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Abstract
This is a multi-genre biography of the sisters Jessica, Edith, Mary and Kate Hayllar, artists who worked in England from the 1880s until the end of the nineteenth century. It examines relevant historical details and documents based on and around the Hayllar sisters lives and examines their paintings closely. It includes fictional vignettes at the conclusion of each chapter based on the information and discussion in that chapter, drawing together facts and issues raised there and focusing on examples of their work. As an imaginative reconstruction of particular incidents and family relationships, the fiction has the potential to enhance an understanding of the circumstances surrounding the sisters art production. In the small body of scholarship on the Hayllars, they are recognised as women whose only training was at home with their father, and they are primarily perceived as artists whose representations of women supported the hegemonic belief in domestic femininity. This biography, while accepting that their lives and work embody contemporary attitudes and traditions, suggests that the sisters were in many ways modern women, who painted to earn an income, and whose pictures exploited and occasionally subverted those prevailing beliefs. The dissertation examines the Hayllar sisters in relation to their Victorian and familial context, their education, the influences affecting their work, and their reception by their contemporaries. It also looks critically at the small group of scholars who have more recently discussed examples of the sisters work. While their story is unique in its family aspects, it is similar to, and so throws some light on, the lives and limitations of many English women artists of this period.