Looking for Emily

I have seen Emily Brontë’s face dozens of times, online, in books, and in my dreams. Where is she? I mean the real Emily. Is there a definitive portrait? Why are there no photos? Can we trust any description?

There is the group portrait with Branwell fading into the pillar. There is the profile fragment that the National Portrait Gallery calls Emily and earlier writers have argued may be Anne. There are reproductions of the fragment, reproductions of reproductions, and covers that can turn a damaged family painting into something remarkably decisive.

Then there are the descriptions. Tall. Strong. Graceful. Beautiful eyes. Hair like Charlotte’s. Who said what and is there accordance?

The face everyone knows

The National Portrait Gallery holds two paintings by Branwell that include or are said to include Emily. The Pillar Portrait is catalogued as Anne, Emily, and Charlotte, painted around 1834. The separate profile is the surviving fragment of another family portrait, painted around 1833.¹

The profile creates the better problem. The Gallery’s present record identifies Emily. Its extended catalogue entry also preserves a long argument that the sitter may be Anne, complete with references to the Brontë Society articles in which the question was fought over.²

So the familiar portrait comes with a footnote large enough to stand beside it. Good. That gives me somewhere to begin.

What I am actually looking for

The Journal article will be called “What Did Emily Brontë Look Like?”. It needs two registers.

The first will catalogue images: paintings made during Emily’s life, derivative prints, disputed sitters, later copies, colorizations, and the eventual army of imagined Emilys. The second will catalogue written descriptions and force each one to answer basic questions. Who saw her? When? When did they write it down? Where is that text now? Am I reading their words, a transcription, a biographer’s paraphrase, or a sentence that has spent a century improving itself?

This is how a question about somebody’s face becomes a provenance project.

The descriptions may be worse

The University of Leeds holds Ellen Nussey’s biographical note on Emily under the reference BC MS 19c Brontë/C14. Its public page prints a substantial passage about Emily’s reserve, expression, self-command, closeness with Anne, and affection for her dogs.³

That gives me an object and an institution. Other familiar descriptions remain leads until I can find the same things: an original manuscript, a dated publication, or at least a responsible chain back to the witness.

I am not short of descriptions. I am short of descriptions that have shown me their papers.

What comes next

I need the complete catalogue histories for both Branwell paintings, the early tracings and reproductions, the articles arguing over the profile, and the original source behind every physical description repeated in modern biographies and websites.

I will also need image permissions. A nineteenth-century painting can be out of copyright while the useful digital photograph of it arrives with a licensing page and an invoice. The face survives. Access has terms.

The Journal will get the orderly catalogue. This Notebook will keep the less orderly record of asking museums for files, discovering that a quotation has no visible bottom, and learning how many different women can occupy one small piece of damaged canvas.

Footnotes

1. National Portrait Gallery, Patrick Branwell Brontë, The Brontë Sisters, NPG 1725, and Emily Brontë, NPG 1724, checked 22 August 2026. Evidence status: documented institutional holdings and current catalogue identifications. ↩

2. National Portrait Gallery, extended catalogue entry for NPG 1724, checked 22 August 2026. Evidence status: institutional catalogue preserving a disputed identification history. ↩

3. University of Leeds Special Collections, “Ellen Nussey & Emily Brontë”, identifying BC MS 19c Brontë/C14, checked 22 August 2026. Evidence status: later biographical recollection held by an institution. ↩