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| The author in Tiradentes, Brazil, in May 2018. |
You may already know me from my previous blog, Pre-Raphaelite Reflections, which I'm now no longer updating – I wanted to give my blog writing a fresh lease of life! Here's a bit about me.
I was born in Ludlow in 1993 and grew up in Shropshire and Cornwall. I was able to study A-level art history at one of the few non-private institutions that offered the subject (Truro College, fyi) – without that, I doubt I would have got to where I am now!
I studied my BA in English and History of Art at Oxford Brookes University in 2011–14, and my MA in History of Art (British Art) at the University of York in 2014–15. Both my bachelor’s and master’s dissertations focused on Pre-Raphaelite art and literature: Lewis Carroll’s connections with the Pre-Raphaelites, and the watercolours of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
After my MA, I worked for a few months as a marketing assistant at Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers in London, followed by a two-month internship in the Western Art Print Room at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, cataloguing Pre-Raphaelite sketchbooks and drawings – the dream!
I returned to Oxford Brookes in September 2016 to start my PhD, a studentship funded by the university and supervised by Christiana Payne and Dinah Roe. My project focused on Frederic George Stephens (1827–1907), one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood about whom virtually nothing had been written. My archival research took me to surprising places, from beautiful Vancouver to a railway museum in rural Kent. In September 2019 I completed my thesis, entitled ‘The Hidden Pre-Raphaelite: The Art and Writings of Frederic George Stephens from 1848–70’, and in February 2020 I was awarded my PhD. I’m currently developing my thesis into a monograph on Stephens.
I’ve published articles in the Burlington Magazine, Ashmolean Magazine, British Art Journal and Pre-Raphaelite Society Review. My chapter on Stephens will be included in the forthcoming collection Defining Pre-Raphaelite Poetics (Palgrave Macmillan). I’ve delivered public talks in the Ashmolean Print Room and presented my research at the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Birmingham & Midland Institute. I co-organised the conferences ‘Reassessing Burne-Jones’ at the Ashmolean in February 2019 and ‘Pre-Raphaelite Sisters: Making Art’ at the University of York in December 2019.
Since December 2020 I have been living in Brazil with my husband, a fellow art historian. Besides art, I love literature, cinema and music of various kinds. I’ve also developed an interest in Brazilian art from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and am partly using this blog as a space to record some of my thoughts and observations on this subject.
If you have any enquiries about my research, feel free to reach out to me by email at robert.wilkes11@gmail.com. I am currently accepting commissions for written work.
I was born in Ludlow in 1993 and grew up in Shropshire and Cornwall. I was able to study A-level art history at one of the few non-private institutions that offered the subject (Truro College, fyi) – without that, I doubt I would have got to where I am now!
I studied my BA in English and History of Art at Oxford Brookes University in 2011–14, and my MA in History of Art (British Art) at the University of York in 2014–15. Both my bachelor’s and master’s dissertations focused on Pre-Raphaelite art and literature: Lewis Carroll’s connections with the Pre-Raphaelites, and the watercolours of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
After my MA, I worked for a few months as a marketing assistant at Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers in London, followed by a two-month internship in the Western Art Print Room at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, cataloguing Pre-Raphaelite sketchbooks and drawings – the dream!
I returned to Oxford Brookes in September 2016 to start my PhD, a studentship funded by the university and supervised by Christiana Payne and Dinah Roe. My project focused on Frederic George Stephens (1827–1907), one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood about whom virtually nothing had been written. My archival research took me to surprising places, from beautiful Vancouver to a railway museum in rural Kent. In September 2019 I completed my thesis, entitled ‘The Hidden Pre-Raphaelite: The Art and Writings of Frederic George Stephens from 1848–70’, and in February 2020 I was awarded my PhD. I’m currently developing my thesis into a monograph on Stephens.
I’ve published articles in the Burlington Magazine, Ashmolean Magazine, British Art Journal and Pre-Raphaelite Society Review. My chapter on Stephens will be included in the forthcoming collection Defining Pre-Raphaelite Poetics (Palgrave Macmillan). I’ve delivered public talks in the Ashmolean Print Room and presented my research at the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Birmingham & Midland Institute. I co-organised the conferences ‘Reassessing Burne-Jones’ at the Ashmolean in February 2019 and ‘Pre-Raphaelite Sisters: Making Art’ at the University of York in December 2019.
Since December 2020 I have been living in Brazil with my husband, a fellow art historian. Besides art, I love literature, cinema and music of various kinds. I’ve also developed an interest in Brazilian art from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and am partly using this blog as a space to record some of my thoughts and observations on this subject.
If you have any enquiries about my research, feel free to reach out to me by email at robert.wilkes11@gmail.com. I am currently accepting commissions for written work.
I am a distant relative of Rebekah Clara Stephens nee Dalton. i have been doing some research into my family and would be very interested in any information you have about her or her family. You may be interested to know that on the 1901 census Annie Maria Duley is recorded as a servant in the Stephenson household. In fact she was the sister of Rekebah CLara. My grandmother worked there briefly as well to help her grandmother Annie Maria Duley.
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