Commission - Portrait of Emily Brontë

Preliminary sketch 

An interesting and different way to start the new year - a previously explored subject. The preliminary sketch is always very rough and incomplete.

Several years ago, I painted portraits of some of my favourite authors. Emily Brontë’s was one of them, as her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights, had left a real impression on me as a young woman. Having read it in my teens, in French translation, I intend to re-read it in the original 

English sometime this year. 

The Pillar Portrait by Branwell Brontë 

 There are very few images of the Brontës to use as reference and the ones that do exist are considered to be of poor likeness. I relied heavily on the ‘Pillar Portrait,' painted by their brother Branwell. I figured that even if he wasn’t that good of a portraitist, he had at least captured something of his sisters' essence and facial features. Emily is in the centre and would have been about fifteen years old when this portrait was painted. 

Rounded "baby face" with a sulky expression. 

My new client enquired about the painting above of Emily Brontë, which I had done many years ago, hoping to purchase it. Unfortunately the painting had been sold - so here I am, beginning a new portrait of Emily for her. Like the first, the new portrait will be painted on an old book glued shut, then primed.

 Since I painted the original portrait, an 1848 daguerreotype of three ladies emerged in France. Although unconfirmed, it is believed to be of the Brontë sisters. Emily is again in the centre and would have been around thirty years old. She died of tuberculosis in December of that same year. Wuthering Heights had been published the year before under her pen name Ellis Bell.

For this new portrait of Emily Brontë, I will use a combination of images as well as some reliable written sources describing her facial features, physical appearance, and personality traits. 

This website was very useful to me: brontesisters.co.uk. 

 Standards of beauty change through the centuries and are highly subjective. A young Queen Victoria would have been a model for the standards of beauty and fashion at the time. Emily was described as tall and manly, with strong features, a protruding mouth and prominent chin. The exact opposite of the ‘doll like,’ diminutive, large-eyed, thin-lipped, chinless Victoria. Emily did not care for fashion and frivolity. An intellectual, she was an introvert - perhaps a feminist before the term existed. I wanted to portray her as unconventionally attractive, intelligent, and observant of her surroundings, understanding life’s struggles and human nature well beyond her years. She had a strong character and perhaps was a little intimidating. She marched to the beat of her own drum.

 I decided to depict her in her twenties, deep in thought, at work on Wuthering Heights. 

Thank you to my client for the opportunity to 

reaquaint myself with this exceptional author.

 Please follow me on this new painting project.