Lot Essay
Marie Spartali has an assured place in the gallaxy of beauties who played such a crucial part in the history of Pre-Raphaelitism. Graham Robertson, who knew her well, wrote of her and her younger sister Christine: 'Theirs was a lofty beauty, gracious and noble; the beauty worshipped in Greece of old, yet with a wistful tenderness of poise, a mystery of shadowed eyes that gave life to what might have been a marble goddess'. Conceding that the beauty of Jane Morris was 'too grand, too sombre to appeal to every eye', he continued: 'I always recommended would-be but wavering worshippers to start with Mrs Stillman, who was, so to speak, Mrs Morris for Beginners. The two marvels had many points in common: the same lofty stature, the same long sweep of limb, the 'neck like a tower', the night-dark tresses and the eyes of mystery, yet Mrs Stillman's loveliness could at once be appreciated' (Time Was, 1931, pp. 13, 95). As well as being a celebrated beauty, she had two qualities not always found in beauties, sweetness of character and talent, being herself a charming and sensitive painter (see lots 93-95).
Born in Hornsey in 1844, Marie was the daughter of Michael Spartali, a wealthy Greek merchant who acted as Greek consul-general in London 1866-82. The family belonged to the naturalised Anglo-Greek community which figures so prominently in the annals of later Victorian art, and Marie and her sister grew up in a bracing atmosphere of international culture. Their striking good looks first made an impact in the early 1860s, the revelation apparently occurring at a garden party at the Tulse Hill house of their relations the Ionides, which many artists attended. 'We were all à genoux before them', Thomas Armstrong recalled, 'and of course every one of us burned with a desire to paint them'. Significantly, this was the moment when many of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates were turning to classicism; like Maria Zambaco, the mistress of Burne-Jones, the sisters embodied the new Greek ideal. Indeed Marie Spartali, Maria Zambaco and Marie's cousin Aglaia Ionides (the Egeria of William Morris, whose daughter's portrait by Rossetti was sold in these Rooms on 13 March 1992, lot 81) were all inseparable friends, a triumvirate of beauty and talent known throughout their circle as 'The Three Graces'.
Christine was the first of the sisters to be immortalised, sitting to Whistler for La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine (1863-4; Freer Gallery, Washington), which became the centrepiece of the famous Peacock Room created for F.R. Leyland. But it was Marie rather than her sister (who married the Belgian Comte Edmond De Cahn and succumbed to a mysterious illness) who achieved prominence as a model. She sat many times for Rossetti, although he confessed that he found her head 'about the most difficult I ever drew. It depends not nearly so much on real form as on a subtle charm of life which one cannot re-create' (letter in British Museum, quoted in Surtees, loc. cit.). She posed for the right-hand attendant in Dante's Dream (1869-71; Liverpool), for one of the foreground figures in The Bower Meadow (1872; Manchester), and (alone) for The Vision of Fiammetta (1878; private collection, America), a picture which captures the essence of her gentle and serene personality. Other artists too sought her services. Spencer Stanhope painted her as Patience on a Monument, smiling at Grief (1884; De Morgan Foundation), and Burne-Jones as Danaë watching the building of the brazen tower (1887-8; Glasgow Art Gallery). She also sat to Madox Brown and was the subject of a number of photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron - Memory, Hypatia, The Spirit of the Vine, and others.
In 1871, by now making her name as an artist and living with her family at 'The Shrubbery', a large Georgian house which still stands on Clapham Common, Marie married the Rossettis' American friend William James Stillman. She is said to have done so on the rebound from an unhappy love affair with Lord Ranelagh, and the marriage itself was not easy. During his early career, Stillman had done much to create awareness of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites in America, but he had abandoned art for diplomacy, becoming American consul in Rome and then in Crete. The terrible conditions of the Cretan insurrection had driven his wife to suicide, and when Marie met him he was a widower with three young children, one of them an invalid. Her father was horrified at the match and for a time broke with her completely, while many of her friends looked askance at the marriage, wondering how this beautiful and cultured girl - 'a pearl among women', as Rossetti described her at the time of her engagement - could throw herself away on a raw New Englander. After visiting America in 1871, the couple returned to England, where their eldest child, Effie (see lots 93, 95), was born the following year. Stillman, however, could find no settled work, and in 1875 he set out to cover the rising in Herzegovina for The Times and the New York Herald. Two years later he settled with his family in Florence, moving to Rome when he became The Times' correspondent there in 1886.
These dramatic developments did not prevent Marie from returning regularly to England and keeping up her Pre-Raphaelite connections. She was still in demand as a model and her beauty remained unimpaired. The young Alexander Ionides, having lost sight of her for many years, saw a striking figure one night at the opera. 'I asked who that tall, pale beauty, radiating dignity with every movement, might be. It was Marie Stillman.' Well into the present century, Mrs Comyus Carr, whose husband had been one of the directors of the Grosvenor Gallery, described her as changed 'merely in type - once a dryad, now a sibyl.'
On Stillman's retirement in 1898 he and Marie settled in Surrey, where he composed the obligatory two volumes of reminiscences, The Autobiography of a Journalist, published in 1901. Stillman died that year and for the rest of her life Marie lived in Kensington with her two step-daughters, Lisa Stillman and Mrs Middleton. In the early 1920s, when she was nearly eighty, she crossed the Atlantic again to visit her son, still impressing all she met though the type she represented was now so out of date. She died in London on 1 March 1927, the last of the Pre-Raphaelite beauties who, as J. W. Mackail wrote in her Times obituary, 'had no little share in creating the influence which, half a century ago, (her) circle exercised over the whole art and life of that age'.
