They dazed and dazzled. They starred and shone. They glowed and gleamed through the canvas and the frames. They were amongst the most feted women of the 19th century, captured for all time in intensely saturated luminous colour by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and their circle, but their names are still barely known to the public: Jane Burden, Elizabeth Siddal, Emma Watkins, Alexa Wilding…
They were the Pre-Raphaelite women featured in some of the most important British paintings ever created including Autumn Leaves, Astarte Syriaca, Work, The Light of the World and The Hireling Shepherd which live in Manchester Art Gallery.
As part of March’s Wonder Women season Ed Glinert, official Manchester tour guide and author of Penguin’s Manchester Compendium, leads this fascinating fact-filled tour around the gallery’s best loved Victorian models and their contemporaries.
