You probably haven’t heard of Marie Spartali Stillman, because she was a woman when it was the least advantageous time to be one AKA the Victorian Era.

Marie Spartali Stillman was born on March 10, 1844 into a fairly affluent family… if you consider summering on the same island as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert affluent. Stillman’s father was Michael Spartali, Greek Consul-General to the United Kingdom and patron of the arts. He hosted many a bourgey party for budding young artists and writers of the time, which is how Marie became a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They literally referred to her as a “stunner” and the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne went so far as to refer to her as, “…so beautiful I feel as if I could sit down and cry,” which seems a little extreme if you ask me. Stillman modeled for all of the PRB greats: Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, James Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and more. Then she weaseled her way into a position as a student for Ford Madox Brown, despite resistance from her parents. She studied under him for six years, modeling all the while. Her preferred media were “a mixture of watercolor, gouache, and graphite, innovating her own technique with the addition of heavy, opaque pigments and additives that gave her work a jewel-like tone and the overall quality of an oil painting.”

She had a knack for portraying women not just as mindless mannequins, but as actual living, breathing women, which was pretty cool, I guess. Stillman exhibited her work in a number of galleries including the Royal Academy, but reviews were incredibly inconsistent. The author, Henry James wrote about her work, “In Mrs. Stillman’s pictures there is something very exquisite…This lady is a really profound colourist; but the principal charm of her work is the intellectual charm–that thing which, when it exists, always seems more precious than other merits, and indeed makes us say that it is the only thing in a work of art which is deeply valuable.” Meanwhile, Rossetti said sh*t like “like most of her sex she is not gifted with a strong eye for form.” But we can easily assume that he was just bitter that his model was an artist now, and didn’t need him anymore.

In 1871, Stillman married William James Stillman, an American painter and writer. She married him against her parents’ wishes and gave up her inheritance for him, so we’d like to think it was true love. He was a widower with three children, whom Marie helped raise alongside her own three children. Though family life did get in the way at times, Marie never stopped painting. She was highly modest to the point of self-deprecation throughout her career, though she was undoubtedly one of the stars of the Pre-Raphaelite “Brotherhood.” Efforts to put her on the map are in progress and going well!