The present drawing is Rossetti's only portrait of Marie, as distinct from his studies from her for pictures. Mr Chauncey D. Stillman (the former owner of Pontormo's Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici, sold in our New York Rooms in May 1989 for over #22 million) regarded it as by far the best likeness, and he was one of the last people living who had known her. What appears to be a study for the portrait (Surtees 520) was formerly in the collection of L.S. Lowry; and Rossetti's companion portrait of W.J. Stillman (1870; Surtees 518) is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Born in Hornsey in 1844, Marie was the daughter of Michael Spartali, a wealthy Greek merchant who acted as Greek consul-general in London 1866-82. The family belonged to the naturalised Anglo-Greek community which figures so prominently in the annals of later Victorian art, and Marie and her sister grew up in a bracing atmosphere of international culture. Their striking good looks first made an impact in the early 1860s, the revelation apparently occurring at a garden party at the Tulse Hill house of their relations the Ionides, which many artists attended. 'We were all à genoux before them', Thomas Armstrong recalled, 'and of course every one of us burned with a desire to paint them'. Significantly, this was the moment when many of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates were turning to classicism; like Maria Zambaco, the mistress of Burne-Jones, the sisters embodied the new Greek ideal. Indeed Marie Spartali, Maria Zambaco and Marie's cousin Aglaia Ionides (the Egeria of William Morris, whose daughter's portrait by Rossetti was sold in these Rooms on 13 March 1992, lot 81) were all inseparable friends, a triumvirate of beauty and talent known throughout their circle as 'The Three Graces'.
Christine was the first of the sisters to be immortalised, sitting to Whistler for La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine (1863-4; Freer Gallery, Washington), which became the centrepiece of the famous Peacock Room created for F.R. Leyland. But it was Marie rather than her sister (who married the Belgian Comte Edmond De Cahn and succumbed to a mysterious illness) who achieved prominence as a model. She sat many times for Rossetti, although he confessed that he found her head 'about the most difficult I ever drew. It depends not nearly so much on real form as on a subtle charm of life which one cannot re-create' (letter in British Museum, quoted in Surtees, loc. cit.). She posed for the right-hand attendant in Dante's Dream (1869-71; Liverpool), for one of the foreground figures in The Bower Meadow (1872; Manchester), and (alone) for The Vision of Fiammetta (1878; private collection, America), a picture which captures the essence of her gentle and serene personality. Other artists too sought her services. Spencer Stanhope painted her as Patience on a Monument, smiling at Grief (1884; De Morgan Foundation), and Burne-Jones as Danaë watching the building of the brazen tower (1887-8; Glasgow Art Gallery). She also sat to Madox Brown and was the subject of a number of photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron - Memory, Hypatia, The Spirit of the Vine, and others.
In 1871, by now making her name as an artist and living with her family at 'The Shrubbery', a large Georgian house which still stands on Clapham Common, Marie married the Rossettis' American friend William James Stillman. She is said to have done so on the rebound from an unhappy love affair with Lord Ranelagh, and the marriage itself was not easy. During his early career, Stillman had done much to create awareness of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites in America, but he had abandoned art for diplomacy, becoming American consul in Rome and then in Crete. The terrible conditions of the Cretan insurrection had driven his wife to suicide, and when Marie met him he was a widower with three young children, one of them an invalid. Her father was horrified at the match and for a time broke with her completely, while many of her friends looked askance at the marriage, wondering how this beautiful and cultured girl - 'a pearl among women', as Rossetti described her at the time of her engagement - could throw herself away on a raw New Englander. After visiting America in 1871, the couple returned to England, where their eldest child, Effie (see lots 93, 95), was born the following year. Stillman, however, could find no settled work, and in 1875 he set out to cover the rising in Herzegovina for The Times and the New York Herald. Two years later he settled with his family in Florence, moving to Rome when he became The Times' correspondent there in 1886.
These dramatic developments did not prevent Marie from returning regularly to England and keeping up her Pre-Raphaelite connections. She was still in demand as a model and her beauty remained unimpaired. The young Alexander Ionides, having lost sight of her for many years, saw a striking figure one night at the opera. 'I asked who that tall, pale beauty, radiating dignity with every movement, might be. It was Marie Stillman.' Well into the present century, Mrs Comyus Carr, whose husband had been one of the directors of the Grosvenor Gallery, described her as changed 'merely in type - once a dryad, now a sibyl.'
On Stillman's retirement in 1898 he and Marie settled in Surrey, where he composed the obligatory two volumes of reminiscences, The Autobiography of a Journalist, published in 1901. Stillman died that year and for the rest of her life Marie lived in Kensington with her two step-daughters, Lisa Stillman and Mrs Middleton. In the early 1920s, when she was nearly eighty, she crossed the Atlantic again to visit her son, still impressing all she met though the type she represented was now so out of date. She died in London on 1 March 1927, the last of the Pre-Raphaelite beauties who, as J. W. Mackail wrote in her Times obituary, 'had no little share in creating the influence which, half a century ago, (her) circle exercised over the whole art and life of that age'.
The present drawing is Rossetti's only portrait of Marie, as distinct from his studies from her for pictures. Mr Chauncey D. Stillman (the former owner of Pontormo's Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici, sold in our New York Rooms in May 1989 for over #22 million) regarded it as by far the best likeness, and he was one of the last people living who had known her. What appears to be a study for the portrait (Surtees 520) was formerly in the collection of L.S. Lowry; and Rossetti's companion portrait of W.J. Stillman (1870; Surtees 518) is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston