Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joanna-mary-wells-593" aria-label="More by Joanna Mary Wells" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Joanna Mary Wells</a>
Gretchen
Presented by the artist's daughters 1923
actions: postures and motions
adults
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, ‘Faust’
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
people
standing
woman
<p>This picture alludes to a central scene in <span>Faust</span>, the tragic play published by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the early 19th century. In the play, Gretchen, confused, seduced and pregnant by Faust, seeks solace in church. The sitter for the work was probably Wells’s nursery maid. Women artists had limited access to models at the time. Joanna Wells (née Boyce) had established a reputation during the 1850s as a painter of portraits, genre and landscape. She also wrote art reviews for the <span>Saturday Review</span>. Her career ended prematurely at the age of thirty. Wells herself was pregnant when she began this painting. She died shortly after the birth and the picture was left unfinished.</p><p><em>Gallery label, December 2020</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
2012-11-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-05
Gallery 9
Collection based display
23 August 2019 – 17 November 2019
2019-11-17
23 August 2019 – 17 November 2019
2019-11-17
2019-08-23
Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2019-08-23
Histories of women
Loan-out
Gretchen
support: 730 × 437 mm
frame: 922 × 618 × 48 mm
Presented by the artist's daughters 1923
<div class="text">
<p>Joanna Mary Boyce (married name Wells) paints her family’s nursery maid as Gretchen, the tragic lover of Faust in Goethe’s play by the same name. Faust seduces Gretchen, before she becomes pregnant and later drowns her baby. In Victorian times giving birth was dangerous for mothers and children. The artist died soon after painting this work, following the birth of her third child. She left this painting unfinished. Gretchen is an early example of the Pre-Raphaelite ‘poetic portrait’, a portrait that also references a literary character.</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
actions: postures and motions adults Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, ‘Faust’ literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) people standing woman