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National Portrait Gallery to tackle myth of male-only genius with exhibition of 'Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood'

Model Fanny Cornforth in The Blue Bower by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1856 - PA
Model Fanny Cornforth in The Blue Bower by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1856 - PA

They have gone down in art history as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: a generation of male genius beloved for its romantic depiction of beautiful, often red-headed, women.

The National Portrait Gallery will next year aim to tell the story of the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, replacing the image of women as “passive mannequins” to reveal their true influence.

The “untold” stories of 12 women now known to have had their own influence on the artists is to be told by the gallery, which hopes to put women front and centre of the “immensely creative social circle”.

An exhibition, entitled Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, will highlight female artists such as Joanna Wells, Marie Spartali Stillman and Evelyn Morgan who curators say played integral roles in the movement but have been largely omitted from history.

It will also uncover the details of the muses used for some of the era’s most famous paintings, including Elizabeth Siddal, a long-term muse of Rossetti who famously posed for John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, is “for the first time” presented as an artist as well as a sitter, a spokesman for the gallery said.

Thou Bird of God by Joanna Boyce Wells - Credit: NPG
Thou Bird of God by Joanna Boyce Wells Credit: NPG

Special focus will be paid to Annie Miller and Fanny Cornforth, who together inspired and modelled for some of the movement's most famous paintings, as well as Fanny Eaton, a Jamaican-born model whose life story has never been fully told before on this scale.

Christina Rossetti, the poet of Pre-Raphaelitism and a model for early paintings, Effie Millais and Georgiana Burne-Jones, described as providing “domestic support for their husbands’ artistic and social successes, while relinquishing their own ambitions in the process”.

A curator said the exhibition would prove the women of the time were not simply "passive mannequins" but "members of an immensely creative social circle".

The First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura by Marie Spartali Stillman, 1889 - Credit:  The Leicester Galleries
The First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura by Marie Spartali Stillman, 1889 Credit: The Leicester Galleries

The collection will feature paintings displayed by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the second half of the 19th century.

Previously unseen works including The First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura by Spartali Stillman, will be on public display for the first time, alongside as Thou Bird of God by Wells, which has not been exhibited for over 25 years.

Photographs, manuscripts and personal items will also tell of how the Pre-Raphaelite Sisters worked as models, muses and companions.

The exhibition will appear next to a collection of work by contemporary artist Elizabeth Peyton, which will focus on the painter's portraiture.

Fanny Eaton by Joanna Wells, 1861 - Credit: Yale Center for British Art
Fanny Eaton by Joanna Wells, 1861 Credit: Yale Center for British Art

Dr Jan Marsh, curator of Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, said: "When people think of Pre-Raphaelitism they think of beautiful women with lustrous hair and loose gowns gazing soulfully from the picture frame or in dramatic scenes painted in glowing colours.

"Far from passive mannequins, as members of an immensely creative social circle, these women actively helped form the Pre-Raphaelite movement as we know it.

"It is time to acknowledge their agency and explore their contributions."

Marie Spartali Stillman
Marie Spartali Stillman

Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: "I am delighted to announce these two new exhibitions for autumn 2019, both of which will be viscerally beautiful and quietly political in highlighting the vital role women have played in shaping artistic movements and genres.

"I am particularly pleased to be collaborating with Elizabeth Peyton to bring her inimitable works to the National Portrait Gallery for the first time."

The exhibition will run from October 17, 2019 until January 26, 2020 as part of the gallery's autumn schedule.