THEODOR VON HOLST, 1840

Best known as the first illustrator of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Theodor von Holst was an English Romantic artist whose work shows a clear fascination for literature and the supernatural. He served as a major inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with The Wish having a marked influence on the way women were often represented in their art.

The intensity and allure of this portrait offers a darker, more seductive counterpart to 19th century ideals of angelic femininity. Of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, it is Dante Gabriel Rossetti who seems most moved by the notion of the femme fatale as it appears in The Wish, recalling his fixation on Von Holst’s vision of “a beautiful woman, richly dressed, sitting at a lamp-lit table, dealing out cards, with a peculiar fixedness of expression” that led him to publish his first poem, ‘The Card Dealer’, in 1852, which imagines an encounter with her.

In his lifetime, Von Holst achieved some commercial success, though this was limited by his unconventional interest in occult and erotic themes which set public opinion against him, and his career was unfortunately cut short by his untimely death in 1844. Today, he is remembered as the essential link between Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite painting, and his image of the femme fatale has endured in art to this day.