What did the Bronte Sisters look like?

National Portrait Gallery

There are two official portraits of the Bronte Sisters.

Both painted by their brother Branwell Brontë (His own image in the picture has been painted out).

 

This is an actual photograph of 'The Gun-Group' portrait - an oil painting produced by Branwell around 1833/34. The photograph is now in extremely poor condition. The subjects are, from left to right: Anne, Charlotte, Branwell and Emily. Shortly after Patrick Brontë's death in 1861, Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls (pictured on right), took the painting back with him to his home town of Banaghar, in southern Ireland. He tore off the section showing Emily and destroyed the remainder believing the likenesses of the other three to be so poor. The original 'Emily' section is now on display in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Mary Taylor discribes Charlotte when she arrived at Roe Head:

I first saw her coming out of a coverd cast,in very old-fashioned clothes, looking very cold and miserable She looked a little, old woman.

Ellen Nussey: She never seemed to me the unattractivelittle person others designated her, but certainly she was at that tme anything but pretty, even her good points were lost. Her naturally beautiful hair of soft sily browb being then dry and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight little curls. 

Ellen Nussey July 1833, her first stay at the Parsonage:  

Emily was the tallest person in the house, except her father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte's, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes – kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not often look at you; she was too reserved. Their colour might be said to be dark grey, at other times dark blue, they varied so. She talked very little. She and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.

 

Anne, dear gentle Anne, was quite different in appearance to the others. She was her Aunt’s favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown and in falling curls fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet blue eyes, fine pencilled eye-brows, a clear, almost transparent complexion."

 

Juliet Barker: Anne's hair was actually darker then Ellen remebered: a little plait, cut off and cerefully preserved by Patrick on 22-05-1833 suggests that it had deepened to a rich brown with a hint of auburn, though it remained fairer than her sisters.

http://bjtanke.com/BRONTE/pagex.htm

 

Victorian society was of no interest to Emily. Having taken a fancy to the romantic, gigot sleeves of the 1830s- she wore them long after they’d gone out of style. On the other hand, she had no use for false embellishment. While attending Madame Heger’s school in Brussels, she was teased by the fashionable girls for not wearing a corset. Fellow pupil, Laetitia Wheelwright, recollected that Emily always answered their jokes with, “I wish to be as God made me.”

 Charlotte Bronte made these portraits of Anne:

 

George Smith: Charlotte’s friend and publisher:

 

'I must confess that my first impression of Charlotte Brontë’s personal appearance was that it was interesting rather than attractive. She was very small, and had a quaint old-fashioned look. Her head seemed too large for her body. She had fine eyes, but her face was marred by the shape of the mouth and by the complexion. There was but little feminine charm about her; and of this fact she herself was uneasily and perpetually conscious. It may seem strange that the possession of genius did not lift her above the weakness of an excessive anxiety about her personal appearance. But I believe that she would have given all her genius and her fame to have been beautiful. Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she, or more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was not pretty.'

 

On the website of the National Portrait Gallery

I found these portraits: 

 

Charlotte Brontë (Mrs A.B. Nicholls)

by George Richmond
chalk, 1850
23 5/8 in. x 18 3/4 in. (600 mm x 476 mm)
Bequeathed by the sitter's husband, Rev A.B. Nicholls, 1906

Artist
George Richmond (1809-1896), Portrait painter and draughtsman; son of Thomas Richmond. Artist associated with 320 portraits, Sitter in 13 portraits.
Brontë's publisher, George Smith, commissioned this portrait of the novelist from Richmond as a gift for her father, who saw in it 'strong indications of the genius of the author'. Elizabeth Gaskell recalled seeing the portrait hung in the parlour of the Haworth parsonage, and a copy of it appeared in her biography.

