Jenniffer Williams' Blog Post 2

Valued Image and Vilified Labor:

Women as Artists and Models in the 19^th Century

  While Pre-Raphaelitism was described by its founders as a Brotherhood, there were several notable women who were associated with and made significant creative contributions to the movement.  However, their work as artists was often unrecognized or undervalued at the time of production.  In present day, much of the work is now unavailable to be studied due to later owners' disregard for the works, or the works being destroyed by the artist herself due to lack of success[1].   The reasons for the limited success of these woman artists varied from restricted access to education and artistic training, to their work being attributed to a male artist to whom they were related, such as a brother or a husband, to a lower market value for art works produced by women[2].  However, women also faced the additional constraints on their ability to have successful careers as artists due to the societal expectations that women should conduct their lives solely in the private sphere, while men could exhibit their work in public and achieve recognition and success.  Additionally, when women, such as Elizabeth Siddall, posed as artist's models, their work as models earned them negative reputations, while their images earned the male artists who painted them success and recognition.

         As mentioned above, Elizabeth Siddall was a model for several of the artists in the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.  In particular, John Everett Millais' Ophelia (1851-1852) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix (1870) are well-known representations of Siddall that are counted among the artists' best-known works.  However, rather than benefiting Siddall, working as an artist's model instead resulted in her being labeled as working class and described as “under ban” for certain social engagements and “not a lady” by a middle class woman artist Barbara Bodichon[3]. In this way, Siddall's work and her appearance in public sphere through her representation in art earned her notoriety while her image earned fame for the male artists.

        In addition to working as a model, Siddall also produced her own artwork.  However, she still remains best-known as a Pre-Raphaelite model and wife, rather than an independent artist[4].  While her image was made public through the work of male artists, these roles placed her more firmly in the private sphere, thus limited her ability to be successful as an independent artist.  Her work was even described at one point as “under Rossetti's influence” and as having “no original creative power”, due to the instruction of her mentor and husband[5].  Again, her role as a wife has led to an interpretation that she was incapable of independent creativity, due to the expected role of women to remain in the private sphere and rely on men for support.  While some similarities in style exist between Siddall and Rossetti's work, the two artists remain distinct from one another, despite critiques that say otherwise.  This is made apparent in a comparison between Siddall's Self Portrait (1854) and Rossetti's Regina Cordium (1860), both representing Siddall's image.  Siddall's Self Portrait presents her image as fully dressed with an upright posture, open eyes, and while the figure engages in direct eye contact with the viewers, she appears reserved and austere.  Rossetti's painting, on the other hand, depicts Siddall in a more sensuous manner, with bare shoulders, a forward posture, and a downward gaze that does not directly address the viewer.  While Rossetti's representation of Siddall was successful in the public sphere, her own representation of herself was not, showing that women's labor in the public sphere was not as highly valued as men's representations of their images.

Elizabeth Siddall, Self Portrait, 1854.

Dante Rossetti, Regina Cordium, 1960.      

          Other women involved in the Pre-Raphaelite movement were also limited due to their domestic roles or needs to stay out of the public sphere.  The poet Christina Rossetti, for example, turned down an invitation to join the original Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood because she felt it was improper to be “on display” as a woman in Victorian society[6].  On the other hand, her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, exhumed the body of his wife in order to retrieve poetry so that it could be published, an act which contributed even more attention to his work in the public sphere.  Joanna Boyce, another woman artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, died from complications of childbirth, a result of one of the responsibilities of her domestic role which limited her success as an artist.

       In order to be successful as an artist, one is required to have a public presence through, at a minimum, the display of artwork, and in some cases a public persona, such as that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Women, however, were often not valued, and in some cases were vilified for taking a role in the public sphere as artists and models, which is an additional reason why women artists in the 19^th century may not have achieved the same recognition as their male counterparts.

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[1]    Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (London: Tate Publishing, 2000), 69.

[2]    Ibid.

[3]    Deborah Cherry, “Elizabeth Siddall: Woman in the Relay of Gaze,” in Painting Women: Victorian Woman Artists (London: Routledge, 1993), 189.

[4]    Griselda Pollock and Deborah Cherry, “Woman as Sign in Pre-Raphaelite Literature: The Representation of Elizabeth Siddall,” in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art (London: Routledge, 1988), 91.

[5]    Pollock and Cherry, “Woman as Sign,” 97.
[6]    Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, 71.

Image links:
http://lizziesiddal.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/selfportrait-1853-54.jpg    http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/reginacordium-siddal.jpg