An exhibition uncovering the story of seven remarkable women.

Written by Corinna Henderson, Exhibitions Curator.

Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters is an exhibition that brings into focus a family of seven Anglo-Indian sisters whose lives connected Bengal, Paris, and London, and whose influence helped shape Victorian artistic and intellectual culture. Through paintings, photographs, letters, jewellery and dress, the exhibition reveals how these women; Adeline (1812–1836), Sara (1816–1887), Julia (1815–1879), Maria or ‘Mia’ (1818–1892), Louisa (1821–1892), Virginia (1827–1910) and Sophia (1829–1911), contributed, each in different ways, to the creative world around them.

Born in West Bengal to James Pattle (1775-1845) of the East India Company and Adéline Maria de L'Étang (1793-1845), who was of French-Indian descent, the sisters spent their earliest years in a landscape rich with visual and cultural diversity. Their later education in Europe further broadened their outlook, giving them fluency in multiple languages, confidence in conversation, and a cosmopolitan sensibility unusual for women of their time. These formative experiences would shape how they moved through society, deliberately and with influence.

Today, Julia Margaret Cameron is the most widely recognised of the seven, celebrated for her pioneering contribution to early photography. Beginning her photographic practice at the age of 48, Julia developed an approach defined by emotional intensity and visual softness. Her portraits of Darwin (1809-1882), Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), the actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928), and many of her own family members are among the most iconic images of the nineteenth century. In the exhibition, her work appears not as an isolated achievement, but as the product of a creative environment in which sisters and friends sat for her, encouraged her, and shared ideas.

At the centre of that environment was Little Holland House in Kensington, where Sara Prinsep (née Pattle) established one of the most active and dynamic salons of mid-Victorian London. On Sunday afternoons, artists, writers, musicians and thinkers gathered to exchange ideas. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), and William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), as well as scientists, Charles Darwin and Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), and even politicians, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898). The sisters’ collective presence at these gatherings helped shape the tone of warm, intellectually curious, and culturally open discussions. This was not women’s passive socialising; the Pattle sisters created an environment in which some of the greatest thinkers of the Victorian era debated, inspired, and produced.

No figure was more deeply entwined with this circle than G F Watts (1817-1904). Watts lived alongside the family from 1851 to 1871 as Artist-in-Residence. His developing friendships during this period shaped both his personal and artistic life. His portraits, including those of Mia, Sara, Sophia and Virginia, form a core part of the exhibition. Several of these portraits have been loaned to the exhibition by descendants and great advocates of the Pattle sisters, including the Eastnor Castle Collection. Through these artworks we see the sisters not merely as muses, but as individuals whose character Watts sought to express. Furthermore, their influence extended beyond the frame as they provided Watts with an environment of dialogue, hospitality and creative exchange that nurtured his practice.

The sisters’ legacy continued long beyond their own lifetimes. Through Mia Pattle, and her daughter, Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson; formerly Duckworth; 1846-1895), the family line leads directly to Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), two founding figures of the Bloomsbury Group. Bell’s painting of her mother, Julia Stephen, produced after a photograph of her mother by her aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, marks the multi-generational and multi-media artistic legacy of the Pattle Sisters. The Bloomsbury Group section of the exhibition also showcases generous loans from Charleston, the home and studio of Bell and Duncan Grant. Through this display, the story of the Pattle sisters forms a bridge between Victorian aesthetic culture and early British modernism, a lineage of women associated with artistic innovation, and alternative thinking about art and society.

Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters invites visitors to reconsider the role of women in Victorian Britain. It highlights influence not only through professional achievement, but through hosting, conversation, creativity, and connection. It asks us to recognise the power of collective presence, of seven sisters whose remarkable shared life resulted in the creation of art, ideas and relationships that shaped a generation.