Juliet Barker: Richmond captered the beauty of her large hazel eyes and played the size of her prominent nose and mouth.
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It was during this visit in the summer of 1850 that the Smiths persuaded Charlotte Bronte to sit to George Richmond for a portrait, and she agreed, as the drawing was to be framed and presented to her father, and Ellen Nussey had also wished for a portrait of her friend. Richmond found Charlotte Bronte by no means a good subject; it is well known that he was keen about having a good picture as well as a faithful likeness. Richmond found Charlotte Bronte very depressed, and after she had given him two sittings he lost hope. It was her melancholy expression, as well as her irregular features that troubled him. On her third visit, the Duke of Wellington's servant was just leaving the studio as she entered, which caused Richmond to say in welcoming her, " If you had been here a quarter of an hour sooner, you would have seen the Duke of Wellington." Whereupon she broke out into eager talking about the Duke, and the artist caught the wistful expression given in her portrait.

When Richmond was getting on well with the drawing, Charlotte Bronte stood behind him, looking at it,  he heard a sob, and on turning round she said to him, " Excuse me it is so like my sister Emily."

When the drawing was finished, Mr. George Smith says in his paper, " In the Early Forties," " She burst into tears, and said it was so like her sister Anne, who had died the year before." The fact was, there was a family likeness between the three sisters, but Charlotte was not so good-looking as Emily and Anne. Mrs. Gaskell considered the drawing an excellent likeness, as did others who knew her in 1850.

Mr. Smith sent the drawing, and also a framed portrait of the Duke of Wellington as a present for Mr. Bronte, whom, as an Irishman, he greatly admired.

This portrait of Charlotte Bronte I never saw before.

Unknown woman, formerly known as Charlotte Brontë (Mrs A.B. Nicholls)

by Unknown artist
watercolour, 1850
urchased, 1906
for more information about this portrait read this

Thackeray’s daughter, the writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie recalled a visit to her father by Charlotte Brontë:

…two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of faint green moss.  

 

Barège dress = (a lightweight fabric woven of silk or cotton and wool) 

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A lot of discussion is going on about this portrait of Landseer. Read more on these weblogs:

Landseer could have travelled through the Brontes' home town of Haworth whilst visiting his friend John Nussey at Bolton Hall in Yorkshire. Nussey was the also brother of Charlotte Bronte's friend Ellen.

http://abigailsateliers.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-new-bronte-portrait/

http://soeursbronte.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/les-bronte-par-edwin-landseer-un-portrait-controverse/

http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-bronte-portrait.html

http://bookstains.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/did-the-real-charlotte-bronte-just-stand-up-the-debate/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/8196844.stm

Funny information on these weblogs

http://soeursbronte.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/a-la-recherche-des-soeurs-bronte-2/

http://bjtanke.com/BRONTE/

http://bjtanke.com/BRONTE/page%209.htm

Ruring a visit to London Charlotte visit the Royal Academie and is looking to a painting of Landseer. This is the only official occasion that the Bronte name is connected with Landseer.

I am going on in my search for more information about the Richmond and Landseer portraits and Charlotte's photo's.

 

A photograph believed

to be that of Charlotte Brontë

taken in the last year

 of her life in 1854.

Courtesy Brontë Parsonage Museum
 

Artist not known
Brontë Parsonage Museum
circa 1839

A head and shoulders portrait of Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) showing her wearing a bonnet. It is possible that this is the portrait Charlotte writes about while on her second visit to Brussels in 1843. This would suggest the artist is Mary Dixon.

Medium: ink, crayon, chalk & wash
Dimensions: diameter: 15.5cm
Vendor: Sotheby's
Provenance
Martha Brown (a servant in the Bronte household), 1855; William Law; Sotheby's, 2004.

Recently restored chalk drawing of Charlotte Bronte which was purchased at Sotherbys in 2004 and carefully restored to its former glory by experts.

When I see these portraits
I wonder
Why did Charlotte think she is ugly?

 

This is the latest discussed portrait

I have a problem with the hat of  ""Emily""

I think it is of a later period

 

But sure this portrait

 shows the kind of wild and imagenary beauty I imagine the sisters could have

More info on brontesisters