Dorothy Dene
{{Short description|English stage actress and artist's model}}
{{Distinguish|Dorothy Dean}}
{{EngvarB|date=February 2018}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2018}}
{{more footnotes needed|date=November 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Dorothy Dene
| image = Dorothy Dene 1880s.jpg
| caption = Dorothy Dene in the 1880s
| birth_name = Ada Alice Pullen
| birth_date = 1859/1860
| birth_place = New Cross, London, England
| death_date = 27 December 1899 (aged 40)
| death_place = London, England
| burial_place = Kensal Green Cemetery
| occupation = Actress, artist's model
| spouse =
| parents =
| signature = Dorothy Dene's signature.png
| children =
}}
Dorothy Dene (1859/1860 – 27 December 1899), born Ada Alice Pullen, was an English stage actress and artist's model for the painter Frederick Leighton and some of his associates. Dene was considered to have a classical face and figure and a flawless complexion. Her height was above average and she had long arms, large gray-blue{{Cite news |date=23 July 1904 |title=DOROTHL DENE |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XNtlAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA7 |work=The Montana Catholic}} (sometimes reported as violet or having a violet hue){{Cite news |date=2 May 1896 |title=Leighton's Fair Model |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=geAqAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA3 |work=The Ellensburgh Localizer}}{{Cite news |date=7 May 1897 |title=SEARCHING FOR A MODEL |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oF1ZAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA7 |work=Mansfield Daily Shield}} eyes and abundant golden chestnut hair.{{Cite news |date=12 November 1892 |title=A BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LUwoAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA2 |work=The Ottawa Free Trader}}
Biography
Dene was born in New Cross, London, in 1859 or 1860; her birth name was Ada Alice Pullen.{{cite book|last1=Jiminez|first1=Jill Berk|last2=Banham|first2=Joanne|title=Dictionary of Artists' Models|date=2001|publisher=Fitzroy Dearborn|location=London|pages=151–54}} She came from a family of six siblings and a number of her sisters earned their living from acting on stage.{{Cite news |date=9 February 1896 |title=DOROTHY DENE'S BEAUTY |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iFNZAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA6 |work=Mansfield Daily Shield}} She lived with her sisters in an apartment in South Kensington, London.
Career as a model
According to a story published in 1897, Leighton chose her as the one woman in Europe whose face and figure most closely tallied with his ideal. Leighton searched Europe for a model suitable for his 1884 painting Cymon and Iphigenia, eventually finding Dene in a theatre in London.{{citation |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66524304 |title=A Master's ideal |newspaper=The Inquirer and Commercial News |location=Perth, WA |date=4 June 1897 |access-date=7 October 2014 |page=14 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} However, the story about her being found in a theatre is contradicted in Leighton's biography, written by Emilia Barrington right after his death. According to Barrington, Dene was spotted by the artist at the doorstep of a painter's studio close to Leighton's. The studio mentioned was probably that of Louise Starr Canziani in Kensington Green where she was already working as a model. She sat for Leighton when he painted Bianca in 1881.
Aside from Cymon and Iphigenia Dene appeared as the maiden catching the ball in Leighton's Greek Girls Playing Ball. Her long arms embellish the painter's Summer Moon. She also was the model for his Captive Andromache, The Garden of the Hesperides, The Bath of Psyche, Flaming June, among many{{Cite news |date=7 May 1887 |title=NEW PICTURES, Art Works Now Delighting London for the First Time |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MuYxAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA11 |work=Reading Eagle}} others.{{Cite news |date=1 August 1885 |title=Epitome of Mail News. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38JPAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA25 |work=The Sydney Mail}}
John Everett Millais and George Frederic Watts also used Dene as a model.{{cite news |last=Davies |first=Lucy |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |title=Dorothy Dene: Lord Leighton's secret lover? |date=19 November 2014 |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/11236508/Dorothy-Dene-Lord-Leightons-secret-lover.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205082355/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/11236508/Dorothy-Dene-Lord-Leightons-secret-lover.html |archive-date=5 December 2014 |url-status=live }}
Relationship with Leighton
File:Ferederic Leighton - Crenaia, the nymph of the Dargle; 1880.jpg, oil on canvas, 1880. Part of the Pérez Simón collection.]]
There have been rumours that Leighton had a romantic interest in Dene, but nothing has ever been substantiated. Leighton's sexuality remains a matter of debate. He remained a bachelor and, according to art historian Richard Louis Ormond who together with his wife Leonée wrote Leighton's biography, acknowledged he "fulfilled some part of himself in the company of young men".{{cite book|last=Cooper |first=Emmanuel |title=The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TZmGKVnjSmYC&pg=PR1 |year=2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-83458-7}} However, Leighton's friend, Italian artist Giovanni Costa makes some mysterious references to the artist's "wife" in letters to their mutual friend George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle. It has been speculated that they refer to Dene.
