There are very few portraits of Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on this day, August 30, in 1797. Sadly, she never sat for a photographer, though the technology was available over the last decade of her life.
The two paintings above were done from actual sittings, twenty years apart. Most other known portraits, in oils or pen, were made after Mary's death, based on earlier sketches or descriptions by her son, Percy Florence.
Samuel John Stump’s portrait from 1820 shows a young Mary at her writing desk. She smiles shyly, lost in thought, fiddling with a locket. Stump was best known for his portraits of stage celebrities, and a series of famous landscapes.
The 1840 painting is by her friend, Irish-born Richard Rothwell who, for a time, was considered the finest portraitist in Britain. Mary appears with big brown eyes and luminous skin on a field of dark colors, a striking image of a refined and melancholic lady.
Both works come together brilliantly as inspiration for David Levine's caricature, published in the March 21, 1974 issue of The New York Review of Books. Levine, who passed away in 2009, was one of America’s finest artists, a master of pen and ink likenesses and editorial cartoon commentary.
5 comments:
I've always found it particularly sad that Mary never sat for a photo, although I suppose a photo doesn't have the same...'soul' as a painting. Still, makes me wish for time machines...
Did a post on my own blog about different artists interpretations of the Bride of Frankenstein, thought you might enjoy it!
http://www.wicked-halo.com/2010/08/bride-of-frankenstein.html
Happy Birthday to the Mother of FRANKENSTEIN...
Out of curiosity, Pierre, have you happened to read THE YOUNG ROMANTICS: THE TANGLED LIVES OF ENGLISH POETRY'S GREATEST GENERATION by Daisy Hay? Not really a biography of the single poets so much as a biography of their entire sphere, and how they interacted/depended on/feuded with each other. There's a lot about the Shellys in there, obviously, and especially about Mary after Percy's death and how she had to struggle to secure not only her own literary legacy, but his as well.
A fascinating read for anyone interested at all in the period or the personalities involved.
Interesting that I remember reading personal accounts from a couple people who had met Mary Shelley and physically described her, variously, as "blonde" with "grey-eyes". Also, there is a description of Mary being "auburn-haired", "petite", and "very handsome, though not beautiful" and yet another, as I recall, stating that she was "rather over the middle height of women" and "luminously beautiful."
Wish I could remember where I read those, but I recall the descriptions themselves quite clearly.
Oddly, none of Mary's portraits painted while she was alive appear to show her as neither a blonde nor auburn-haired lady.
MP
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