Kelmscott Manor
Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman (Middlesex 1844 – London 1927)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
Unknown
Materials
Watercolour on paper
Measurements
528 mm (h) x 668 mm (w) x 36mm (d)
Order this imageCollection
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
NT 1287932
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. 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]’. 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 drawing - Watercolour of Kelmscott Manor, viewed over flowerbeds and turtledoves. Wide giltwood mount; glazed in narrow giltwood frame.
Provenance
Given to Mrs William Morris; May Morris.
Marks and inscriptions
Typed and written labels on reverse giving details of provenance.
Makers and roles
Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman (Middlesex 1844 – London 1927), artist
References
Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, pp. 148-151