Painting an Ethos: The Actress, the Angel in the House, and Pre-Raphaelite Ellen Terry

Abstract

Artist Graham Robertson referred to British performer Ellen Terry (1847–1928) as the “Painter's Actress.” Many nineteenth-century female performers benefited from relationships with fine art, using the image on the canvas as a vehicle for combatting stereotypes surrounding women in the theater. In aligning herself with the bohemian Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic, Terry established respectability through fine art and offered a feminine persona that was a powerful alternative to domesticity. Cultivating this persona not only through paintings but also through photographs and textual representations, Terry suggests the ways in which women could employ multimodal arguments to secure their place in the public sphere.

Notes

¹The author thanks RR reviewers Nan Johnson and Edward Schiappa, and also Melissa Ianetta, Margaret Stetz, and Kristie Fleckenstein for their time, thoughtful comments, and suggestions while preparing this piece.