Elaine: Victorian Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Art World

Katherine Duffy is a student on the MA Nineteenth Century Studies programme at Edge Hill University who has dedicated her studies to the Pre-Raphaelite artists that defined nineteenth century art. Her interests in the Pre-Raphaelites stemmed from her upbringing in Liverpool, home of the Walker Art Gallery and many Pre-Raphaelite paintings. She has previously published a blog on the importance of Elizabeth Siddal within the Pre-Raphaelite movement, titled ‘Elizabeth Siddal: Reception and Reflection’ (https://sites.edgehill.ac.uk/ehu19/2024/05/14/elizabeth-siddal-reception-and-reflection/)

Sophie Anderson, Elaine (1870), Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons[1]

Tucked away in the corner of the Walker Art Gallery is a quiet masterpiece.

Sophie Anderson’s Elaine is a late-Victorian artwork reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelite style seen in works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Anderson’s painting hangs directly opposite Rossetti’s Dante’s Dream in the gallery. Yet whilst visitors flock to the Rossetti, Anderon’s Elaine remains an under-appreciated work of genius, with its use of colour, composition as well as themes of love and anguish. [2]

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante’s Dream (1871), Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons[3]

Sophie Anderson was a British artist whose work was ‘avidly collected by private individuals’ throughout her career yet lesser so today.[4] Other than the purchasing of Elaine by the Walker Art Gallery, Anderson’s other works occasionally appeared in exhibitions throughout the nineteenth century mainly in the midlands, but unfortunately Anderson’s legacy failed to endure past the nineteenth century and is often now unknown to many in the art world.

Bought by Liverpool Museums back in 1871, Elaine was shown at Liverpool’s Autumn Exhibition to ‘wide and conflicting’ reviews.[5] Amongst the opinions found in The Liverpool Mercury on the piece where a few who believed it would be a ‘gallant graceful act’ to place Anderson alongside some of the notable women artists of the day. [6] Yet negative critics claimed the painting was ‘only fit and good enough to be placed as a panel to one of Busby’s hearses’.[7] The latter review of Anderson’s piece actually highlights the melancholic and mournful tone to her painting with its comparison to the painting as a funeral piece, yet it also pinpoints the work as a deeply reflective piece, calling on the Pre-Raphaelite style and Medieval Revivalism.

Anderson’s piece encapsulates what is characteristic of Pre-Raphaelite art in one painting, yet she is rarely included in the pantheon of Pre-Raphaelite artists. Naming her piece Elaine, Anderson draws attention to the anguished figure of the maiden from Arthurian legend. Elaine Astolat throughout the tales, falls in love with Lancelot while inciting the rage of Guinevere, only to die cursed with a broken heart. Anderson’s depiction of the tragic scene shares so many similarities with the tragic tale of many Pre-Raphaelite Medieval works, but without the recognition.

Medieval Revivalism

But what was so alluring for the Pre-Raphaelites about the art and literature of the Middle Ages? Firstly, it was nostalgic and therefore evocative, something which the Pre-Raphaelites felt had been lost in English art under the strict confines of the Royal Academy of Arts. The Pre-Raphaelites wanted vibrancy and detail, turning away from the Academy in favour of the Medieval style. Arthurian legends and Medieval art were a ‘great central romance of the middle Ages’, a ‘romance’ which exudes from the Pre-Raphaelite works they inspired.[8]

The rise of historical documentation of Medieval manuscripts in the mid-nineteenth century had, as Colin Cruise suggests, a ‘strong impact on the Pre-Raphaelites and other painters interested in accurate historical detail’, fulfilling the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s goal of showing ‘truth to nature’.[9] It is the ‘other painters’ here that should be focused on too. Despite Anderson not being labelled as a Pre-Raphaelite herself, Elaine evokes a Pre-Raphaelite style through her use of Medievalism.

Anderson zones in on the devastatingly tragic tale of Elaine of Astolat, otherwise known as the Lady of Shallot, a figure depicted time and time again in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition, especially by John William Waterhouse. This choice of Medieval figure alone places Anderson’s piece alongside the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their use of the tragedy in their works.

