Sisters in the spotlight

Caroline Bugler admires a new exhibition that reveals the creative role of women in the Pre-Raphaelite circle

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WHEN Rossetti, Hunt and Millais founded their revolutionary art movement in 1848, they gave it an unambiguously male name —the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—evoking a secret society or medieval monastic community. But their lives were anything but monastic and, as the movement expanded and developed, it created a new ideal of female beauty—the ‘stunner’, with her unsmiling expression, soulful pale face framed by an abundant mane of hair and elongated neck. This was not the standard look for women at the time. To get an idea of that, you only have to cast your eyes over one of the earliest paintings in the exhibition, Thomas Richmond’s portrait of Effie Ruskin (as she then was, before her second marriage to Millais). She stands before you demure and slightly simpering, as Effie herself said, ‘like a graceful little doll’.