The Accidental Pre-Raphaelitism of Miss Gabrielle Ray

Today's post is a bit of fun, but don't worry if you just read my stuff for the words 'then everything took a tragic turn...' because I promise you there is a bit of misery too. Mainly, I wanted to just point out something that occurred to me while researching Edwardian actresses.  First of all, let me introduce you to the gorgeous Gabrielle Ray...

I mean, my goodness me, stunning. Gabrielle Elizabeth Clifford Cook, or Miss Ray, or Gabs to her friends, was a dancer, singer and actress and one of the most famous beauties of her generation.  Born in 1883 in Stockport in the North of England, she came from a fairly wealthy family and her sister Gladys (1879-1920) was also an actress, known as Gladys Raymond...

This is not a biographical piece on Ray as there are some cracking ones out there (but I will give you a bit of tragedy later).The purpose of this post is calling Our Gabs out for being Accidentally Pre-Raphaelite...

Okay, we'll start somewhere really obvious.  Here we have a 1906 card where Gabrielle Ray is being Millais' Bubbles...

Bubbles (1886)

It's uncanny.  As I've already spoken about in this post, the recreation of paintings is not an unusual thing, but possibly pretending to be a small boy is a novel move.

Now Miss Ray has arrived with her lilies, a very Pre-Raphaelite prop, and it might be a tad tenuous but I can see things like Rossetti's Sanctas Lilias and Cooksey's Maria Virgo but we can call on Rossetti's Virgin Mary pictures as well.

Maria Virgo (1915) May Louise Greville Cooksey

If a lily is a standard Pre-Raphaelite prop meaning the innocence and purity of the Virgin Mary, then I was surprised to see Miss Ray posing with a bird.  Those of us lucky enough to do Open University A102 will remember the pictures of 'kept' women with birds, how women are also caged pets etc etc.  I must admit Miss Ray's bird is both exotic and slightly sinister. And stuffed.

I remember lots of Victorian pictures of women with their caged birds, and even Byam Shaw's image of Maud Atkinson releasing the bird as she would like to be released (as you can see in this post), but I've chosen this Val Prinsep image as the girl looks remarkably like Miss Ray...

Reclining Woman with Parrot (undated) Val Prinsep

The exotic dress, the bosoms, it's practically the same picture!

Girl with Lovebirds (1876) Henry Guillaume Schlesinger

Yes, this is the sort of thing I was remembering, where women are like pretty exotic birds and we must keep them in nice warm house with plenty of seed, or something.  Either way, I'd love to know where the photographer who took Gabrielle's picture got that bird. It is striking, to say the least.

I now draw your attention to the genre of Pre-Raphaelitism that is 'woman emerging from foliage' as Miss Ray is demonstrating here...

I obviously thought of Rossetti's Fiammetta and her apple blossoms

A Vision of Fiammetta (1878) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

But equally I could have gone with Julia Margaret Cameron's image of Alice Liddell lurking in a hedge...

Ceres (Alice Liddell) (1872) Julia Margaret Cameron

Or in fact something like Sophie Anderson's Capril girl who looks very happy about her flowers...

Capril Girl With Flowers (undated) Sophie Anderson

Good for her, it's nice to have a hobby.

The picture that really set me off on this frankly ridiculous post was this one...

Oh, come on now, she's definitely referencing this painting by Frederick Sandys...

Love's Shadow (1867) Frederick Sandys

We're looking at around 40 years between the images but the moment I saw (and subsequently bought) this postcard on eBay, I knew it was either consciously or unconsciously a call-back to another actress, Mary Emma Jones/Sandys, the common-law wife and model of Frederick.  Mary was also still alive and, depending if this postcard was after Sandys death in 1904, putting on performances to pay the bills.

Finally, I saw this image of Gabrielle...

which reminded me of this image of Florence Welch (from this post)...

which obviously led me to this painting, which incorporates a multiple image of Jane Morris...

Astarte Syriaca (1877) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Yes, I know that Jane isn't all three women, her daughter May is one of them, but the effect is of a multiple of the same goddess. With Gabrielle's image, reflected in the mirror, I'm guessing there is a hint of her life as an actress, being in front of the mirror to prepare for the stage, but also the many parts she will play, the many facets of her personality. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the images of Fanny Cornforth and Alexa Wilding in front of mirrors in such works as Lady Lilith or Fazio's Mistress. A woman in reflection is a trope, for want of a better word, also buying into the notion of women's vanity, but judging by Gabrielle's expression, I wonder if there is more to the term 'reflection' here.  What is she thinking?

Gabrielle Ray (c.1910) Foulsham and Banfield, London

Miss Ray was only 10 years old when she took to the stage in 1893, but from that point she became a star. She was just shy of 30 years old when she retired from the stage in order to marry Eric Loder in the Spring of 1912, however less than a year later he had cleared off and committed adultery, giving her grounds for a divorce. Meanwhile, her beautiful sister Gladys had married railway engineer John Winnington in 1910. Despite regularly appearing in plays throughout the war and after, Gladys suddenly disappeared from public life, dying in 1920 of cancer in the Barnsley Hall Asylum in Bromsgrove.  

Gabrielle kept working, but her original fame had been damaged by her retirement and the scandal around her marriage and she never found the same popularity.  Mental health issues caused her to have a breakdown in 1936.  She lived out the rest of her life in Holloway Sanatorium where she was visited by her fellow actresses including Lily Elsie.  She was remembered by the staff there as a small, neat old lady who enjoyed going out in the car and shopping, walking in the nearby village, being quiet and cheerful.  She died in May of 1973 and had an obituary in The Stage which tactfully reported that 'for half a century, she has lived away from theatrical circles.'

Apologies for the tragic ending, but the point of this rambling post is the currency of Pre-Raphaelite imagery, fifty years after its creation.  I'm not sure if I think the echoing of these paintings is deliberate either by Gabrielle Ray or the photographer but it is a very strong coincidence if it isn't.  More likely, the poses and props of Pre-Raphaelitism had become their own graphic language that superseded the original meaning and place to become the standard of feminine beauty, easily understood by the viewer. My hunt continues for inadvertent Pre-Raphaelitism but it has been a charming diversion to spend time with Miss Ray.