Frederic George Stephens

Frederic George Stephens (1827 – 9 March 1907) was an art critic, and one of the two 'non-artistic' members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Stephens was born to Septimus Stephens of Aberdeen and Ann (née Cooke) in Walworth, London and grew up in nearby Lambeth. Because of an accident in 1837, he was physically disabled and was educated privately. He later attended University College School, London. In 1844 he entered the Royal Academy Schools where he first met John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. He joined their Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, often modelling for them in pictures including Millais's Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1849) and Ford Madox Brown's Jesus Washing Peter's Feet (1852–56). There is a pencil portrait of Stephens by Millais dated 1853 in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. He was so disappointed by his own artistic talent that he took up art criticism and stopped painting. He claimed to have destroyed all his paintings in 1850 but three of them are still at the Tate Gallery, London: The Proposal (The Marquis and Griselda) (circa 1850), Morte d'Arthur (circa 1850–55), and Mother and Child (circa 1854) along with a pencil drawing of his mother (1850).

He communicated the aims of the Brotherhood to the public. He became the art critic and later the art editor of the Athenaeum while writing freelance for other art-history periodicals including The Art Journal and Portfolio. He also wrote for journals on the continent and the United States. His contributions to the Brotherhood's magazine The Germ were made under the pseudonyms Laura Savage and John Seward. During this time he was heavily influenced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whom he allowed to write reviews of his own work under Stephens's name.

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