Iulian Boldea, Dumitru-Mircea Buda (Editors) CONVERGENT DISCOURSES. Exploring the Contexts of Communication Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2016 ISBN: 978-606-8624-17-4 Section: History and Cultural Mentalities

306

APPROACHING THE PRE-RAPHAELITE WOMEN ARTISTS

Lavinia Hulea, Assist. Prof., PhD, University of Petroșani

Abstract: Towards the last decades of the twentieth century, art historians and critics showed

an increased interest in the women artists affiliated to the Pre-Raphaelite group; various

studies approached subjects focusing on the social and professional roles played by the Pre-

Raphaelite women artists or on the model and painter Elizabeth Siddall. The Pre-Raphaelite

group included an important number of women artists, who were either sisters or daughters

of the Pre-Raphaelite men artists, or wives of artists and writers. Art historians have shown

that it is not wrong to refer to the women artists that were part of the enlarged Pre-Raphaelite

group as to the “Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood”; moreover, as far as the importance of their

artistic production is concerned, the works that have been preserved are entitled to a critical

reconsideration.

Keywords: painting, Pre-Raphaelites, women artists, artistic training, artistic experience

Between 1997 and 1998, the itinerant exhibition called Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists,

organized by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn and showed in Manchester, Birmingham,

and Southampton, displayed an important collection of art works produced by the women

artists, who were linked to the Pre-Raphaelite group.

It has been stressed that the artistic achievements of the Pre-Raphaelite women painters

have always seemed to be depreciated and considered inferior to those belonging to their male

colleagues and to other important male artists.

In order to give a positive and relevant perspective upon the importance of the Pre-

Raphaelite women artists it is necessary to rely on the works signed by them; unfortunately,

most of these works no more exist, due to various reasons: some of them were destroyed;

Iulian Boldea, Dumitru-Mircea Buda (Editors) CONVERGENT DISCOURSES. Exploring the Contexts of Communication Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2016 ISBN: 978-606-8624-17-4 Section: History and Cultural Mentalities

307

others were not attributed or were accredited mistakenly; part of them were impossible to

locate, while others were only partly finished.

The Pre-Raphaelite group included an important number of women artists, who were either

sisters (Christina Rossetti, Rosa Brett, Emma Sandys, Joanna Boyce, Rebecca Solomon) or

daughters (Lucy Madox Brown, Catherine Madox Brown) of the Pre-Raphaelite men artists,

or wives of artists and writers (Elizabeth Siddall, who married Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Marie

Spartali, who married the American artist and photographer William Stillman, Lucy Madox

Brown, who married William Michael Rossetti).

According to Elizabeth Prettejohn (2007, 71), citing Jan Marsh, it is not wrong to refer to

the women artists that were part of the enlarged Pre-Raphaelite group as to the “Pre-

Raphaelite Sisterhood”; moreover, as far as the importance of their artistic production is

concerned, the works that have been preserved are entitled to a reconsideration.

Elizabeth Siddall approached the Pre-Raphaelite group at the end of 1849, as a model for

several figures painted by Hunt, Deverell, and Millais; she was Viola, in Walter Deverell’s

Twelfth Night (1850), a red hair woman, in A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian

Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids by Hunt (1849-50), Sylvia, in Hunt’s

Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1850-51), as well as Ophelia, painted by Millais

(1851-2). She is said to have belonged either to the working class or to the lower middle class,

but it seemed that she did not earn her existence as a

professional model. She became involved with Dante

Gabriel Rossetti and, by 1852, she was posing only for

him and started learning to draw from him. They got

married in 1860, but, unfortunately, two years later she

died of an overdose of laudanum. Her work includes a

series of drawings and water-colours that are considered

to have set forth a new type of woman, who is “stronger

and bolder” than the typology of early Pre-Raphaelitism

and would dominate the later stage of the movement. The

new woman figure is strong-necked, wavy-haired, and

wide-eyed and has a more voluptuous counterpart in the

Iulian Boldea, Dumitru-Mircea Buda (Editors) CONVERGENT DISCOURSES. Exploring the Contexts of Communication Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2016 ISBN: 978-606-8624-17-4 Section: History and Cultural Mentalities

