Marie Spartali Stillman

Marie Stillman (née Spartali) (Greek: Μαρία Σπαρτάλη; 10 March 1844 – 6 March 1927) was a British member of the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Of the Pre-Raphaelites, she had one of the longest-running careers, spanning sixty years and producing over one hundred and fifty works. Though her work with the Brotherhood began as a favourite model, she soon trained and became a respected painter, earning praise from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others.

Marie Spartali
Marie Spartali, 1868,
photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Born
Marie Spartali

(1844-03-10)10 March 1844
London, England
Died6 March 1927(1927-03-06) (aged 82)
London, England
NationalityBritish
Known forPainter

Early life

Marie Spartali was the eldest child of Michael Spartali, a wealthy merchant, principal of the firm Spartali & Co and Greek consul-general based in London from 1866 to 1879. He had moved to London around 1828, where he married Euphrosyne Varsini,[1] the daughter of a Greek merchant from Genoa.[2] The family split time between their home at Clapham Common in London and their country home on the Isle of Wight. In the city, Spartali’s father was fond of lavish garden parties where he invited up and coming writers and artists. It was at one such event where Marie would first be introduced to the art world.[3]

Marriage and death

In 1870, Spartali met American journalist and painter William J. Stillman. The couple had previously posed for Rossetti in his famous Dante pictures, though it is not certain if that is how they first met. Interestingly, although her husband was an artist himself, Marie never sat for him as a model. The pair married in 1871 against her father's wishes, causing a rift that would never fully heal.[4]

As her husband was a foreign correspondent for The Times, the couple divided their time between London and Florence (1878-1883), and later Rome (1889-1896).[4]

The couple had three children of their own who were raised alongside William’s other three children from a previous marriage.  Marie Stillman died in March 1927 in Ashburn Place in South Kensington, four days shy of her 83rd birthday, and was cremated at Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey. She is interred there with her husband.

Self-Portrait, 1871, Delaware Art Museum.
How the Virgin Came to Brother Conrad in Offia and Laid her Son in his Arms, 1892. Watercolour, gouache, and gold paint on paper.
Hypatia, Spartali as model.[5] Originally from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Art and career
Mariana (1867–1869)
Love's Messenger, 1885, exhibited in the Delaware Art Museum

Introduction to the Art World

Known for their Greek heritage and beauty, Spartali along with her cousins, Maria Zambaco and Aglaia Coronio, were known collectively among friends as "the Three Graces," after the Charites of Greek mythology (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia). Beauty aside, Marie was very tall, and cut an imposing figure- in her later years dressing entirely in black- and purposefully attracting much attention throughout her life.[3][6][7]

In the house of the Greek businessman A.C. Ionides at Tulse Hill, in south London, Marie first met the artist James McNeill Whistler and playwright Algernon Charles Swinburne. The meeting made quite the impression, for Swinburne was reported to have said that "She is so beautiful that I want to sit down and cry".[3][8]

The Pre-Raphaelites

In 1864, Whistler introduced Spartali to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.[8] She began sitting for him and when Spartali expressed interest in learning to paint he referred her to Ford Madox Brown. Over the next five years the pair developed a close, almost familial, relationship.[4] Of his models, Brown said that Spartali was “the most intellectual,” and maintained a deep respect for her work, chronicled in their correspondence. By 1870, Spartali had decided to pursue art professionally and with the help of her mentor made her first sale for 40 guineas.[4]

Example of modeling works: Brown; Burne-Jones (The Mill); Julia Margaret Cameron; Rossetti (A Vision of Fiammetta, Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice, The Bower Meadow); and Spencer Stanhope.

Style

Because of her close links to the Brotherhood Marie Stillman is often identified as part of the second generation of the movement. According to Henry James, “She inherited the traditions and the temper of the original PRs...but she has come into her heritage by virtue or natural relationship. She is a spontaneous, sincere, naive Pre-Raphaelite.”[8]

There is, however, some academic debate as to whether this is entirely accurate. For example, Robert de la Sizeranne of Le Correspondant noted that this new generation of Pre-Raphaelites, Marie Stillman among them, had enough in common with the Symbolists to be considered one.[9] Marie Spartali Stillman, could be considered a candidate for Symbolism because her figures "... have an immobility, a silence, a pose almost suspended, a slow hesitation in their rare movements, which make them resemble something like sleepwalkers.” [8][9] Rossetti himself credited Spartali for her ability to infuse her figures with emotion, thereby elevating them to something more than mere images.[8][9]

Other influences and career impacts
Dante at Verona (1888)

In 1873 both her young daughter, Euphrosyne, and her sister Christina fell ill. Stillman wrote to Ford Madox Brown that she was preoccupied with their health and felt "too weak to paint." She later clarified that whenever she did work she found herself depicting her sister in a grim state. Because of this, she took some time off painting, however Madox-Brown always speculated that she stopped because of her husband's jealousy over her successful career and continued relationship with himself.[4]

