Marianne Stokes was born Maria-Anna Preindlsberger in Graz, Styria, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1855 and studied art in Graz, Munich and France. In 1884 she married the painter Adrian Stokes and subsequently immigrated to England. Marianne Stokes became a celebrated and internationally known painter, travelling and exhibiting widely over the course of her career.
Painter Marianne Stokes was born Maria-Anna Leopoldine Preindlsberger in Graz, Styria, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 19 January 1855. She studied at the Graz Drawing Academy of Art before winning a scholarship in 1874 that enabled her to continue her studies in Munich. Around 1880, she moved to Paris where she attended the Académie Trélat and Académie Colarossi, leading private academies that offered classes to women. She made her debut at the Paris Salon in 1883, and in the same year, along with fellow student Helene Schjerfbeck, Stokes went to Pont-Aven in Brittany to study plein air realism. It was in Pont-Aven that she met the English painter Adrian Scott Stokes; they married in Graz on 30 August 1884. Following their wedding, the couple travelled in Capri and spent the summers of 1885 and 1886 in the artists' colony at Skagen in Denmark. They settled in England in St Ives, Cornwall.
Over the course of her career, Stokes painted, travelled and exhibited widely. In 1885, she showed for the first time at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition. Her work, A Parting, was purchased by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Living in Cornwall between 1886 and 1900, she was actively involved in the flourishing artistic community there, becoming a member of the Newlyn School. She exhibited at the West Cornwall Artists' Union Exhibition in Penzance in 1887, and with fellow Cornish artists at the newly opened Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1902. Stokes' work was also shown in numerous exhibitions abroad, including in Paris, Vienna, Graz, Budapest, Pittsburgh, and Melbourne. She exhibited in Munich in 1890, and at the Chicago World Fair in 1893, winning gold medals at both events and cementing her international reputation. In 1900, Marianne and Adrian had a joint exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London. Stokes was a Catholic and religious themes entered much of her painting. Focusing on portraits and devotional subjects, she painted people engaged in contemplative activities such as religious devotion, reading or sewing. She later took inspiration from Grimms' fairy tales, for example in The Frog Prince (1894), and from the 1890s she was interested in medieval and romantic themes. One of the leading women painters in England at the beginning of the 20th century, Stokes' work relates both thematically and stylistically to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. From around 1895, she painted in tempera and gesso, and in 1905 she became a member of the Society of Painters in Tempera. In 1908, Stokes was involved in designing and making banners for the Women's Suffrage Procession to the Albert Hall in London, organised by Millicent Fawcett. She also designed a tapestry for Morris & Company in 1912 which was shown by the Arts and Crafts Exhibiting Society at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1912-13, at the Universal Exhibition in Ghent in 1913, and in Paris in 1914.
Marianne and Adrian Stokes spent much of their lives together travelling and painting in Europe. Between 1905 and 1908 they visited Hungary at least five times and travelled widely in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These trips led to the publication in 1909 of their book, Hungary, illustrated with their paintings, and to exhibitions at the prestigious Leicester Galleries, London, in 1907, and the Nemzeti Szalon, Budapest, in 1910. They moved to Munich around 1909 and, when the First World War broke out in 1914, they were travelling with American painter, John Singer Sargent (whom they had known since 1885) in the Dolomites. Initially unable to leave Austria, the group reached Switzerland by September that year and Marianne and Adrian spent the following years largely in Switzerland and France. Eventually they returned to London, moving into Grantham Place, Park Lane, in 1921. Stokes continued to paint and exhibit extensively, and was elected to the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1923; she was also a member of the New English Art Club (NEAC). In 1927, both she and Adrian exhibited at the St Ives Society of Artists.
Marianne Stokes died at home in Grantham Place, London, England on 13 August 1927. Her work was widely known and appreciated and, as a tribute, three portraits by Stokes were shown shortly after her death at the winter exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour. Her portrait of lawyer and writer John Westlake is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Other UK public collections housing her work include Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Walker Art Gallery, Nottingham City Museums & Galleries, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery, and Tate Britain. One of Stokes' best-known works is Madonna and Child (1905), which was chosen as the design for a first-class Christmas stamp in 2005. In 2009, a retrospective of the work of Marianne and Adrian Stokes, accompanied by the publication Utmost Fidelity, was shown in Wolverhampton, Southport, Harrogate, Penzance and Truro.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Marianne Stokes]
Publications related to [Marianne Stokes] in the Ben Uri Library