Frederic George Stephens Collection (VMF160), 1898
| MSS Manuscripts
Administrative/Biographical History
Frederic George Stephens (1828 – March 9, 1907) was an art critic, and one of the two 'non-artistic' members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Born in London, Stephens was physically disabled because of an accident in 1837 and was educated privately. He later attended University College School, London. In 1844, he entered the Royal Academy Schools where he first met John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. He joined their Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, often modeling for them in pictures including Millais's Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1849) and Ford Madox Brown's Jesus Washing Peter's Feet (1852–6). He was so disappointed by his own artistic talent that he took up art criticism and stopped painting.
He communicated the aims of the Brotherhood to the public. He became the art critic and later the art editor of the Athenaeum while writing freelance for other art-history periodicals including The Art Journal and Portfolio. He also wrote for journals on the continent and the United States. His contributions to the Brotherhood's magazine The Germ were made under the pseudonyms Laura Savage and John Seward.
Stephen's first work of art history, Normandy: Its Gothic Architecture and History was published in 1865, and Flemish Relics, a history of Netherlandish art, appeared in 1866. Monographs on William Mulready (1867) and on Edwin Landseer (1869) followed. In 1873, he started writing series of almost 100 articles on British collecting for the Athenaeum; these treated major collections and small collectors alike thus encouraging middle-class art patronage and the growing Victorian interest for contemporary art.
He was also Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum and wrote most entries in the first volumes of the Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Division I: Political and Personal Satires, from 1870 onward. In 1875, Stephens began to characterize himself as an art historian rather than a critic and in 1877 he started to write contributions for the Grosvenor Gallery catalogues, which he continued to do until 1890.
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All publication not covered by fair use restricted to those who have permission of the copyright holder.
Originally laid in Ford Madox Brown: A Record of His Life and Work by Ford M. Hueffer. PR6011 O53 F6 1896
Accession number 1067
1898: January 17. Autograph letter signed from Stephens to Mrs. M. P. Brocklebank, informing her that Christina Rossetti did not sit for the portrait of St. John in Ford Madox Brown's painting "Christ and Peter," 2 pages
1898: January 21. Autograph letter signed from Stephens to Mrs. M. P. Brocklebank, identifying the models for the faces in Ford Madox Brown's painting "Christ and Peter," 2 pages
1898: January 26. Autograph letter signed from Stephens to Mrs. M. P. Brocklebank, making additional identifications of models for "Christ and Peter," 3 pages
1898: January 26. Manuscript notes listing names of models used for Ford Madox Brown's "Christ and Peter," 2 pages