How the Virgin Mary came to Brother Conrad of Offida and laid Her Son in his arms
Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman (Middlesex 1844 – London 1927)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1892 (monogrammed and dated)
Materials
Watercolour, bodycolour and gold paint on paper
Measurements
682 mm (h) x 985 mm (w) x 35 mm (d)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
NT 1287919
Caption
‘I stayed at Kelmscott for ten days and felt quite shut out of the busy world in that beautiful walled garden.’ Marie Spartali Stillman was Jane Morris’s ‘dear friend’ who ‘paints quietly in the garden, making pretty portraits’. Using her favourite medium of watercolour, her series depicting Kelmscott Manor – William Morris’s ‘heaven on earth’ – included a gift to Morris, now at Wightwick Manor, West Midlands (NT 1287932). Born into the close-knit Anglo-Greek community in London, Spartali Stillman’s cosmopolitan upbringing brought her into contact with Pre-Raphaelite patrons and artists. From 1865 she studied with Ford Madox Brown alongside his daughters, Lucy and Catherine. She was also in demand as a model, sitting for her childhood friend the sculptor Maria Cassavetti (later Zambaco), and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79). After her marriage to William Stillman in 1871, the family lived an itinerant life in England, the USA and Italy. In Florence the artist was part of the Anglo-American community that included John Singer Sargent and Vernon Lee, and she was included in Ellen Clayton’s English Female Artists (1876). In 1893 she wrote from Rome to her artist daughter Effie: ‘I have found several charming subjects which I hope will sell for a few ££ by and bye [sic]’. The lives of saints provided subjects for a number of Spartali Stillman’s works – in the example here her husband was used as the model for Brother Peter, standing to the left. Edward Burne-Jones commented on her working sketch for Friar Conrad’s vision: ‘… I don’t know how it could go wrong anywhere’. The view through the trees was influenced by Bellini’s The Assassination of St Peter Martyr (1505–7), and features in a number of her other works. Spartali Stillman produced 170 known works over a 60-year career, exhibiting in the UK and the USA. The largest public collection of her work is held at Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington.
Summary
Watercolour, bodycolour and gold paint on paper, How the Virgin Mary came to Brother Conrad of Offida and laid Her Son in his arms by Maria Spartali Stillman (Middlesex 1844 – London 1927), signed with monogram and dated: 92 [1892]. A wood scene with Virgin Mary to right lowering baby into the hands of a kneeling Brother Conrad, additional monk to left behind a tree.
Full description
The subject is the most important event in the life of the Italian Saint Conrad, a Franciscan monk born near Ancona about 1240. His companion on his travels, Blessed Peter of Treja, is shown on the far left watching from the edge of the wood. The lives of saints provided subjects for a number of Marie Spartali's works, including The Childhood of Saint Cecily (1883), The Vision of the Good Monk of Solfiano (1892) and Saint Francis Blessing the Pigeons he has Freed (1902). The Italian mediaeval subject and setting are characteristic of Spartali's work. Equally distinctive is her use of the Pre-Raphaelite technique of dense, opaque watercolour to create subtle colour harmonies, here predominantly greens and browns. The flat, frieze-like composition with the figures all set on the same plane in the foreground can be seen in many of her figure groups, reflecting the influence of her study of Renaissance, especially 15th century Florentine, art during her residence in Italy. Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn have pointed out the resemblance of the composition to The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr of circa 1510 by the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini (National Gallery, London), which is dominated by its woodland setting. Spartali was living in Rome at the time she was working on Brother Conrad. She wrote to Burne-Jones seeking advice about both it and The Good Monk of Solfiano, sending him sketches for comment. He wrote of Brother Conrad: "the kneeling monk and Virgin & Child only want such change as nature will give you when you begin to make drawings - if the Virgin leaned forward a little to trust the babe safely it might be better - no, she is better upright - and the monk's hands are a little awkward but it is only where nature will at once set you right - this ought to be a lovely little picture and full of care and delight to you and I don't know how it could go wrong anywhere - and you know a wood whose green background is all ready for you - get both done for May - and send me over the tracings later on for final correction and warning...." [Marsh and Nunn 1989 pp 104, 106]. There are affinities between Brother Conrad and Burne-Jones's The Merciful Knight of 1863 (Birmingham Art Gallery). One of his favourite early works in the same opaque watercolour technique, it shows a comparable incident from the life of another mediaeval Florentine saint, also in a woodland setting with symbolic flowers. In Brother Conrad the white lilies are the flower of the Virgin, a symbol of purity. Glimpsed through the woodland is a Tuscan landscape with a tower in the distance. Spartali's husband William Stillman was the model for Brother Peter on the left.
Provenance
By descent to Chauncey Stillman (1907 – 1989), New York; transferred to the National Trust on the death of Sir Geoffrey Le Mesurier Mander (1882-1962)
Marks and inscriptions
EDONO Chauncey Stillman New York August 1976 (labelled on reverse)
Makers and roles
Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman (Middlesex 1844 – London 1927), artist
Exhibition history
Poetry in Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of Marie Spartali Stillman, Watts Gallery, Surrey, 2015 - 2016, no.Cat. 31 Poetry in Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of Marie Spartali Stillman, Delaware Art Museum, 2015 - 2016, no.Cat. 31
References
Marsh & Nunn, 1997 Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists, 1997 , no. 53 Elliot 2005 David B. Elliot, A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage: The Lives and Works of Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 2005 Poetry in Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of Marie Spartali Stillman (ed. Margaretta S. Frederick and Jan Marsh), Delaware Art Museum, 7th November 2015 -31st January 2016 and Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey 1st March - 5th June 2016, cat. 31 Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, pp. 148-151