Remembering F. G. Stephens

Rebecca Clara Dalton Stephens and Frederic George Stephens, 1890s, by an unknown photographer. Image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Kent.

Frederic George Stephens, the Pre-Raphaelite artist, art critic, art historian, and sometime poet and model, died on this day in 1907, aged 79.[1] In this post I will tell you some lesser-known things about his life and work, which I discovered while researching my PhD thesis on him.

Alphonse Legros, F. G. Stephens, 1889, silverpoint, location unknown, published in J. B. Manson, Frederick [sic] George Stephens and the Pre-Raphaelite Brothers (1920). Stephens and Legros were close friends, and the former wrote reviews of the artist's work.

Stephens photographed by Frederick Hollyer, ca. 1890, published in Hollyer's Portraits of Many Persons of Note, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

A day on the water

One of Stephens's favourite pastimes, when he wasn't painting, reading, writing or visiting museums and country houses, was rowing. He rowed all his life. I don't know exactly when he first took up this hobby, but it comes up a lot in his early correspondence (late teens, early 20s), inviting his Pre-Raphaelite friends – William Michael Rossetti, the Tupper brothers, Holman Hunt, Rossetti – for leisurely jaunts down the Thames. Sometimes they'd accept, other times gracefully decline. In one letter (I can't now find the exact date) he mentioned having fallen out of the boat into the water during one of these merry excursions – given the state of the river water in those days, lord knows what that felt like!

Why rowing? My theory is that, because of Stephens's lame leg,[2] it was an outdoor physical pursuit which didn't require him to use his legs as much – rowing is more of an upper-body activity. He also evidently found the practice of rowing immensely relaxing, and being out on the water gave him time and space to think, away from the relatively cramped home which he shared with his family. He wrote at least two prose pieces influenced by his rowing habits: 'A Night on the Water', published in an obscure journal called Titan in 1859; and its sequel 'A Day on the Water', which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in 1864. They are strange things that are hard to categorise: part historical essay, part moody prose poem. Stephens describes the historical locations and heritage sites seen along the banks of the Thames from the rowboat, but also the natural sights around him: 'The day is fresh and brisk with a constant air [...] It is river and sky, sky and river, white cloudlets like swans among the grey'.[3] I need to look into them more!

In 1866, after Stephens married Rebecca Clara Dalton, the couple took up a lease on 10 Hammersmith Terrace, the garden of which backs into the Thames:

View of Hammersmith Terrace from the River Thames. Source.

One of the main reasons why Stephens was attracted to the house was because it allowed easy access to the water. He had his own rowboat which he kept moored at the end of the garden; in one or two letters he mentions having to get it repainted. This stretch of the Thames is also a prime spot for viewing the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race – an event which Stephens followed with interest (the first race was in 1829). He would invite friends and relatives to come around and watch the race from the upper windows of the house, which gave an unrestricted view of the river. One vivid letter by Clara Stephens to her husband not long after their marriage gives an account of her running the household during the boat race while he was away on research, and a stream of visitors arriving to watch the boats from the bedrooms.

'A very prepossessing head'

It's no secret that Stephens was a favourite male model of the PRB. William Michael Rossetti wrote to his mother Frances in September 1849: 'Stephens has, as you say, a most pensive and, I think, very prepossessing head. Millais is painting him for Ferdinand listening to Ariel'.[4] What's telling here is the phrase 'as you say', suggesting that Frances Rossetti too found Stephens good-looking; his physical attractiveness was recognised by both men and women (neither of whom, in this case, were professional artists, and one of whom wasn't even a member of the Brotherhood). Millais's Ferdinand is a faithful likeness of Stephens, when compared with a photograph of him taken in 1859:

John Everett Millais, Ferdinand lured by Ariel, 1849-50, oil on canvas, 65 x 51 cm, The Makins Collection, USA. Source.

F. G. Stephens photographed by Joseph Cundall, 1859, published in Jeremy Maas, The Victorian Art World in Photographs (1984)

Stephens also sat for the central figure of Christ in Madox Brown's Jesus washing Peter's feet:

Ford Madox Brown, Jesus washing Peter's feet, 1852-6, oil on canvas, 116.8 x 133.3 cm, Tate, London. Source.

Ford Madox Brown, Study of F. G. Stephens for 'Jesus washing Peter's feet', 1852, pencil on paper, 29.2 x 34.3 cm, Tate, London. Source.

