Mrs and Mrs Michael Spartali had
a house outside Shanklin named Rylestone Manor, built in a sort of Black Forest
style, where the family spent their summers. Some miles along the south coast of the Isle
of Wight, Mr and Mrs Charles Hay Cameron also had a summer home, at Freshwater,
very close to that of Mr and Mrs Tennyson.
The Spartalis’ elder daughter Marie was a young artist, who studied with
Ford Madox Brown in London and was already acquainted with J M W Whistler, D G
Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and other artists, partly through the social
network of cultured Greek families like the Ionides living in the Holland Park
area, home also to Mrs Cameron’s sister and brother-in-law, Mr and Mrs Prinsep
of Little Holland House.
Marie was now on the lower rungs of
the professional ladder. Her exhibition
debut in 1867 contained three works depicting an Ottoman widow, the ancient
Greek poetess Corinna (‘with red disorderly hair’ as befitted poetic
inspiration) and the allegorical damsel Praise-desire from Spenser’s Faerie Queene - who has
lines expressive of chivalric ambition:
Pensive, I yield I am, and sad in Mind,
Through great desire of Glory and of Fame
Through great desire of Glory and of Fame
Ambition in young Victorian
women, whether of British or Greek ancestry, was frowned on. Modesty,
obedience, self-sacrifice were the approved virtues. Marie’s demeanour was modest and retiring, but
her aspirations, as expressed in her picture-titles, were heroic. Her next works quoted Theocritos, Sophocles, Ovid and
Renaissance figures, and in 1870 she sent works both to the Royal Academy and
the Paris Salon.
Her father patronised artists
and encouraged his daughter. In spring
1868 he paid Mrs Cameron twenty guineas for 24 prints of portrait photographs
of Marie and her sister Christina. The photographer had her own ambition; as
she wrote happily to Henry Cole: ‘I am likely now to acquire fortune as well as
fame for as I told you …a woman with sons to educate cannot live on fame alone!’
Moreover, Julia Cameron’s aspirations
chimed with those of her sitter.
Portraiture as mere likeness was subservient to portrayals of beauty
and intellect, and to depictions of allegory, literary scenes and sacred
imagery. Later in the year and again in
1870 she invited Marie to Freshwater, to pose in costume for figures rather
like Marie’s Lady Praise-desire; in the invocation of classical sources, roles
in which Cameron cast her have evident links to Marie’s heritage. These included Hypatia, an early Greek
mathematician; Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses; The Duenna; and The Spirit of
the Vine, decked in vine-leaves and clutching grapes – perhaps brought from
Michael Spartali’s own vineyard.
By 1870 Marie had her own heroic
story. The American journalist William J
Stillman, who had also studied art and become a follower of Ruskin, covered the
recent Cretan rebellion against the Ottomans with partisan fervour, which got
him expelled from the island and made him popular among the Greek community in
Britain. His wife committed suicide,
leaving him with three small children and no assured income. He and Marie met
in London and both sat to Rossetti for portrait drawings. In January 1870 they
became engaged, against the wishes of Marie’s parents – who doubtless saw a
penniless widower wanting both a step-mother and a wealthy wife. Others saw it as romantic, including Julia
Cameron’s niece Julia Duckworth, who encouraged the courtship (and would
herself marry a needy widower). Marie
was a loving and dutiful daughter, but withstood all pressure, and the Stillman
wedding was due to take place in spring 1871.
While her husband-to-be took his children to the US, Marie was at
Shanklin with her family, and again visited Freshwater to pose for Mrs Cameron.
‘My days pass in sitting for pictures
and reading aloud’ she wrote to a friend.
I at once offered my services to the venerable host [Mr Cameron] and during the intervals of my sittings we
read a learned article from the Revue on
Paléontologie together.’ Another
guest was Anne Thackeray, the author’s
daughter, whom Marie found ‘delightful’.
Veteran poet Henry Taylor – one of Julia Cameron’s pantheon – had just
left, and one evening Marie was taken to meet Tennyson. ‘I
have always heard him described as disagreeable and grumpy and he quite
answered the description,’ she reported.
‘Just as I was going away he seized a lighted candle and passed it up
and down within an inch of my face saying he was shortsighted. After this
inspection he thawed a little and was gracious enough to walk to the end of the
grove occasionally interrupting the s[ilence] of the night by some oracular
remark.’ She added that after sitting
again she was going home. ‘I was so fatigued yesterday that only two pictures
succeeded. I worked in half a dozen and ruined them.’
It isn’t clear what the last remark
signifies. A model does not normally
‘work’ during a photographic sitting, nor would any such work be likely to ruin
the result. Whatever the meaning
however, the implication is that as model or sitter she was partly responsible
for the art produced, which is an interesting sidelight on the process. A few years earlier Marie and her sister had
spent time in Whistler’s studio, while Christina posed for the Princesse du pays de la porcelaine, and had
observed the painting process in action, as Marie had also done while sitting
to Madox Brown. At Freshwater it was
presumably the first time she watched a woman artist at work, observing both
the elaborate technicalities of wet collodion photography and Cameron’s committed,
concentrated effort to realise her conception in despite of changing light,
tricky chemicals and tired models. While
middle-class women of all ages were encouraged to draw, embroider and make
music, these skills were subordinate to domestic responsibilities; Julia
Cameron’s dedication to her chosen art form was unusual and even comical to
many, but it could serve as an example to a younger woman now faced with
competing artistic and emotional demands.
Marie Spartali was herself unusual in
her dedication to art over nearly five more decades. That she has been written out, ignored and
dismissed as an ‘amateur’, as if her painting were also an easily laid aside
pastime, is as calumnious as the dismissal of Julia Cameron as a ‘wealthy woman
able to indulge her hobby’. Both were professionally
ambitious and committed.
Dear Jan, I live in a house owned by Maries parents here on the Isle of Wight one they owned the longest some forty years we still have the grapes growing in our conservatory that you refer to above. Please feel free to contact me as we located something of interest in our attic which i feel is worthy of investigation. Regards Sue.
ReplyDeleteDear Jan, I live in a house owned by Maries parents here on the Isle of Wight one they owned the longest some forty years we still have the grapes growing in our conservatory that you refer to above. Please feel free to contact me as we located something of interest in our attic which i feel is worthy of investigation. Regards Sue.
ReplyDeleteDear Jan, I live in a property formerly owned by Maries parents here on the Isle of Wight, owned for some forty years and we still have the grapes that you refer to in your article above, growing in our victorian conservatory. We recently made a discovery in our attic which I feel is worthy of investigation should you be willing to contact me to discuss, many thanks Sue.
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