Anderson’s Symbolism

The Pre-Raphaelites were renowned for symbolism in their works, whether that be mirrored surfaces as representatives of vanity in Waterhouse’s Echo and Narcissus or the hair as a signifier of desirability in works by Rossetti.

John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus (1903) oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons[10]

Snippet of dream highlighting the hair

Anderson’s work tells the tale of Elaine and her unrequited love for Lancelot through a smart application of symbolism in the hair and floral imagery. It is from the symbolism that the history of Elaine’s tragic tale is conveyed. Adopting the Pre-Raphaelite style, Anderson plays with the image of the hair, giving Elaine a cascade of bright locks to signify her sexuality. Hair often spoke volumes for the Victorians, becoming ‘invested with an over-determination of sexual meaning’. In other words, the more a woman covered up, the more her hair became a focal point to attract.[11]

Elaine’s story is about love for Lancelot, but it is a complicated and unrequited love. Looking closely to the clasped hands of the deceased Elaine, we view the lily, held tightly to her chest. The ‘highly popular’ Victorian flower language emphasises the lily as an indicator of purity, but also death, asserting Elaine’s failure in love to Lancelot.[12] Viewing the hair and the lily together, we are asked to view the lily not as a choice of purity but more of a rejection of love from Lancelot.

Bringing together the use of hair and floral imagery we may imply that Elaine’s unrequited love is a punishment of the overt sexuality represented through her hair. Elaine dying of a broken heart, suggested by the letter to Lancelot clutched to her chest (heart), becomes a way of linking female sexuality to death. Elaine’s tale then becomes a warning of female love and sexuality.

But does this stance come from our knowledge of Anderson as a female artist painting in a predominantly male space? Chadwick and Frigeri suggest that ‘knowledge of gender can affect the ways in which we literally see works of art’, asking if we would view Anderson’s painting differently if Rossetti had painted it for example.[13] I argue that our ‘knowledge of gender’ here adds sympathy to Elaine. The art represents Anderson reflecting on another woman’s tragedy with beauty and vibrancy in the style and colour. Anderson’s delicate and detailed composition adds respect and compassion to the tragic tale, urging viewers to sympathise with Elaine, not to condemn her for her love of Lancelot.

Anderson as Pre-Raphaelite?

Elaine is Pre-Raphaelite due to this connection between Anderson and Medievalism, as well as discussions of love and sexuality. If the Pre-Raphaelite use of colour and detail can be traced back to this nineteenth century obsession with the Middle Ages, then Anderson’s same use of this detail, natural imagery and colour can too be deemed Pre-Raphaelite.

It is in this consideration of Anderson as a Pre-Raphaelite that we should consider the relationship between the Pre-Raphaelites and Liverpool as well as Anderson’s position in the gallery.

Since the creation of the Liverpool Academy in 1812, the city has held a deep and meaningful place in art history.[14] Starting with its Academy Exhibitions in the 1850s, many Pre-Raphaelite artists including William Holman Hunt and Ford Maddox Brown were awarded the exhibition prize starting a long and treasured history between the Pre-Raphaelites and the city. With the new and improved Liverpool Exhibitions in the 1870s, the city showcased some of the most influential Pre-Raphaelite works, Elaine being included in its ranks. Yet despite the fame of the works by Rossetti, Hunt and Millais from these exhibitions, Anderson’s skill remained relatively under-appreciated nationwide. Liverpool however, acknowledged the finesse of Anderson’s work making her, as previously stated, the first permanent work by a living woman artist to be purchased for a collection in any British heritage collection.[15]

Liverpool’s art history is not only important in acknowledging the heritage and traditions of the Pre-Raphaelite artists but also those like Anderson who I would argue act as Pre-Raphaelite adjacent fundamental to the art movement and the local heritage of Liverpool.

Figures List

Anderson, Sophie, Elaine (1870), oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery,  Liverpool, < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sophie_Anderson_-_Elaine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg> [last accessed 1^st July 2024]

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, Dante’s Dream (1869-71), oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_Dante%27s_Dream_at_the_Time_of_the_Death_of_Beatrice_(1871).jpg>, [last accessed 1^st July 2024]

John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus (1903) oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_William_Waterhouse_-_Echo_and_Narcissus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg#/media/File:John_William_Waterhouse_-_Echo_and_Narcissus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg>, [date accessed 1^st July 2024].