Alongside her husband, Stillman lived in Florence, Italy for a number of years. She took great inspiration from the city around her which can be seen most prominently in her subject matter. Being in the city of Dante Alighieri, she depicted numerous scenes from the Divine Comedy, focusing in particular on the romance between Dante and Beatrice.[4]

Though separated from her peers, Stillman maintained her correspondence with the PRB and Rossetti in particular who shared her love of Dante.[8][4]

Farm Scene
First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura (Church of Santa Chiara at Avignon), 1889

Exhibitions

The subjects of her paintings were typical of the Pre-Raphaelites: female figures; scenes from Shakespeare, Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio; also Italian landscapes. She exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1875, then at the Grosvenor Gallery and its successor, the New Gallery; at the Royal Academy; and at various galleries in the eastern USA, including the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Stillman exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. A retrospective show of her work took place in the United States in 1982, and another one at the Delaware Art Museum in 2015. The latter show transferred to the UK, opening at the Watts Gallery at Compton, Surrey from March until 5 June 2016.

Commemoration

In January 2023, English Heritage announced that a blue plaque would be unveiled later that year on a house in Clapham, where she took her first steps in becoming an artist.[10] The plaque was installed in April 2023 at The Shrubbery, 2 Lavender Gardens, Clapham, her family home when she was a young woman and where she later painted and prepared for exhibitions.[11]

Fiammetta Singing, 1879

Works (Incomplete)

David Elliott lists more than 170 works in his book. The following are the better-known works, as determined by their mention in other books which discuss the artist.

The Pilgrim Folk, 1914
  • How the Virgin Mary came to Brother Conrad of Offida and laid her Son in his Arms (1892; Wightwick Manor, National Trust, UK)
  • A Rose from Armida's Garden (1894)
  • Love Sonnets (1894; Delaware Art Museum)
  • Beatrice (1896; Delaware Art Museum)
  • Portrait of Mrs W. St Clair Baddeley (1896)
  • Beatrice (1898; Private collection)
  • The Pilgrim Folk (1914; Delaware Art Museum)
Madonna Pietra degli Scrovegni, 1884

Notes
  • Dyson, Stephen L. (2014). The LAST AMATEUR The Life of William J. Stillman. New York: State University of New York.
  • Marsh, Jan; Pamela Gerrish Nunn (1998). Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 131–135. ISBN 0-500-28104-1.
  • Stillman, William James (1901). Autobiography of a Journalist. London: Grant Richards.

References
  1. "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38009. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Vasos Tsibidaros. Oi Ellines stin Anglia (The Greeks in England). Athens: Alkaios, 1974.
  3. Robertson, W. Graham. Time Was. (1931) pp.12–13
  4. Elliot, David B. (2005). A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage: The Lives and Works of Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club
  5. Scanned from Colin Ford's Julia Margaret Cameron: 19th Century Photographer of Genius, ISBN 1855145065
  6. Their Trackless Way, A Book of Memories, Adele Le Bourgeois Chapin, H. Holt, 1932, p. 182
  7. Pre-Raphaelite Portraits, Andrea Rose, Oxford Illustrated Press, 1981, p. 106
  8. Waterman, Amanda B. Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism: The Final Generations, University of Washington, 2016.
  9. Casteras, Susan (1995). The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy to Symbolism. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 39.
  10. "2023 Blue Plaques". English Heritage. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  11. "Marie Spartali Stillman | artist and model | blue plaques". English Heritage. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  1. Waterman, Amanda B. Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism: The Final Generations, University of Washington, 2016.
  2. ^ Dimitrios SPARTALI & Christina (Ioannes) Mavrogordato". www.christopherlong.co.uk. Retrieved 23 July 2017
  3. ^ Vasos Tsibidaros. Oi Ellines stin Anglia (The Greeks in England). Athens: Alkaios, 1974.
  4. ^ Robertson, W. Graham. Time Was. (1931) pp. 12–13
  5. Elliot, David B. (2005). A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage: The Lives and Works of Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club
  6. Dyson, Stephen L. (2014). The LAST AMATEUR The Life of William J. Stillman. New York: State University of New York.
  7. Casteras, Susan (1995). The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy to Symbolism. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 39.
  8. ^ Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (23 July 2017). "The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Chelsea years, 1863-1872, prelude to crisis : 1863-1867". Boydell & Brewer. Retrieved 23 July 2017 – via Google Books.
  9. ^ Nichols, K. L. "Women's Art at the World's Columbian Fair & Exposition, Chicago 1893". Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  10. ^ POETRY IN BEAUTY: THE PRE-RAPHAELITE ART OF MARIE SPARTALI STILLMAN, website
  11. ^ Collins, Maxine (9 November 2015). "Marie Spartali Stillman: The female artist time forgot". BBC. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  12. ^ "Marie Spartali Stillman: The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo". ArtMagick. Archived from the original on 8 March 2016.

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