Marie Spartali Stillman
Encyclopedia
Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, later Stillman (10 March 1844 – 6 March 1927), was a British Pre-Raphaelite
painter of Greek
descent, arguably the greatest female artist
of that movement
. During a sixty-year career she produced over one hundred works, contributing regularly to galleries in Great Britain and the United States.
and Greek consul-general based in London
from 1866 to 1882. He had moved to London around 1828. In London he married, and Euphrosyne (known as Effie, née Varsami, 1842–1913), the daughter of a Greek merchant from Genoa
.
The family lived in their Georgian country house with a marble-pillared circular hallway, on Clapham Common
, known as ‘The Shrubbery’ with a huge garden and views over the Thames and Chelsea
. In the summer months they moved to their country house on the Isle of Wight
where her father developed the cultivation of grapes on his lands. In London, her father was fond of lavish garden parties where he invited up and coming young writers and artists of his day.
She and 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
), as all three were noted beauties of Greek heritage. It was in the house of the Greek businessman A.C. Ionides (1810–1890) at Tulse Hill, in south London, that Marie and her sister Christine (1846–1884) met Whistler
and Swinburne
for the first time. They were dressed in white with blue ribbon sashes. Swinburne was so overcome that he said of Spartali: "She is so beautiful that I want to sit down and cry". Marie was an imposing figure, around 1.9 meters tall and, in her later years, dressed in long flowing black garments with a lace hood, attracting much attention throughout her life.
Spartali studied under Ford Madox Brown
for several years from 1864, with his children Lucy, Catherine and Oliver. Rossetti
, on hearing that she was to become a pupil to Madox Brown, wrote to him (on 24 April 1864), "I just hear Miss Spartali is to be your pupil. I hear too that she is one and the same with a marvellous beauty of whom I have heard much talk. So box her up and don’t let fellows see her, as I mean to have first shy at her in the way of sitting." She first sat for him in 1867. He wrote to Jane Morris on 14 August, "I find her head the most difficult I ever drew. It depends not so much on real form as on a subtle charm of life which one cannot recreate." She was the most intellectual of his models.
She modelled for: Brown; Burne-Jones
(The Mill); Julia Margaret Cameron
; Rossetti (A Vision of Fiammetta, Dante's Dream, The Bower Meadow); Spencer Stanhope
; and Whistler (La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine) for which she posed for seventy times for this picture and refused to take delivery of it.
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. She was his second wife, his first having committed suicide two years before. The couple had posed for Rossetti in his famous Dante pictures, though it is not certain if that is how they first met. He first worked for the American Art Magazine, The Crayonne. His later job was a foreign correspondent for The Times
. His job as a foreign correspondent resulted in the couple dividing their time between London and Florence
from 1878 to 1883, and then Rome
from 1889 to 1896. She also travelled to America, and was the only Britain-based Pre-Raphaelite artist to work in the United States.
She had three children. The eldest was Michael; he moved to America and worked as an architect; he died there in 1966. Her younger son died as an infant. Her daughter Euphrosyne (Effie) Stillman became an artist in her own right and had some success in her career before dying young in 1911.
Marie Spartali died in March 1927 in Ashburn Place in (South Kensington). Marie was cremated at Brookwood Cemetery
, near Woking
, Surrey
, and is interred there with her husband. The grave is marked by a simple lawn headstone.
Her last will and testament contains a letter where Marie wrote, "It seems rather absurd to make a will when one has neither possessions nor money to leave". She left various personal items, including some mementos from her life as an artist. Her body of work is valued today at over $500 million.
, Petrarch
, Dante
and Boccaccio
; also Italian landscapes. She exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, 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. A retrospective show of her work took place in the United States in 1982.
.jpg)
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
painter of Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
descent, arguably the greatest female artist
Women artists
Women artists have been involved in making art in most times and places. Often certain certain media are associated with women, particularly textile arts; however, these gender roles in art change in different cultures and communities...
of that movement
Western art history
Western art is the art of the North American and European countries, and art created in the forms accepted by those countries.Written histories of Western art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC...
. During a sixty-year career she produced over one hundred works, contributing regularly to galleries in Great Britain and the United States.
