Blossom

Marie Spartali was the daughter of a prominent member of a Greek family based London. Closely associated with the members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement she was a pupil of Ford Madox Brown and model to Rossetti and Burne-Jones. She married William James Stillman, an American journalist, in 1871 and they spent much of their married life in Italy. She frequently exhibited in London at the Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery, Dudley Gallery and elsewhere and in New York at the American Society of Painters in Water Color. Working usually in watercolour and bodycolour, Marie Spartali’s works are strongly influence by the Pre-Raphaelites. The present work, which dates to circa 1875-7 was probably painted in the Isle of Wight where her family had a holiday home and where she and her children stayed for much of the time whilst her husband was working in the Balkans as a foreign correspondent for The Times. Blossom was always a favourite subject of the artist and features in many of her works as well as being prominent in Rossetti’s portrait of her as A Vision of Fiammetta.