No Country for Old Women

Happy New Year, Lovelies.

A little while back, I had an interesting discussion over on that there Facebook about the appearence, or lack of, older women in Pre-Raphaelite art.  I was already thinking about a similar post, about how we can compare the photographic image and the painted image of Stunners, especially as they grew older, thinking especially of Jane Morris.  As I thought about this post, I thought 'well, I could use...ummmm....oh dear...'

Are there any older women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings?

Ironically at the start, you can find them...

Isabella (1849) J E Millais

Christ in the House of this Parents (1849-50) J E Millais

Good old Millais, he had no fear of chucking in his Mum to bring up the average age.  Actually, neither did Rossetti...

The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1848-9) D G Rossetti

1849 was obviously a good year to be an artist's Mum.  It seems that when they were young men, the subjects they chose were quite inclusive.  Much in the same vein as traditional 'history' genre painting, the moments captured in the above pictures are naturalistic, despite their unnatural narratives.  The models were members of their own families, to add to the tension between fantastic story and domestic veneer.  However, look at the imagery and characters that the Pre-Raphaelites were drawn to: Ophelia, The Lady of Shalott, Arthurian Legend, Medieval Maidens.  Many of the women are caught in a moment of their youth, some of them die young, which imbues them with their heroine status.  There are precious few old women in the majority of their works because the subjects do not call for them.

Now, here is where I struck a thorn.  What was I looking for exactly?  The above pictures are of, excuse me, 'older' women, in fact the lady in Isabella, sat next to Lorenzo is quite elderly, but what I was interested to find was pictures of glamorous, 'stunner' pictures of women over 40.  Before I start, can I just point out that I find it very difficult to judge people's age these days and find actresses who I assume to be about my age (because they play parts that seem contemporary with me in film) are actually about 20.  So with Google search open I went in search of that glamorous women, middle aged and above.

Portraiture seems a safe place to start.  If you consider that by the time you have earned enough money and status to be able to commission a portrait of yourself or your wife, you have to be knocking on a bit, I felt sure I would be able to find the women I was after (if you know what I mean).

Mrs Coventry Patmore (1851) J E Millais

Oh, Mrs Coventry Patmore, with your glossy spaniel hair and pink bow, you must be what I seek!  I know your husband is a gentleman of age, shall we say, he has an enormous moustache...oh wait a moment, that's his official photo from later in his life.  Mrs Coventry was born in 1824 and therefore is 27.  Blimey, she was only 36 when she died, so inadvertently she is 'middle aged' in this picture.  Sorry, Mrs Coventry, and also I'm sorry that no-one knows your name is Emily and that you didn't look like a spaniel.  Hang on...

Emily Honoria Patmore

That's better.  Love the shawl.

Fair enough, how about Holman Hunt?  Surely he can provide me with an older woman (sorry, again, that sounded wrong, but you know what I mean)...

Fanny Holman Hunt (1866-68) William Holman Hunt

Now, she looks very regal and stately in this image, but hang on, she died at 33.  Damn it, she was dead before he finished this.  Fine, how about Edith, the other sister.  He married her later, and so she must have been older...

Edith Holman Hunt, you know, the other one (1880)

Ha!  Now, this is over a decade later and so Edith would have been....Fanny's much younger sister, therefore 34 in this picture.  Really? What is wrong with you all?

I'll have to move outside the PRB (shallow bunch) to find a proper 'older woman looking glam' picture.  Enter Evelyn de Morgan...

Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund (1905) Evelyn de Morgan

Granted, she's evil, but Queen Eleanor does seem to be somewhat older than the youthful and doomed Fair Rosamund. Nice, if disturbing.  I think de Morgan shows us the most convincing image of an older stunner, by using an existing stunner and waiting until she got older...

Jane Morris (1904) Evelyn de Morgan

.I think Jane must be about 65 here, and it is a preparatory sketch for a picture about the cruelty of time...

