Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 117,600 GBP
37 by 30 cm. ; 14 1/2 by 11 3/4 in. (sight) on a folded sheet measuring 54 by 62 1/4 cm. ; 21 1/4 by 24 1/2 in. (overall)
signed with monogram and dated 1870 l.l. on a folded portion of the sheet
coloured chalks
‘For the ladies holding the suspended veil momentarily ere it covers the form & features of Beatrice Marie Spartali the daughter of the Greek Consul for London was one. She possessed a face superlatively beautiful.’ (Letter from Rossetti to Ellen Heaton, 9th January 1868, British Museum).
In 1869 Dante Gabriel Rossetti drew for the first time a striking new model named Marie Spartali, for several of the studies for one of his greatest later works Dante's Dream on the Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). Rossetti wrote 'I find her head about the most difficult I ever drew. It depends not nearly so much on real form as on subtle charm of life which one cannot re-create.' (Andrea Rose, Pre-Raphaelite Portraits, 1981, pg. 106). Despite the difficulties, Rossetti persevered to make three drawings for the head of the attendant on the right in Dante’s Dream, one of which is at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and another formerly with the Christopher Wood Gallery, dated 1870. A similar related portrait drawing of Marie Stillman drawn in 1869 is in the collection of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The composition of Dante’s Dream had been devised in 1856 for a watercolour (Tate Britain) which depicts an incident from the Vita Nouva in which Dante is led to the bier of Beatrice by the figure of love as two lofty attendants lower a pall strewn with may-flowers and poppies. In 1869 William Graham commissioned Rossetti to paint a second version in his more mature style, which eventually materialised on a scale far beyond Graham’s wishes. This picture, which bears the date 1871, is Rossetti’s largest and most ambitious painting and held much personal significance to the artist as a symbol of his love for Jane Morris who posed for Beatrice (the first version had depicted his wife Elizabeth Siddall).
Born in 1844 in Tottenham in Middlesex (other sources state that it was Hornsey), Marie was the youngest daughter of Euphrosyne and Michael Spartali, a wealthy and cosmopolitan merchant and later Greek consul general for London. Marie and her sister Christine and brother Demetrius were raised in a large house in Clapham, which became the centre of the Greek community in the 1860s. The Anglo-Greek connoisseur Constantine Ionides who patronised Burne-Jones and Rossetti and whose collection is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, was a great friend of the Spartali's and it was probably this connection that led to Marie being 'discovered' by the Pre-Raphaelites. Marie was also a close friend of Maria Zambaco (nee Cassavetti), Burne-Jones’ mistress and model and Aglaia Coronio the confidante of both Rossetti and William Morris and the three women were known as the ‘Three Graces’ after their Greek heritage and striking beauty. It is said that the Spartali girls’ debut was made in the late 1860s at a garden party in Tulse Hill given by relations of the Ionides family, where their arrival caused a stir among the invited artists. 'We were all รก genoux before them and of course every one of us burned with a desire to paint them' recalled the artist Thomas Armstrong. The perceptive Graham Robertson described Marie thus, ‘… 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.’ (Graham Robertson, Time Was, 1931, pg. 13) whilst the poet Swinburne exclaimed that she was ‘so beautiful I feel as if I could sit down and cry’ (Thomas Armstrong, A Memoir 1832-1911, 1912, pg. 195).
Christine was the first of the sisters to pose for an artist, secured by Whistler to pose for his Aesthetic masterpiece La Princess du Pays du Porcelaine of 1864 which formed the centrepiece of the famous Peacock Room (now at The Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington). Christine later married the Belgian Comte Edmond De Cahn and it was hoped that Marie would follow in her sister's footsteps. Unfortunately for her mother and father, the headstrong Marie had other ideas and had already begun to take lessons in drawing from Ford Madox Brown. Marie worked with Madox Brown’s daughter Lucy in Brown’s studio in Fitzroy Square and soon showed great promise as an artist. Around 1864 Marie posed for a series of exquisite photographs by the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and among the most notable costumed portraits of Marie are Hypatia, Mnemosyne and The Spirit of the Vine. She also posed for portraits by George Frederick Watts and Valentine Cameron Prinsep and was painted by Spencer Stanhope as Patience on a Monument Smiling at Grief in 1887 (De Morgan Foundation) and by Burne-Jones as Danae in 1884 (Glasgow Art Gallery). Marie was also the model for several imposing later works by Rossetti including The Vision of Fiametta of 1878 (collection of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber), The Bower Meadow (Manchester City Art Gallery) and the unfinished Desdemona's Death Song (drawings at Birmingham City Art Gallery and the Collection of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber). Softer, prettier and more Teutonic features than those of Jane Morris and Alexa Wilding, more graceful and less sensual than Fanny Cornforth or Annie Millar, Marie had a more gamine and dignified beauty than any of the other 'stunners' painted by Rossetti. The astute Robertson explained her appeal as a model thus, '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 conformed to the standard of ancient Greece and could at once be appreciated, while study of her trained the eye to understand the more esoteric beauty of Mrs Morris and 'trace in Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine.' (Ibid Robertson, p. 95).
Marie’s charm was not limited to her physical beauty and she was possessing of a warm and generous personality, great intelligence and much artistic talent. She was arguably the most talented of the female Pre-Raphaelite artists, painting over a hundred works in the 1870s and 1880s in a rich style derived from that of Rossetti and of Ford Madox Brown. A beautiful example of her work Portrait of a Young Woman which was painted a year before Marie posed for Rossetti, was offered in these rooms on June 14th 2001. The files at the Delaware Art Museum note that 'she was a very serious artist, working regularly every day in a very disciplined way until her death in 1927 at the age of eighty-three' (catalogue of the collection of the Delaware Art Museum 1974, pg. 172). Her paintings have the same whimsical romance as those of her male counterparts and she often came close to greatness in her paintings. However she will be perhaps always be best remembered as a Pre-Raphaelite model, one of the small group of women whose faces shaped the British notion of beauty.
By 1869 when Rossetti made his drawings of Marie for Dante's Dream, she had exhibited her first pictures at the Dudley Gallery The Pacha’s Widow, Corinna and The Lady Prays –Desire. She was making her name as a painter and despite parental opposition she married in April 1872, the American photographer and journalist William James Stillman who was so influential in spreading the fame of Pre-Raphaelitism in the United States. Stillman was penniless, widowed with three children (his wife had committed suicide when he was Consul General of Crete) and suffering from an incurable bone disease, but Marie loved him very much and would not be persuaded. The Spartali's lived a very happy married life together, dividing their time between England and Italy. According to Rossetti’s brother William, William Stillman was the model for the figure of Dante in Dante’s Dream.
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