The Pre-Raphaelite Women
by Elizabeth Urbach
The Lady of Shalott
1842 William Holman Hunt (1827-1910)
Model: Mary Waterhouse
But, who were the women whose faces gaze at us from the Pre-Raphaelite images of the 19th century?
In paintings and sketches they represent thoughtful, dying, ruined, angelic, or sexually powerful girls and women, in the context of fairy tales, myths, legends from history, literature and stories of Christian saints.
In real life, they were the sisters, wives, lovers, daughters, and friends of the artists who painted them. The real women who defined the “ideal woman” include Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, Christina Rossetti and Jane Morris, most prominently.
Lady Lilith, began in 1863
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Model: Fanny Cornforth
These women influenced the popular definition of female beauty, changing the ideal from the innocent, youthful, pale, even sickly look popular during the Romantic movement of the 1830s and 1840s, to a much more colorful, sensual type of beauty. As Elizabeth Lee, a writer for the Victorian Web website put it:
“Essential to the Pre-Raphaelite art is a woman's face, a beautiful visage with large, luminescent eyes set in a web of long hair. Powerful bodies, necks, or striking features were favored, as were women who were red-headed with a fine posture and lovely lidded eyes. The ideal woman might be dark browed like Jane Morris or...fleshy like Fanny Cornforth.”
Ophelia, 1851
by John Everett Millais (1829-1876)
Model: Elizabeth Siddal
Although the best-known of the Pre-Raphaelite artists were men, there were several prominent women who were artists and poets in their own right, including some of the models for the images produced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal are prominent among these female artists.
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 The Annunciation, 1849-1850 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) Model: Christina Rossetti |
Want to learn more? Visit:
- To Learn 10 things you never knew about Millais' Ophelia, click here
- www.VictorianWeb.org
- Pre-Raphaelite Women: Models, Lovers, Art-Sisters
- http://faculty.pittstate.edu/knichols/lizzie.html
- RossettiArchives.org
- To read an interpretation of Hunt's Lady of Shalott, click here
- To read an interpretation of Rossetti's Proserpine, click here