More than Muses: Makers, Models, Muses

Carol Jacobi

"Why are there no great women artists?"  Famous essay from Linda Nochlin.  Jacobi's reflections cover women as hidden in plain sight - models and muses.

All artists covered were more known as muses than artists - Isabel (Lizzie) Siddle (described as a victim in literature); Derila - Slade; Madelene Knox - Camden Town Group.

Most of these women are mentioned as an artist, not known as artist.  Consider how the caption is written.  National Gallery is trying to identify women artists in Pre-Raphaelite portraits.

How do curators talk about models who are also artists?  Do they reinforce myths?  Women model/man artist?  Notably, both men and women are artists and models.  What is the interaction between artists and sitters when both are artists.  The discussions definitely took place but are not documented.

Francis Bacon and Freud - captions describe their relationship
Holman Hunt and Rosette - muse-like relationship.
Julia Margaret Cameron and Holman Hunt - ?

PRB - paint from reality.  Not perfect bodies but friends and family as subjects.  PRB members were impatient with middle class expectations of their family - respectability; enforced introductions to suitable partners.  Associating with working class women instead.  Consenting relationships.  Parental pressure; seducing - No!  All parties to encounter consent.

William Holman Hunt - The Awakening.  Annie - seduced woman.  Conscience.  Unusual take.  Original interpretation brother & sister playing the piano ! Really?  Annie, the subject, became a professional model as it paid double to domestic work, and gave her a good living.

Fanny Carnforth.  Model and sex worker. Woman modelling alleged to be prostitute.  But need to hear real story to explode the stereotype.  Portrayed as a fallen woman who committed suicide in river.  Actual story -  Bought pub, married, had 7 children.  Being a model could be a good start in life.

Lizzie Siddell.  Poor family, from Old Kent Road.  Working in hat shop.  Spotted for her red hair.  Actually met Walter Deverell at art school, and writing poetry.  She accesses the studio via common interests.  Issue of name.  Died Lizzie Rossetti, but known as Lizzie Siddell.

Deverell wanted a boyish girl for Viola (Shakespeare) so picked Siddell for her boyish looks, not her beauty.  Models are just actors within the scene set by the male artist.

Millais, Ophelia - Siddell lay in a bath, heated by candles under it.  Victim of love, father wants her to marry another, and Hamlet who breaks her heart.  Story is part of daring world of rule breaking - defies parents; defies social expectations.

Image as fantasy of artists vision.  A dream, not an actuality.

Rossetti and Siddell move in together - very risqué for its time.  But gives Siddell - introduction to patrons; studio space; proper teaching.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was obsessed with her.  1000s of images.  Informal and quick.  Loose hair, no corset - awakening conscience?!  Intimate relationship of painter and model.  Part of PRB group.  Rossetti did not marry her at this stage.  She could not engage with society.  He starts playing around.

Janey Morris, uneducated, daughter of stablehand.  Successful textile artist.  May Morris, daughter, ran the textile part of the business.  Changed fashions.  Tight hair and corset became loose hair and uncarpeted.  Fashions associated with women's rights and freedoms - 1850s.
Love triangle - William Morris, Janey and Rossetti.

Fanny Carnforth.  Often portrayed with mouth open.  Risque.  Mouth does not wear out.  Sexually awakened woman.  Power of beauty.  Loose hair and clothing.  Jewellery of natural forms.

Rossetti finally marries Siddell.  Miscarriage.  Suicide by laudenham.

Women are known by diminutives. Not men.  Holman Hunt 'The Mad' - not recorded.  Isabel (Lizzie) Siddell - recorded.

Men's artistic legacy - preserved by family members.  But happens less often to women.

Women artists influencing male artists - many.  But not recorded.  Whereas men influencing women are - Cassett/Degas.

Women's trajectory lost with change of name, eg marriage, aristocracy.  Need to look harder.

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Patterns with second case study.

Women who model get reputation for slovenly, lacking morals, bohemian.

Suzanne Valadon.  Hangover; blue room self portrait, books and cigarettes.

Isabel Rawthorne/Lambert.  Only had her own studio in 40s.  From poor background.  Won scholarship with RA.  Original of the skinny figures of Giacometti - known as his muse.  Was also studio assistant of Epstein.  Described as 'exotic', not from Bali, but was Scots/Welsh.  Had Epstein's baby, but registered it as his wife's child.  Has studio in Essex.  Giacometti changes the spelling of her name to Isobel.

Her artistic story: Paris.  Life class prizes.  All there is, is drawing.  Gaining presence. Only 3 self portraits.  Very light tough.  Friends of Giacometti.  Flaneurs.  He developed drawing skills in 1937 when he became friends with her.  Studio and conversation - she, as a young woman artist, influences an older male artist.

Epstein and Giacometti makes sculptures of her.  Spanish Civil War - they bury their work.  Few sculptures survive - Epstein's and Giacometti's work is found, hers is not.  She was in war intelligence, travelling - passport documents it.  Couriering money and documents?  Worked for SOE?  Black propaganda ie from inside Germany.  Malingering leaflets for German troops to go home - her image is on their leaflets to us!).  Black porn - Bletchley Committee meeting notes - porn found on German soldiers - undermine morale.

Post War - first civilian artist to get back to Paris and Giacometti.  He wanted her to model for him - yet male art critics publish her as bitch.  His work stalled - but she had to leave to get a decent studio space.  46/7 winter very cold.  We know she influenced Giacometti because of dates on work.

Successful design career in ballet.  Draws in practice rooms.  Her work is of moving figures.  Giacometti's work is static figures.  Her work is moving cubism.  Several positives and once.  Looks at figures and draws.  Real body in continuous movement.  Elongates arms of Nureyev and Fonteyn.  No difference between animals and people.  Cold War takes place.

Starts looking at swallows and oilseed rape.  (Made British landscape look very different - no longer muted colours but bright yellow).  Sparrowhawks die due to pesticides.  Final piece when she died of dead sparrow hawk.  Represents death - harbinger of death.  Turner's angel in sun.  Scratched names of all those she's loved into the paint, and handprints.

When she died, house sold.  Bacon's biographers checked the house.  Tried to get Giacometti's letters. Bridget Noakes saved Isabel's works with permission from the family.  Obituaries - recorded her as muse not artist.  All biographers of Epstein, Giacometti and Bacon tell of her as muse, tease, man-eater, lush, impotence maker, beauty who lost her looks - especially James Lord.  None of these things are said about men!

Artist talent eclipsed by femme fatale/vanitas figure, by male recorders.

Show at Hanover.  Isabel Lambert (name of second husband).  Gallery adverts 'by Isabel Rawsthorne'.  She was not know by this name, other than as a muse.  She became a derivative of a man.

Solution Research and publish and exhibit women artists.

Women artists - biographical ghetto or misfit to artistic canon?  What about telling her story by rewriting art history but changing it.  Try rereading the Bacon story - her story casts a lot of light on his story.  Every exhibition should identify where women are part of the story and how they impact on it.