Curiously, according to Holman Hunt, Brown painted Elizabeth Siddall's hair onto Stephens's head in the final painting!

But these appearances by Stephens in some of the most iconic Pre-Raphaelite paintings are all familiar by now. During my research I looked for any studies or likenesses of Stephens which have been overlooked. It is known that Stephens appears as one of the snobbish, murderous brothers sitting at the dinner table in Millais's Isabella of 1848-9:

John Everett Millais, Isabella, 1848-9, oil on canvas, 103 x 142.8 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Source.

The smiling figure beside Stephens with light-brown hair is usually thought to be Walter Howell Deverell

Stephens is shown holding up a wineglass and chewing his fingernails. Thanks to Millais's meticulous, semi-photographic painting techniques, we can be sure that we are looking at a realistic representation of Stephens's delicate hands and handsome profile (Stephens himself later wrote that the PRBs painted their human models 'exactly, and so to say, to a hair').[5]

I found a study for this painting now in Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery which shows yet another likeness of Stephens:

John Everett Millais, Studies for 'Isabella', ca. 1848-9, pencil on paper, 25.1 x 35.4 cm, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery. Source.

This study shows that Millais added the fabulous medieval hat later on; he initially sketched Stephens simply, in profile. About a year later, Millais would use Stephens as a model again for Ferdinand.

We don't often allow ourselves to acknowledge that the male models in early Pre-Raphaelite paintings are handsome or even beautiful – we have typically reserved those perceptions for the women, like Siddall, Anne Miller and Fanny Cornforth. Stephens is a useful starting point for considering these issues, which I would like to consider in greater detail in my future research.

'This morning we got to Louvain and tomorrow to Brussels'

Stephens's art history books aren't read much (if at all) nowadays; indeed, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that he was an art historian. But art history was as important to him as his criticism, which engaged with modern art and exhibitions rather than the art of the past. He was a self-taught historian, having not had the Oxbridge education of someone like John Ruskin, and he was equally as interested in researching art as making it while he was a student at the Royal Academy (which had an excellent library). In the 1860s Stephens was finally able to travel to other European cities in order to immerse himself in the original works of art and architecture which he had previously only seen as engravings in books.

A notable example is the trip he made to Belgium while researching his book Flemish Relics in the spring of 1865:

Front cover of Flemish Relics by F. G. Stephens, 1866. Source: Internet Archive.

He was accompanied by the photographer Joseph Fleming, who was enlisted to take photographs of the major public buildings in Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp which would be included in the book (luxuriously, as actual photographic prints stuck onto the pages). In May 1865 Stephens wrote to his stepmother Dorothy from the Hôtel le Panier d'Or in Bruges, the first stage of his journey: '[we] found this inn which is in the market-place, right opposite the famous Belfry of nearly 300 feet in height, we have seen several of the places it is necessary to see and shall see the first tomorrow'.[6]

A few days later he and Fleming were in Mechelen, having already passed through Ghent, Oudenaarde and Antwerp; 'this morning we got to Louvain [Leuven] and tomorrow to Brussels, after that it is uncertain where we shall be'. In the same letter he wrote appreciatively about the bells of St Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen: 'The carillions [sic] here, and at Audenaerde, are charming, those of this place are playing now some long piece like a waltz tune and very intricate of performance'.[7]

View of Mechlin Cathedral by Joseph Fleming, taken in May 1865, in F. G. Stephens's Flemish Relics.

Stephens's fascination with medieval architecture meant that he opposed what he felt was the over-restoration of historic buildings, particularly churches and cathedrals, in Victorian Britain. He wrote ferociously against the subject in his weekly columns in The Athenaeum – so much so that William Morris wrote to him in March 1877: 'there are many thoughtful people who would be glad to sacrifice time, money, and comfort in defence of those ancient monuments'. Morris had plans for establishing a society 'to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all "restoration" that means more than keeping out wind and weather', and he asked for Stephens's help in getting the project off the ground: 'I am unskilled in organising this sort of thing; is it too much to ask you to do something to help, and when could I see you about it?'[8] This led to the founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings ('Anti-Scrape') later that year. Stephens's role in the establishment of the society has not been properly acknowledged before, although of course he was not the only person involved.

Funeral

Me standing beside the grave of F. G. Stephens, 3 January 2020. Photo by Felipe Corrêa.

