Abstract
Despite the presence of female patrons in art-commissioning networks formed around Dante Gabriel Rossetti, scholarship has been mostly directed toward the analysis of the relationships between Rossetti, his artworks, and his male patrons. Further analysis of the artist’s correspondence and scholarship reveals, however, a number of women who actively commissioned his works between 1848 and 1865. Following the lead of the increasing scholarly interest in women’s art patronage, this article places Rossetti’s female patrons at the core of its discussion. Through analysis of the similar commissioning practices of four patrons—Ellen Heaton, Pauline Trevelyan, Louisa Ashburton, and Harriet Baring—it considers the extent to which their consumption of art demonstrates a shared interest in investing in art that reflects their own homoerotic and homosocial interests and how this female-centered investment relates to other modes of mutual influence and networking developed within and surrounding the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The contextualization of these creative patronal practices in nineteenth-century matters of materiality, consumption, morality, religion, and (women’s) collectives allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the patronage of a Pre-Raphaelite artist and offers new perspectives on women’s self-expression through patronage and their contributions to the economics of artistic exchanges in the nineteenth century.