Who were the women who sat for the Pre-Raphaelite painters?
Muses to an exclusively male genius, of tragic stature and uncertain health — were they indeed as passive as their portrait painters and critics contrived to suggest?
Jan Marsh reveals the actual lives behind the myth of the Pre-Raphaelite women: Elizabeth Siddal, Emma Brown, Annie Miller, Fannie Cornforth, Jane Morris and Georgiana Burne-Jones.
A meticulous testimony, this book at last records the rare vitality of these gifted and ambitious women.
Delivering them from a century of masculine misrepresentation, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood is a fascinating tribute to their spirit of independence in circumstances which conspired to suppress it.
Praise for The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
‘It turns the familiar terrain of Pre-Raphaelitism on its axis, giving new history, new life to the previously silent subject of the paintings’ – Times Literary Supplement
‘Required reading for all future historians of the movement’ – The Times
‘Is essential for serious collections in art history, women's studies, or literature.’ – The Library Journal
Praise for Jan Marsh
“An excellent addition to Bloomsbury studies that will be of interest to both devotees and newcomers.” – Publishers Weekly
“Jan Marsh's book is the best researched and fullest biography of Rossetti we have yet had.” - Fiona MacCarthy, New York Review of Books
“The author's steady, sympathetic course through Rossetti's divided life enables readers to delve into the intense and original self most fully expressed in her poetry.” - Kirkus Review
Jan Marsh (b.1942) has written a number of ground-breaking biographies, including Bloomsbury Women, Jane and May Morris, The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal and her highly acclaimed work Christina Rossetti. She has also scripted arts documentary programmes for radio and television, and has curated exhibitions of work by women painters of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She is a contributor to the Dictionary of Women Artists and a frequent lecturer in Britain, North America and Japan.
This absorbing work, undiminished by its clear but reasoned feminist approach, is essential for serious collections in art history, women's studies, or literature. Three carefully researched chapters (``Youth,'' ``Marriage,'' ``Maturity'') reconstruct the forgotten lives of six women who were integral to the pre-Raphaelite movement. Elizabeth Sidall, Emma Madox Borwn, Annie Miller, Fanny Cornforth, Janey Morris, and Georgiana Burne-Jones are validated as individuals with their own lives and creative needs, not simply as romanticized adjuncts to their better-known male companions. Interestingly enough, despite their putative beauty and allure, these women were often chosen as models because of their plainness or availability; yet they became the Victorian feminine ideal. Recommended. Robin Kaplan, M.L.S., The Information Group, Los Angeles
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.