Leighton assisted Dene in her acting career; educating her and introducing her to "fashionable society", and it has been speculated that George Bernard Shaw "drew upon their relationship" for his play Pygmalion.[https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/LH_A4_factsheets_LP_Dene.pdf "LEIGHTON & DOROTHY DENE"] Leighton House Museum
At his death, he left her £5,000, plus another £5,000 in trust for herself and her sisters (this was the equivalent of around one million pounds today), which was by far the largest bequest he made.
Acting career
Ada Alice became "Dorothy Dene" in 1882 when Leighton became Ada's benefactor. It was adopted as a stage name for her theatrical career. "Dorothy" was chosen by Ada in reference to her younger sister who died in 1877 and the surname Dene was chosen by Leighton.
Dene made her debut as an actress as Maria in The School For Scandal in 1886. Theatre critic Clement Scott predicted great things for her acting career after seeing her first performance.{{Cite news |date=11 April 1891 |title=Who Miss Dorothy Dene Is |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=15o-AAAAIBAJ |work=Boston Evening Transcript |pages=2}} After that she played dramatizations of Bleak House and Called Back along with many classical plays.
In late 1892, Dene traveled to the United StatesNew York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892
Digital Folder: 005256145
Microfilm: 1027699
Image: 79
Indexing Batch: P50434-3 and in New York City she performed in a play produced by the Theater of Arts and Letters.{{Cite news |date=15 December 1892 |title=THE AMERICAN DRAMA |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2RobAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA6 |work=The Pittsburgh Press}} She also performed in other venues in the country.{{Cite news |date=4 February 1893 |title=DELAVAN OPERA HOUSE |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tTw6AAAAIBAJ&pg=PA2 |work=The Morning Record}} Although the very critical American audience considered her performance to their standards and received many offers from managers,{{Cite news |date=27 December 1892 |title=AMERICAN COIN, Foreign Artists Monopolize New York. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wFxkAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA5 |work=St. Joseph Herald}} Dene found little success as a performer in America and her 1893 tour was eventually abandoned.{{Cite news |date=15 July 1893 |title=STAGE GLINTS |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MFAUAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA4 |work=The Register-Guard}} In Britain her skill as an actress did not go unnoticed. In 1894, in a tour of A Woman of No Importance,{{Cite news |date=31 October 1894 |title=A Woman of No Importance ad |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u4M-AAAAIBAJ&pg=PA1 |work=The Glasgow Herald}} she alternated the roles of Mrs Allonby and Mrs Arbuthnot with the company's other leading lady, Florence West: critics complimented Dene on contrasting the two very different characters successfully. One wrote that she rose "to a height of intense emotional power" in the latter role, another that she played the former "with much charm and grace of manner"."Miss Dorothy Dene", The Era, 24 November 1894, p. 7
Later years
Some reports mention her spending her last four years as a recluse{{Cite news |date=28 January 1900 |title=She Has a Place in History |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045604/1900-02-18/ed-1/?sp=25&q=%22dorothy+dene%22&r=0.739,1.037,0.35,0.169,0 |work=Wheeling Register}} and that physicians who treated her said "she was dying from consumption, a victim of her own work, in spending long hours, scantily draped, in the not too comfortable studio."{{Cite news |date=1 April 1900 |title=A BEAUTIFUL MODEL |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SF8mAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA3 |work=The Clinton Morning Age}} She died in London in the summer of 1899{{Cite news |date=29 December 1899 |title=Dorothy Dene Dead |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DUBeAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA4 |work=The Morning Herald}} at the age of forty and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.'English Actress Dies', The New York Times, 29 December 1899, p. 7
Gallery
File:Lord Frederic Leighton - Cymon and Iphigenia - Google Art Project.jpg|Cymon and Iphigenia, Frederick Leighton, 1884
File:Greek-girls-playing-at-ball.jpg|Greek Girls Playing Ball, Frederick Leighton, 1889
File:Flaming_June,_by_Frederic_Lord_Leighton_(1830-1896).jpg|Flaming June, Frederick Leighton, 1895
File:Head study of Dorothy Dene (The Golden Stairs).jpg|Head study of Dorothy Dene for The Golden Stairs, Edward Burne-Jones, 1880
File:George Frederic Watts. Dorothy Dene.jpg|Dorothy Dene, George Frederic Watts, c1888
File:The Rain it Raineth Every Day (1883) by George Frederick Watts.jpg|The Rain it Raineth Every Day, George Frederick Watts, 1883
References
{{reflist}}
- Lima, Ohio Times Democrat, Searching for a Model, 28 May 1897, Page 6.
- North Adams, Massachusetts Evening Transcript, Most Beautiful English Woman, Tuesday, 10 May 1898.
- Ogden Utah Standard, A Beautiful Actress, Saturday, 24 December 1892, Page 7.
External links
- {{Commons category-inline}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070624155054/http://www.artmagick.com/galleries/muses/dene.aspx "Ode to the Muse": a good short biography, with pictures, from the Art Magick website.]
- {{Find a Grave|11177305}}
{{Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood|state=expanded}}
{{Frederic Leighton}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dene, Dorothy}}
Category:English artists' models
Category:English female models
Category:English stage actresses
Category:19th-century English actresses
Category:Actors from the London Borough of Lewisham