308

paintings belonging to the male painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

1. Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, Lady Clare, 1857, private collection

The Pre-Raphaelite women artists are also considered to have approached group drawing

activities as the members of the Brotherhood used to do. Among these women artists working

together, Barbara Leigh Smith (Bodichon) and Anna Mary Howitt (Watts) were already

leading personalities of the group, by 1850; they not only worked together, but also travelled

abroad to study art, attempting at coming closer to the Brotherhood’s devotion to art and

discussing ideas about the emancipation of women.

2. Barbara Leigh Smith

(Bodichon), At Ventnor,

Isle of Wight, 1856,

private collection

By mid-century, William Michael Rossetti repeatedly expressed his opinion on the

importance of taking into consideration the work of the women artists and, through his

exhibition reviews and contributions to a series of magazines, he drew attention on Siddall,

Howitt, Boyce and Smith.

Theorists also assert the idea that the Pre-Raphaelites’ rejection of academic conventions

represented a step towards women’s emancipation, owing to the fact that they still could

hardly benefit from academic education in art. It has been noticed that the women who

Iulian Boldea, Dumitru-Mircea Buda (Editors) CONVERGENT DISCOURSES. Exploring the Contexts of Communication Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2016 ISBN: 978-606-8624-17-4 Section: History and Cultural Mentalities

309

embraced Pre-Raphaelitism approached various types of artistic training and experience: they

either studied in Munich (Howitt), in Paris (Boyce), or used to work in different styles.

Nonetheless, they seemed to display a common objective in the rendering of women figures,

from mid-century onwards (for instance, Howitt’ s Boadicea – 1856, Boyce’ s Rowena

Offering the Wassail Cup to Vortigern - 1856 or Siddall’ s Lady Clare - 1854-7), abandoning

the usual graceful figure typology of the Victorian painting.

3. Anna Mary Howitt (Watts), Elizabeth

Siddall, 1854, private collection

Nowadays art historians have noticed that the

previously mentioned manner of representing women,

initiated by the Pre-Raphaelite women artists,

resulted, during the 1860s, in paintings of “single

female portraits”, showing imposing features, painted

by both men artists (Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Bocca Baciata – 1859, William Holman Hunt’s

Il Dolce Far Niente – 1859-66, or John Everett Millais’s Esther – 1865) and women artists.

The assertion differs from the one commonly supported by former authors, who considered

that such portraits were exclusively made by the male Pre-

Raphaelite artists, who presented women as temptresses.

The new typology of women, made by the women artists

associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, has been

acknowledged as an attempt at representing forceful women

meant to oppose to the ordinary Victorian taste for frail

womanhood. (Prettejohn, 2007: 84)

Iulian Boldea, Dumitru-Mircea Buda (Editors) CONVERGENT DISCOURSES. Exploring the Contexts of Communication Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2016 ISBN: 978-606-8624-17-4 Section: History and Cultural Mentalities

310

4. Joanna Mary Boyce, Gretchen, 1861,

Tate, London

In spite of the small number of works preserved, of the lack of adjacent data, and of the

marginal place commonly given to them by art history, the women artists connected with the

Pre-Raphaelite men artists appear now as an important creative force exhibiting various

training backgrounds, different personal experience or artistic practice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Marsh, J. 1987. Pre - Raphaelite Women. Guild Publishing, London.

2. Hilton, T. 1976. The Pre-Raphaelites. Thames & Hudson, London.

3. Moyle, F. 2009. “Pre-Raphaelite Art: The Paintings that Obsessed the Victorians” in

The Daily Telegraph (Review), London. www.telegraph.co.uk.

4. Nead, L. 1988. Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain.

Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

5. Prettejohn, E. 2007, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites. Tate Publishing, London.