Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Pre-Raphaelite Who's Who: Dorothy Tennant and Frances Leyland

Dorothy Tennant (1855 - 1926) was a painter and model.

She studied painting under Edward Poynter at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and with Jean-Jacques Henner in Paris. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886 and subsequently at the New Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. Outside of London Tennant featured in exhibitions by the Fine Art Society in Glasgow and also in the Autumn Exhibitions held in Liverpool and Manchester.

She modelled for several painters, such as Jean-Jacques Henner, George Frederick Watts and John Everett Millais, for his painting titled No! In 1890 she married the explorer of Africa Henry Morton Stanley and became known as Lady Stanley.

John Everett Millais, No!

Frances Leyland (née Dawson, 1834 - 1910) was the wife of British shipowner Frederick Richards Leyland, who was also a major art collector and commissioned works from several of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters.

Frances modelled for the Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Frances Leyland, by James McNeill Whistler, and for Monna Rosa, by D. G. Rossetti. This is actually the title of two oil paintings: the earlier and smaller painting was completed in 1862 and its whereabouts is now unknown; the second was completed in 1867 and is now in a private collection. Frederick Leyland displayed the larger painting in his drawing room with five other Rossetti "stunners."

Monna Rosa (1867)

Monna Rosa (1862)

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