Pre Raphaelite Sisters

This exhibition explores gender relations in the 19th-century art world by highlighting stories that have been obscured. The lives and works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are well known and documented, but ‘Pre Raphaelite Sisters’ brings to the fore the agency and influence of women ‘behind’ the brothers: their relatives, muses and artists in their own right. As the curator Jan Marsh asserts in the catalogue: “For too long, the male artists have dominated accounts of Pre-Raphaelitism. Step forward, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters!”

These contributions are on display in the artworks by some of these women, and in depictions of the women by the ‘Brothers’. Effie Millais, formerly Effie Ruskin, is primarily positioned as a muse and model. Her work, ‘Garden path with rose arch’, from the Ruskin Whitehouse Collection is part of this narrative.