For over a century, Marie Spartali Stillman, Maria Zambaco, and Aglaia Coronio have been trapped in the footnotes of art history as the mere muses of famous men. The indie short film The Three Graces completely rewrites that narrative.
In this interview with Close-Up Culture, director Nicole Sarah Fry and screenwriter/producer/actor Andreane Rellou break down how they fought budget constraints, subverted history, and put these forgotten creators exactly where they belong: center stage.
Marie Spartali Stillman, Maria Zambaco and Aglaia Coronio have often been remembered through their connections to famous male artists rather than for their own creative work. As a director, how did you approach shifting the focus towards these women and making their ambitions the centre of the story?
NICOLE SARAH FRY: In the short, we focus on the girls’ artistic aspirations and their attempt to improve their etiquette to fit into London high society. The vast majority of fictional and factual representations focus on the men at the centre of this movement and women pushed to the sidelines as models and muses. But in The Three Graces, these men are merely stepping stones for the Graces’ own careers, such as Marie’s intention to enter the Royal Academy competition.
The film explores assimilation, with the women trying to become more British to gain acceptance in Victorian artistic circles. What interested you about using comedy to explore that pressure to change yourself to fit into a society that may never fully accept you?
ANDREANE RELLOU: Being a Greek immigrant myself, I’ve always been acutely aware of how much I have to code-switch in order to fit in. Beyond switching languages, it’s also about shifting behaviours and communication styles. So there’s definitely a curiosity there, about how much and whether one even has to adapt themselves in order to be socially accepted.
When I was initially researching this project, I kept finding firsthand accounts of people who had met Maria Zambaco, Marie Spartali Stillman and Aglaia Coronio, and remarked on their manners, their accents, their eccentricities. As they were very beautiful, Victorians frequently exoticised them, or they were seen as seductive, provocative, offensive or “forward”. When Marie Spartali Stillman started to achieve success as a professional artist in England, someone described her Greek heritage as “mortifying”.
I felt a real kinship to them, how they were trying to be taken seriously for their work, but instead found their heritage and their gender to be a barrier to success. There is still so much of that today in British society, especially when it comes to attitudes towards immigrants – and comedy felt like an interesting way to approach these themes.
NICOLE SARAH FRY: I find people often use comedy as a sort of relief to uncomfortable situations. It enables you to view their experience through a more positive light while still conveying the differences of the characters. I am British myself but I, as I’m sure all of us have, have had occasions where I have felt a desire to fit it whether at school or a new job, and having to adjust your behaviour in an effort to please people around you, for worse or better.
The story is based on real people, but the opening line, “Based on a true story. Sort of,” signals that you’re taking some creative liberties. How did you decide where historical accuracy mattered most and where fictionalisation gave you more freedom to tell the story?
ANDREANE RELLOU: I’ve always been a big fan of period dramas – I grew up on a lot of Downton Abbey, Titanic and Jane Austen adaptations, and loved how much attention to detail there was. Of course, these projects had enormous budgets, whereas on The Three Graces we had only £7,000 and a 15-page script. Even though our team is very passionate about historical accuracy, we knew our budget and time constraints would make it a challenge to achieve. Creative liberties are always taken when adapting an existing story or historical events, so it’s certainly a delicate balance.
We all have great respect for the real historical figures featured (such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, played by Sharif Afifi, and Algernon Swinburne, played by James Pedley-Holden) and for the original characters we created. The character of Henry Williamson, for example, played by Delon Jessop, is an amalgamation of many figures, but certainly inspired by the book ‘Black Victorians: Hidden in History.” Lady Edythe, played by Clementine Nicholson, is based on forgotten aristocrats like Rosalind Howard & Lady Trevelyan. These details may never be noticed by a viewer, but it was important to us to Finally, through my research I have found some never-before-seen photographs of the real women we’re portraying, and even our hairstyling (done expertly by Kayleigh Fuller) is an attempt to recreate that. For every step of the way, we have tried our best to achieve accuracy, and to work around our limitations. My dream for the project would be to turn this into a TV series, where we could more accurately tell their stories fully, from their beginnings as outsiders aspiring to join the Pre-Raphaelites, through finding love, heartbreak, success, glory, pain – everything.
NICOLE SARAH FRY: With an indie short film the budget does play a part in how historically accurate a film can be, whether that is the location, age of the paintings or the costumes. In this story we chose to exaggerate the three women’s behaviour to make them feel starkly different from members of London high society. To match the more vibrant characters we used bright fabrics and more modern camera movements to make the tone feel more cohesive. I think the areas we were more focused on were the larger aspects of historical accuracy. For example, the styles of the dresses being from the 1860s and also the language used by the British characters again used to show contrast to the girls.
You made the film on a £7,000 budget, shot in Dorset while recreating the atmosphere of 1860s London, and handmade all the costumes yourself, Nicole. Which production challenge forced you to be the most inventive, and did any limitations end up improving the film?
NICOLE SARAH FRY: A big challenge we faced was finding the right location for the art gallery and parlour scenes. We reached out to a few places but they were either too expensive or too far away. Luckily, we found Upton Country Park in Poole which is an early 19th century house. They didn’t have a gallery or furnished parlour room so we had to come up with some creative and inexpensive solutions.
The house has a library that we dressed with an antique sofa and coffee table (both Facebook marketplace finds). We then used items from my own collection including a bureau, candelabra, flowers and other decorative items to help create the look of a Victorian parlour room. As the house didn’t have a gallery and required paintings, we altered the scene to take place in the entrance of the London gallery, using the large entry hall featuring a grand staircase and chandelier.
Our Head of Art Department Jasmine Fry painted Frederick Sandys’ Helen of Troy which features at the beginning of the film, acting as a sneak peek to visitors as to what is to come in the galleries themselves. Originally, if we had found an art gallery we would have chosen a suitable painting from those already on display. Instead, having an empty space allowed us to choose a particular painting to recreate, which added more thematic depth to the film. Helen of Troy (obviously from Greek myth) is a controversial figure that represents the fraughtness of existing as a woman in a judgemental society. The three Graces can no doubt see themselves in her.
If you could invite Marie, Maria and Aglaia to watch The Three Graces today, which of the three do you think would have the strongest opinions about your portrayal of her – and what might she criticise, or praise, first?
ANDREANE RELLOU: I think Maria Zambaco would be relieved at being portrayed as ambitious but slightly scatterbrained, and also outside of the context of her lover, Edward Burne-Jones. Many 21st century art historians still describe her as a “harpy” or a “temptress”. aIn my research (which I hope to publish in the form of a non-fiction book one day) I have found so much about her personality, her sense of humour, her practicality, and how sensitive she was.
Marie Spartali Stillman, I hope, would be pleased with her depiction – she was the least eccentric of the three, and someone who thrived both socially and professionally as an artist. Aglaia Coronio, on the other hand, would probably wonder why she’s a bit of an anti-hero. Marilou Tamvaki, our Aglaia, gives this very expressive-but-deadpan performance in the film, but you can see how much is boiling underneath. She’s desperate to be taken seriously for her artistic endeavours, but can’t bring herself to admit it to the other graces until the very end.
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