His life VS Hers (Victorian & Georgian Eras)
I have been searching for hours for female models in each painting but the problems im coming across is there is no record of how much the models were paid, there names or there stories, as they were seen as prostitutes by socciety and posed for money there isnt much record of them at all which is so sad. i have fond many in the tate gallery but as the paintings in the national gallery are older it makes it even harder. It also says aslot about how much we care about these woemn, the lack of research into them into comparison to the artists add to my statement.
The reality, unfortunately, comes down to how historical records were kept and who was considered worth documenting:
- Most sitters weren’t documented
- Until the late 19th century, artists and patrons rarely recorded the names, pay, or backgrounds of female models.
- Working-class women, servants, or muses were often considered anonymous labour. Their names weren’t seen as important, and financial records almost never survived.
- Artists’ documentation focuses on the artwork, not the sitter
- NG catalogue entries and archives focus on artist, date, provenance, and painting details — not the personal circumstances of the sitter.
- Even when a sitter is known (e.g., nobility or patrons), payment info is rarely included.
- Surviving records are mostly for famous models outside NG collections
- Lizzie Siddal, Victorine Meurent, Joanna Hiffernan, Fanny Eaton, etc., are well-documented because biographers, letters, or journals survived.
- These women posed for works now mostly in Tate Britain, Musée d’Orsay, or private collections, not NG London.
- NG collection is skewed toward patrons or historical figures
- Many female portraits in the NG are of wealthy, aristocratic women — not working-class models — so there’s even less chance of finding pay records or mistreatment notes.
Shifting my project
shifting the focus to women whose names, lives or records are obscure gives me a strong thematic foundation. Here are three paintings from the National Gallery, London collection that depict female sitters with limited biographical information. These can form part of my exhibition with wall text emphasising invisibility and absence of records.