In January I paid a visit to Brompton Cemetery in London, where Stephens and five members of his family are buried. These others are: his father, Septimus Stephens; his stepmother, Dorothy Mary Stephens (née Farmer); his sister, Eliza Stephens; his wife, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton); and his son, Lt Col Holman Fred Stephens, the last to be buried in this plot.

Stephens's funeral took place on 14 March 1907. It was reported in the Illustrated London News on 23 March:

As the article notes, at his death Stephens was one of the last surviving members of the PRB, the others being W. M. Rossetti and Holman Hunt (from whom Stephens had long been estranged following a string of increasingly unpleasant disagreements). Stephens's youthful association with the Brotherhood determined the course of the rest of his life, having a lasting influence on how he created, researched and wrote about art. There's a wonderful quote from a letter to W. M. Rossetti which I always like to use. It was in 1899, only a few years before his death: 'By the inner principles of P[re]-R[aphaelit]ism my life has been & is still guided'.[9] Although Stephens and his work fell into relative obscurity after his death – at least when compared with his more famous Pre-Raphaelite friends, Millais, Hunt, Rossetti and co. – it was the aim of my PhD and resulting publications (the first of many, I hope!) to turn this around. I close with this memorial from the only 'book' (of sorts) to have ever been published about him, exactly 100 years ago:

My completed PhD thesis!

Notes

[1] Stephens was born on 10 October 1827; some sources give 1828, but they are contradicted by Stephens's baptism record, which gives 1827 as his birth year.

[2] In 1837, while still a child, Stephens suffered an accident which left him with a lifelong limp. The circumstances of this accident are not known. Writing to Madox Brown in 1889, he mentioned having recently hurt his foot, 'badly in the old wound of my boyhood which lamed me for life' (letter from Stephens to Brown, 16 February 1889, National Art Library, V&A).

[3] Frederic George Stephens, 'A Day on the Water', Macmillan's Magazine (1867), p. 227.

[4] Letter from W. M. Rossetti to Frances Rossetti, 28 September 1849, in Roger W. Peattie, Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti (1990), p. 9.

[5] Frederic George Stephens, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Seeley and Co., 1894), p. 17.

[6] Letter from Stephens to his stepmother Dorothy Mary Stephens, 23 May 1865, Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

[7] Letter from Stephens to his stepmother Dorothy Mary Stephens, 29 May 1865, Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

[8] See Norman Kelvin, ed., The Collected Letters of William Morris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 351-52 and p. 356, for Morris's letters to Stephens.

[9] 3 August 1899, University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections Division, Angeli-Dennis Collection.

'Sunshine': Remembering Clara Stephens

Note: The information in this post is derived from my PhD research into F. G. Stephens; more is available in my completed thesis, now with Oxford Brookes University.

As women in the Pre-Raphaelite circle go, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton) has been more overlooked than others. On International Women's Day, it feels appropriate to call attention to this forgotten woman who was affectionally nicknamed 'Sunshine' by her husband, Frederic George Stephens.

Clara Stephens (with fabulous hat) photographed by William Housley, probably September 1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (album of photographs of the family and friends of Lawrence Alma-Tadema). Source.

Her marriage to Frederic has had a knock-on effect over time: the husband was overlooked by scholars, so the wife remained even deeper in the shadows. Their marriage, like any other, had its highs and lows, but it was stable and happy – which doesn't fit the template of the tumultuous, 'bohemian' relationships of the other Pre-Raphaelites which audiences often like to hear about (looking at you, Rossetti). Everyone loves a scandal, but with Clara and Frederic there was little in the way of that – indeed, Frederic deplored the way people gossiped about their relationship in the early 1860s, prior to their marriage. In her memoir about the Victorian art world, Jane Allen Panton (née Frith) recalled seeing the couple often at the London exhibitions in the 1890s:

Mr. Stephens was a man one always saw at all of the Private Views, and no doubt elsewhere […] He wore his hair very long, and was usually attired in a wide ‘artistic’ hat and cloak, while his wife, in an old-fashioned bonnet and shawl, accompanied him and looked after him in a manner touching to behold. He was very lame and plain, and we, as young people, looked upon him as the old gentleman himself, and believed the lameness came from an ill-concealed cloven hoof.[1]

Clara and Frederic George Stephens photographed in May 1894, image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.

But what about the woman herself?

