‘Sisters in Art’: Reassessing the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood

Round, Alex (2025) ‘Sisters in Art’: Reassessing the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

How significant were friendships to Pre-Raphaelite women artists and writers? How did these connections play a formative role in their work? My thesis is the first to examine the impact of friendships amongst Pre-Raphaelite women artists and writers and how they used their friendships to challenge the masculine structures of the Victorian art and literary worlds. The figures explored in this research include Barbara Bodichon, Anna Mary Howitt, Bessie Parkes, Jane Benham, Eliza Fox and Elizabeth Siddall. These women established their own women’s network that was built on creative and domestic friendships, as well as political alliances. Together, they utilised their friendships to challenge the masculine structures of the art community, and eventually wider aspects of Victorian culture.

Despite growing publicity following their first exhibition in 1848, women who moved in the Pre-Raphaelite circle were significantly marginalised in comparison to their male counterparts.¹ For instance, John Ruskin criticised Howitt, advising her to ‘leave contentious subjects alone’.² This subsequently led Howitt and other female artists to destroy some of their works. As a result, these women and their works have been excluded from the mainstream narrative of Pre-Raphaelitism. Notwithstanding the stigmas these women experienced, their work broke away from the feminine ideal defined by male-centric institutions. Marsh (1985) coined the term ‘Sisterhood’ as a way of identifying these women as more than the Brotherhood’s ‘muses’, and rightfully as artists. Although ‘Sisterhood’ has been crucial in the efforts to recover them, the term’s use in critical scholarship has proven problematic. These women should not be collectively generalised as the ‘Sisterhood’ as it still relegates their individual and collaborative achievements. Instead, they adopted their own labels to further establish themselves as professional artists and writers, forming their own working partnerships that have hitherto been unknown. My thesis is the first to deconstruct the critical ideologies that have predominated in academic analyses of them, as well as recover the lives and works of these women, the friendships and bonds they formed and their creative agency, distinct from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

1 Serena Trowbridge and Amelia Yeates, Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities: Constructions of Masculinity in Art and Literature (Routledge, 2017), p. 1.

² Jo Devereux, The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England: The Education and Careers of Six Professionals (McFarland, 2016), p. 158.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 5 September 2025 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Pre-Raphaelite Women, Victorian Literature, Pre-Raphaelite, Women’s Studies, Women’s Art, Women’s Literature, Victorian Women, Victorian Art
Subjects:	CAH25 - design, and creative and performing arts > CAH25-01 - creative arts and design > CAH25-01-02 - art
Divisions:	Arts > Art and Design Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	22 Sep 2025 12:23
Last Modified:	22 Sep 2025 12:23
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16648

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