindly let me know your opinion? Thank you. Storye book (talk) 16:12, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As I said previously, I do not think removing the section was necessary for the DYK process. I would not object to it being run at DYK in either state. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:16, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Your Prompt reply is appreciated. I shall let them know, and see what happens. Storye book (talk) 16:45, 14 February 2021 (UTC)