‘Distant Prospects are Anne’s Delight’: Landscape Art in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Abstract

This chapter discusses Anne Brontë’s own drawings alongside an analysis of the role of the artist in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. A Künstlerroman, the novel depicts the artist-heroine, Helen, maturing as an artist as she gains knowledge of the world. It includes several examples of ekphrasis and the detailed descriptions of paintings and drawings are analysed in relation to Anne Brontë’s own interest in the technical challenges of representing the natural world. Most of Anne’s surviving artworks display her fascination with landscape and nature, subjects that preoccupy her artist-heroine. In the novel, Helen labours to produce commercial paintings of landscapes and seascapes that accord with her artistic vision, an indication of the author’s interest in the opportunities available to women to gain financial independence by means of creative labour. This theme makes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall an unusual novel for its time.