Family background
Maria Spartali was the youngest daughter of Michael Spartali (1818–1914), a wealthy merchant, principal of the firm Spartali & CoSpartali & Co
Spartali & Co was a Greek import/export company active in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Marseille, with its headquarters in the Anatolian city of Smyrna, in the second half of the 19th century. Along with several other Greek-owned merchant companies, it acted as a terminal and starting point...
and Greek consul-general based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
from 1866 to 1882. He had moved to London around 1828. In London he married, and Euphrosyne (known as Effie, née Varsami, 1842–1913), the daughter of a Greek merchant from Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
.
The family lived in their Georgian country house with a marble-pillared circular hallway, on Clapham Common
Clapham Common
Clapham Common is an 89 hectare triangular area of grassland situated in south London, England. It was historically common land for the parishes of Battersea and Clapham, but was converted to parkland under the terms of the Metropolitan Commons Act 1878.43 hectares of the common are within the...
, known as ‘The Shrubbery’ with a huge garden and views over the Thames and Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...
. In the summer months they moved to their country house on the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
where her father developed the cultivation of grapes on his lands. In London, her father was fond of lavish garden parties where he invited up and coming young writers and artists of his day.
Adulthood
Maria Zambaco
Maria Zambaco was born Marie Terpsithea Cassavetti , was an artist and model favoured by the Pre-Raphaelites....
and Aglaia Coronio
Aglaia Coronio
Aglaia Coronio, née Aglaia Ionides was a British embroiderer, bookbinder, art patron and art collector of Greek ancestry. She was a daughter of Alexander Constantine Ionides and brother of Constantine Alexander Ionides. She was also a confidante of William Morris and a friend of Dante Gabriel...
were known collectively among friends as "the Three Graces", after the Charites
Charites
In Greek mythology, a Charis is one of several Charites , goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. They ordinarily numbered three, from youngest to oldest: Aglaea , Euphrosyne , and Thalia . In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the "Graces"...
of Greek mythology (Aglaia
Aglaea
Aglaea or Aglaïa is the name of several figures in Greek mythology.-Charis:The youngest of the Charites, Aglaea or Aglaia was one of three daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome. Her other two sisters were Euphrosyne, and Thalia. Together they were known as the Three Graces, or the Charites...
, Euphrosyne
Euphrosyne (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Euphrosyne In Greek mythology, Euphrosyne In Greek mythology, Euphrosyne (Εὐφροσύνη; was one of the Charites, known in English also as the "Three Graces". Her best remembered representation in English is in Milton's poem of the active, joyful life, "L'Allegro". She is also the...
and Thalia
Thalia (grace)
In Greek mythology, Thalia was one of the three Graces or Charites with her sisters Aglaea and Euphrosyne, and a daughter of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome or the hour Eunomia...
), as all three were noted beauties of Greek heritage. It was in the house of the Greek businessman A.C. Ionides (1810–1890) at Tulse Hill, in south London, that Marie and her sister Christine (1846–1884) met Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
and Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
for the first time. They were dressed in white with blue ribbon sashes. Swinburne was so overcome that he said of Spartali: "She is so beautiful that I want to sit down and cry". Marie was an imposing figure, around 1.9 meters tall and, in her later years, dressed in long flowing black garments with a lace hood, attracting much attention throughout her life.
Spartali studied under Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown was an English painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work...
for several years from 1864, with his children Lucy, Catherine and Oliver. Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
, on hearing that she was to become a pupil to Madox Brown, wrote to him (on 24 April 1864), "I just hear Miss Spartali is to be your pupil. I hear too that she is one and the same with a marvellous beauty of whom I have heard much talk. So box her up and don’t let fellows see her, as I mean to have first shy at her in the way of sitting." She first sat for him in 1867. He wrote to Jane Morris on 14 August, "I find her head the most difficult I ever drew. It depends not so much on real form as on a subtle charm of life which one cannot recreate." She was the most intellectual of his models.
She modelled for: Brown; Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
(The Mill); Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....
; Rossetti (A Vision of Fiammetta, Dante's Dream, The Bower Meadow); Spencer Stanhope
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope is an English artist associated with Edward Burne-Jones and George Frederic Watts and often regarded as a second-wave pre-Raphaelite. His work is also studied within the context of Aestheticism and British Symbolism. As a painter, Stanhope worked in oil, watercolor,...