Bibliography

Chadwick, Whitney and Frigeri, Flavia, Women, Art and Society (London: Thames and Hudson)

Cruise, Colin, ‘Sick-Sad Dreams: Burne-Jones and Pre-Raphaelite Medievalism’, in The Yearbook of English Studies, 40, 1-2, (2010), pp. 121-140

Englehardt, Molly, ‘The Language of Flowers in the Victorian Knowledge Age’, in Victoriographies, 3, 2 (2013), pp. 136-160

Nichols, Kate, ’Victorian Women Artists in Public Collection: The Case of Sophie Anderson’, in Art UK, < https://artuk.org/discover/stories/victorian-women-artists-in-public-collections-the-case-of-sophie-anderson>, [last accessed 27^th June 2024]

Ofek, Galia, Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2009)

Prette-John, Elizabeth, The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

‘Elaine’, in National Museums Liverpool, < https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/elaine>, [last accessed 27^th June 2024]

‘Liverpool Exhibition of Paintings’, in Liverpool Mercury, Wednesday October 1871, no. VIII, p. 6, < https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000081/18711025/017/0006>, [date accessed 1^st July 2024]

National Museums Liverpool < https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/liverpool-academy-and-pre-raphaelitism>, [Last accessed 27^th June 2024]

[1] Sophie Anderson, Elaine (1870), oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, in Wikimedia Commons, < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sophie_Anderson_-_Elaine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg>, (uploaded 3^rd May 2015), [last accessed 13^th May 2024].

[2] Sophie Anderson, Elaine (1870) oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

[3] Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante’s Dream, (1869-71), oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, in Wikimedia Commons, < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_Dante%27s_Dream_at_the_Time_of_the_Death_of_Beatrice_(1871).jpg>, (uploaded 4^th November 2013), [last accessed 13^th May 2024].

[4] Kate Nichols, ‘Victorian Women Artists in the Public Collection: The Case of Sophie Anderson’, in ArtUK, <https://artuk.org/discover/stories/victorian-women-artists-in-public-collections-the-case-of-sophie-anderson>, [date accessed 27th June 2024].

[5] ‘Liverpool Exhibition of Paintings’, in Liverpool Mercury, Wednesday October 1871, no. VIII, p. 6, < https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000081/18711025/017/0006>, [date accessed 1^st July 2024].

[6] Liverpool Mercury, 1871.

[7] Liverpool Mercury, 1871.

[8] Cited in Colin Cruise, ‘Sick-Sad Dreams: Burne-Jones and Pre-Raphaelite Medievalism’, in The Yearbook of English Studies, 40, 1-2, (2010), p. 122.

[9] Cruise, p. 125; Andrew M. Stauffer, ‘The Germ’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites, ed. By Elizabeth Prette-John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

[10] John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus (1903) oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_William_Waterhouse_-_Echo_and_Narcissus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg#/media/File:John_William_Waterhouse_-_Echo_and_Narcissus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg>, [date accessed 1^st July 2024].

[11] Galia Ofek, Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2009), p. 3.

[12] Molly Englehardt, ‘The Language of Flowers in the Victorian Knowledge Age’, in Victoriographies, 3, 2 (2013), pp. 137.

[13] Whitney Chadwick and Flavia Frigeri, Women, Art and Society (London: Thames and Hudson), p. 19. 

[14] National Museums Liverpool < https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/liverpool-academy-and-pre-raphaelitism>, [Last accessed 27^th June 2024].

[15] ’Elaine’, in National Museums Liverpool, < https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/elaine>, [last accessed 27^th June 2024]; Kate Nichols, ’Victorian Women Artists in Public Collection: The Case of Sophie Anderson’, in Art UK, < https://artuk.org/discover/stories/victorian-women-artists-in-public-collections-the-case-of-sophie-anderson>, [last accessed 27^th June 2024].