COVE

She only said, "My life is dreary,

He cometh not," she said;

She said, "I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!"

- - Tennyson, Mariana, 1832

Marie Spartali Stillman was one of the most important female Pre-Raphaelite artists. As well as being an artist in her own right she modelled for a number of others. She was part of the first wave of British women able to train as a professional artist. She worked with a technique that gives her watercolours the quality of an oil painting. 

 Stillman's Mariana represents the jilted lover of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, a figure utilised elsewhere by both Gaskell and Tennyson. However, her direct source is Tennyson's poem Mariana, quoted above, which was a source of inspiration for a number of artists. A line from Tennyson's poem was quoted in Millais’ version of Mariana when it was first exhibited.

Stillman sees Mariana as a wistful redhead, like many of the painted Pre-Raphaelite women. However, in contrast to Millais more sexualised painting which encloses Mariana in the domestic sphere, Stillman portrays her in a meditative, thoughtful position looking not out of the window, or into the room but into a contented middle-space. The open window, in contrast to Millais offers a potential liberation from the enclosed interior.