; and Whistler (La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine) for which she posed for seventy times for this picture and refused to take delivery of it.
Marriage
In 1871, against her parents' wishes, she married American journalist and painter William J. StillmanWilliam James Stillman
William James Stillman , United States was an American painter, journalist, and photographer.-Biography:Stillman was born in Schenectady, New York in 1828. His parents were Seventh Day Baptists, and his early religious training influenced him all through his life...
. She was his second wife, his first having committed suicide two years before. The couple had posed for Rossetti in his famous Dante pictures, though it is not certain if that is how they first met. He first worked for the American Art Magazine, The Crayonne. His later job was a foreign correspondent for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. His job as a foreign correspondent resulted in the couple dividing their time between London and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
from 1878 to 1883, and then Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
from 1889 to 1896. She also travelled to America, and was the only Britain-based Pre-Raphaelite artist to work in the United States.
She had three children. The eldest was Michael; he moved to America and worked as an architect; he died there in 1966. Her younger son died as an infant. Her daughter Euphrosyne (Effie) Stillman became an artist in her own right and had some success in her career before dying young in 1911.
Marie Spartali died in March 1927 in Ashburn Place in (South Kensington). Marie was cremated at Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in western Europe.-History:...
, near Woking
Woking
Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, and is interred there with her husband. The grave is marked by a simple lawn headstone.
Her last will and testament contains a letter where Marie wrote, "It seems rather absurd to make a will when one has neither possessions nor money to leave". She left various personal items, including some mementos from her life as an artist. Her body of work is valued today at over $500 million.
Art
The subjects of her paintings were typical of the Pre-Raphaelites: female figures; scenes from ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
, Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
and Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
; also Italian landscapes. She exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, then at the Grosvenor Gallery
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé...
and its successor, the New Gallery; at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
; and at various galleries in the eastern USA, including the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. A retrospective show of her work took place in the United States in 1982.
Works
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 Lady Prays — Desire (1867) Lord Lloyd-WebberAndrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
Collection - Mariana (c 1867-9) private collection
- Portrait of a young woman (1868)
- Forgetfulness (1869) private collection
- La Pensierosa (1870) Chazen Museum of ArtChazen Museum of ArtThe Chazen Museum of Art is an art museum accredited by the American Association of Museums located at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. It was known as the Elvehjem Museum of Art until 2005...
, University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Self-Portrait (1871) Delaware Art MuseumDelaware Art MuseumThe Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 works. The museum, was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the artist Howard Pyle and is now celebrating its centennial...
- Self-Portrait in Medieval Dress (1874)
- Gathering Orange Blossoms (1879) St. Lawrence UniversitySt. Lawrence UniversitySt. Lawrence University is a four-year liberal arts college located in the village of Canton in Saint Lawrence County, New York, United States. It has roughly 2300 undergraduate and 100 graduate students, about equally split between male and female....
- The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice on All Saints' Day (1881)
- Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni (1884) Walker Art GalleryWalker Art GalleryThe Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...
, Liverpool - Love's Messenger (1885) Delaware Art Museum
- A Florentine Lily (c 1885-90) private collection
- The May Feast at the House of Folco Portinari (1887)
- Dante at Verona (1888) private collection
- Upon a Day Came Sorrow unto Me (1888)
- A Florentine Lily (c 1885-90)
- Messer Ansaldo showing Madonna Dionara his Enchanted Garden (1889) This illustrates a tale from The DecameronThe DecameronThe Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people....
, see Summary of Decameron tales - Convent Lily (1891)
- Cloister Lilies (1891)
- Saint George (1892) Delaware Art Museum
- How the Virgin Mary came to Brother Conrad of Offida and laid her Son in his Arms (1892) Wightwick ManorWightwick ManorWightwick Manor is a Victorian manor house located on Wightwick Bank, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England, and one of only a few surviving examples of a house built and furnished under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement...
, The Mander Collection - A Rose from Armida's Garden (1894)
- Love Sonnets (1894) Delaware Art Museum
- Beatrice (1895) Delaware Art Museum
- Portrait of Mrs W. St Clair Baddeley (1896)
- Beatrice (1898) private collection
- The Pilgrim Folk (1914) Delaware Art Museum