The Hourglass (1905) Evelyn de Morgan

Looking as regal and imperious as ever, Jane doesn't seem to have altered since her heyday.  Despite the grey hairs, her sad beauty is still intact and the audience's response is the same to The Hourglass as it would be to  La Belle Iseult from almost 50 years previously.  I have a problem though, and that is that Jane looks so sad, all the damn time, and she looks so miserable about being old.  Did no-one portray a middle aged woman as a stunner?

Excuse me, Rossetti wishes to have a word, although I can't imagine what that word would be...after all, his models were young, and when they got older he replaced them with Alexa Wilding who was a teenager when he discovered her in the 1860s...Oh, I see.  He wanted me to show you this...

Astarte Syriaca (1877-8)

Jane Morris was the same age as me when she became this glorious goddess.  Now that is impressive, as I feel about 104 this morning after falling down a muddy hill yesterday (don't ask).  So, Rossetti gives us a woman on the verge of 40 as a statuesque Deity, resplendent in her robes.  He also gave us Regina Cordium...

Regina Cordium (1861)

No, not that one, Elizabeth was barely 30 here...

Regina Cordium (1866)

No, not that one either, Alexa was in her late teens, for heaven sake...

Regina Cordium (1861)

This is the one: Ellen Heaton, patron of the PRB, posed for it at the age of 45.  Granted, it's not the most convincing stunner I've ever seen, but as portraits go, Rossetti went for glamour rather than dignity, for which I have to smile.  When Millais did a portrait of Isabelle Elder, he chose a more traditional image...

High necked dress? Book?  Basket of flowers?  Check!

So I rather like that Rossetti went with 'sexpot' rather than 'stately' as it is unexpected and completely uncalled for, if you know what I mean.  Instead of wearing a high-necked dress, she's going for a 'naked but for beads' look, and why not?  

To sum up, for the most part Pre-Raphaelitism is not a natural pasture for women over 30, the subjects did not call for them and the subsequent artists joining the cause carried on the medieval maidens and Shakespeare heroines, rather than find anything different.  Rossetti, due to his obsessions and shamelessness, brings us an older stunner, a middle-aged woman still this side of 'matron', but the lack of other images is not wholly the fault of the PRB.  I find it difficult to guess ages because looking 'mature' was often to be aspired to, and in many cases a by-product of life.  Christina Rossetti seems to have looked the same for most of her adult life, making it hard to gauge her age in any of her brother's portraits...

Christina Rossetti (1877) D G Rossetti

This is Christina at 47, but equally she looked like this in most of his images, a dark, deep poetess of incredible feeling and intellect.  Maybe the lack of older stunners is to do with the fact that after a certain age, women wished to have a more dignified persona, that playing the 'beauty' was not enough and possibly not dignified or desirable.  Herein we find another argument point: should we judge the artists or the models for aspiring to beauty or choosing to 'reject' it in favour of dignity?  How old is too old to be donning the coral beads and little else?  Should Ellen Heaton have chosen the more dignified route or was she right to be the oldest stunner?  I have no answers because, God knows, this argument is as relevant today as it was then.  We are utterly obsessed with youth now, maintaining it, regaining it.  I'm as guilty as anyone, I apply face cream, I won't wear certain things that I now deem too young for me.  In the school playground, I am surrounded by mothers in their twenties, some in their teens.  I was relieved to see a woman of my age dropping off her little boy to Lily's class, and so I chatted to her.  Turns out, she was his grandma.  Sod and Bugger.

Anyway, I don't think it's fair to judge the PRB for their lack of older stunners, after all Janey was around 40 towards the end of Rossetti's life and still appeared as his perfection, but for the most part they are responding to a market that valued youth as it's heroine.  Come on, it's no different now.  There is no reason why The Lady of Shalott cannot be an old woman, in fact I would feel sadder for her if she was.  Can you imagine waiting all that time for a shiny thigh, and then it kills you?  Damn....