Anne Brontë (2)

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Anne Brontë [?] (2)

Charlotte Brontë

c.1833

Pencil on paper (but original untraced)

Source: Frontispiece, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Murray ed. 1920)

This portrait is inscribed "[f]rom a pencil drawing by Charlotte Brontë," and the subject is identified below it as Anne Brontë. It may remind us that George Smith described Anne as "a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance." Yet Smith added that "[h]er manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy" (qtd. in Barker 559), whereas this young woman looks rather composed and self-sufficient. [Commentary continues below.]

Image acquisition and text by Jacqueline Banerjee.

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There is more to be said against the identification with Anne, too: this sitter has "more rounded features than those usually attributed to Anne Brontë," and there is "not the usual ringlet associated with this hair-style, so common in portraits by Charlotte taken from life" (Alexander and Sellars 241). Anne was however the "most depicted" of the three sisters, probably because, as the youngest and most biddable, she was the most easily induced to sit for her portrait (Sellars 127). So the possibility that this was Anne at a certain time in her life, and in a certain mood, cannot be overlooked.

Related Material

Bibliography

Alexander, Christine, and Jane Sellars. The Art of the Brontës. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. London: John Murray, 1920. Internet Archive. Contributed by University of California Libraries. Web. 2 December 2017.

Sellars, Jane. "Portraits of the Brontës." The Brontës in Context. Ed. Marianne Thormählen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 123-133.

Created 2 December 2017