Mary Shelley had a pale, oval face, large eyes and brown hair parted in the centre, if you go by the portrait Richard Rothwell painted of her in the 1830s. That oil is the image most of us have of her. A second likeness, a miniature by Reginald Easton dated 1857, follows the same features.
What does the Rothwell portrait show?
Rothwell shows a woman in her thirties, seated, looking straight at you with a faint, closed smile. Her hair is gathered at the sides of the head and parted in the middle. She wears a dark gown that leaves her shoulders bare, with a golden shawl falling from one arm, against a red drapery and a dark blue ground.
The painting is oil on canvas, 73.7 by 61 centimetres. The National Portrait Gallery in London holds it as NPG 1235 and dates it to around 1831 to 1840.
Look at the light. Rothwell keeps almost all of it on her face and shoulders and lets the gown sink into the background. The woman who wrote Frankenstein appears calm and composed, close to the viewer, with nothing gothic around her.
Where was the portrait first shown?
Rothwell exhibited it at the Royal Academy in London in 1840. The catalogue paired it with lines from The Revolt of Islam, a poem by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had died in 1822. Visitors met her face through his verses.
How did the portrait reach the National Portrait Gallery?
Jane, Lady Shelley, Mary's daughter-in-law, left it to the Gallery in 1899. The painting stayed in the family for decades before it went on public view, and it has been there since.
What does the Easton miniature add?
Reginald Easton painted a small portrait in watercolour on ivory, 10.8 by 8.6 centimetres, dated 1857. Mary Shelley died in 1851, so Easton painted it after her death. He gives her the same hairstyle and a shawl, and a circlet backed with blue, close to what Rothwell shows. The miniature belongs to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Two artists, one face. Between them they fixed the Mary Shelley that later illustrators and film costume designers kept returning to.
Who has played Mary Shelley on screen?
Four films have given her a face, each with its own idea of who she was.
In Bride of Frankenstein (1935), directed by James Whale, Elsa Lanchester plays her in the prologue, telling the rest of the story to Percy Shelley and Byron. Lanchester also plays the Bride, so the same actress is both the author and the creature.
Ken Russell's Gothic (1986) casts Natasha Richardson as Mary during the summer at Villa Diodati. Ivan Passer's Haunted Summer (1988) returns to the same summer with Alice Krige. Haifaa al-Mansour's Mary Shelley (2017) stars Elle Fanning and follows her from her teens to the publication of the novel.
You can read how the Creature fared on screen over the same century in our guide to Frankenstein in cinema, and the summer that started it all in the night at Villa Diodati.
Why does the Studio Everart statue dress Mary Shelley in white?
We dressed her in white to set her against the Creature's monstrosity. Rothwell painted her in a dark gown; our Mary wears a white dress, as pure as the act of creation.
She stands on tiptoe on a small footstool, one foot lifted behind her, and reaches up toward the Creature. We sculpted that movement to be light and graceful, like the breath of life itself. Her hands hold the painted heart at the Creature's open chest.
The Creature towers over her. That difference in scale, his enormous bulk against her slight figure on the footstool, is the contrast the whole statue is built on.
The piece is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Creators Edition, Chapter II of our Masters of Madness collection. It stands 32 cm tall, in hand-painted polystone (a composite of resin and stone powder), limited to 100 numbered pieces, with two interchangeable heads for the Creature.
Where can I read more about her life?
Our short biography of Mary Shelley covers her losses and her circle. For what the novel tells us about the Creature's own appearance, read what Frankenstein's Creature looked like in the book.