She was born, evidently, in 1832 in Iver, Buckinghamshire[2] – I say evidently, because when she married Frederic in 1866 she said she was 32 years old, which would mean she was born in 1834. Furthermore, her death certificate in 1915 gives her age as 85, which suggests a birth year of around 1830. Nineteenth-century registers are notoriously unreliable, so perhaps we shouldn't rely on them too much. At any rate, little is known about Clara's early life, making her upbringing and education difficult to pin down. Her parents were Riley and Sarah Dalton. The 1861 census shows them living in Eagle Cottage in the parish of St Mary the Boltons, West Brompton, with their three sons, Clara's brothers: Samuel (aged 23), John (19) and William (16). They were working class: Riley was a building contractor, Samuel was a carpenter and her other brother John was a ‘carman’. In 1851, Clara was working as a servant, aged 18, in the house of Gilbert-Louis Duprez, a notable French tenor, in Albert Place, Kensington.[3]

I have no space here to discuss the mysteries surrounding Clara's two children born in the 1850s, Clara Adelaide Charles (nicknamed 'Lottie) and 'Charlie'. At this time Clara was evidently married to a man named William Charles, the father of Clara and Charlie, although the circumstances are shadowy and require further research – a good subject for a future post!

Decorated card by Clara Stephens to her husband Frederic, 1897, image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

Another mystery is exactly how and when she met Frederic George Stephens. There is a touching card decorated by her and given to her husband in 1897, 'In remembrance of a windy May morning in Cheny [sic] Walk 1859' (pictured above) – evidently an event of some significance for the couple, and an indication that they knew each other as early as 1859. At that time, Clara was a student at the National Art Training School in South Kensington – another aspect of her life that needs more research. Her early letters to Frederic occasionally mention her art lessons, such as in July 1861: 'I know darling it will delight you to hear of any thing that I have done well, after all the time that you have spent for my advantage[,] they gave me an apple to shade and Mr Slocomb said it was very well done'.[4] However, it seems very little of her work, if anything, has survived.

Handwriting practice by Clara, in the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

A distinctive characteristic of Clara and Frederic's relationship in the early 1860s is that Frederic became obsessed – too much so, in my opinion – with improving her handwriting, spelling and grammar. There are many letters exchanged between them on this matter. Pictured above is an example of the handwriting exercises which Frederic sent to her: she had to copy the words 'seventeen', 'near', 'marry', 'altho[ugh]', 'forty' and 'manner' repeatedly in order to improve her cursive lettering.

Frederic George Stephens, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton), ca. 1860s (1866?), watercolour and gouache on paper, 40 x 34.1 cm, collection of Dennis T. Lanigan.

Frederic painted this watercolour portrait of Clara some time after they met; it's undated, but it could have been made around the time of their marriage on 6 January 1866, as a sort of love token. The peacock feathers in her hair could be a reference to the contemporary Aesthetic Movement.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton), 1873, oil on panel, 11 1/4 x 16 inches, location unknown. Reproduced in J. B. Manson, Frederick George Stephens and the Pre-Raphaelite Brothers (1920). Source.

Clara also sat to Lawrence Alma-Tadema – a close friend of the Stephenses – for this portrait in 1873, which sadly is now untraced.

Clara was very much in love with Frederic. During my PhD research, I read through many of her letters in the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, in which she pours out her heart to him. When, in September 1866, they moved into their first proper home, 10 Hammersmith Terrace, Clara enjoyed playing the role of hostess to Frederic's circle of friends. She enters suddenly into the Pre-Raphaelite social scene, mentioned affectionately in D. G. Rossetti's letters to Frederic and floating in and out of Frederic's letters to Holman Hunt, W. M. Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. Apparently, Oliver Madox Brown called her a 'Roman matron' owing to her hospitality and jovial, down-to-earth personality.

Clara and Frederic on holiday in Cornwall, 1890s, image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

In writing this, I realised I have a lot more to say about Clara than I first thought. I would like to write more about her in future, and sometimes a blog post isn't enough. If people are interested to know more, I will certainly continue the subject!

For now, on International Women's Day, let's remember the forgotten women in the shadows behind the famous – or not so famous, in Frederic's case – Pre-Raphaelite Brothers.

Notes

[1] Jane Ellen Panton, Leaves from a Life (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1908), pp. 171–72.

[2] Information found by Philip Shaw of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

[3] Many thanks to Bob Clifford of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum for this information (email, 11 June 2018).

[4] Letter from Clara to Frederic, 12 July 1861, Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.