The Only Male Stunner

                                          

                                                Fred pretty much sums it up here.
                            (Well, I don't really know if  Rossetti ever told Fred he was pretty, but...)
    
Also, what you can't see is the tea stain all over this sketchbook scan. I was reading The Kissed Mouth's post on Fred and laughed and spilt the cup I was drinking. http://fannycornforth.blogspot.com/2011/09/f-g-stephens-respectful-look-at-his.html

F.G. Stephens (Frederic George Stephens) was indeed one of the original "Secret Seven" members of the Brotherhood. (The others besides Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt, were James Collinson, Thomas Woolner and Rossetti's writer brother, William Michael Rossetti.)

Despite beginning as an artist, Fred was so frustrated by his own attempts to finish a painting that he gave up on a career as a painter and became a well-known art critic instead. (He claimed he destroyed all his attempts at art but three of his paintings, thankfully, still survive.)

However, because Fred was, well, a good-looking guy, he was often employed by the others to model.  (He's gotten the honorary title "Hot Fred Stephens" with the current Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood... Thank you, Kirsty.)

Here are some portraits of him by his friends:

Fred, by William Holman Hunt.
I've had a crush on this painting for years.

Fred, by John Everett Millais.
The two of them are probably drawing each other,
 hence the "smoldering" upward glance.

Fred, by Ford Madox Brown, posing for Jesus.
(well, with later modifications... like removing those huge sideburns, for instance...)

Millais' sketch for Fred as Ferdinand in "The Tempest".
Some scruff, not bad...

And last but not least, Old Fred, looking uncannily like Dumbledore:

"Yes, kids, your Grandpa was quite the hottie once..."

               Coming up next: Confessions of a Male Stunner.