In 1864, Whistler introduced Spartali to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti. She began sitting for him and when Spartali expressed interest in learning to paint he referred her to Ford Madox Brown. Over the next five years the pair developed a close, almost familial, relationship. Of his models, Brown said that Spartali was “the most intellectual,” and maintained a deep respect for her work, chronicled in their correspondence. By 1870, Spartali had decided to pursue art professionally and with the help of her mentor made her first sale for 40 guineas.

In 1870, Spartali met American journalist and painter William J. Stillman. The couple had previously posed for Rossetti in his famous Dante pictures, though it is not certain if that is how they first met. Interestingly, despite being an artist himself, Marie never sat for her husband as a model. This is likely because it was not uncommon for artists to become infatuated with their muses only to lose interest years later, a pattern she no doubt witnessed within her circle many times. The pair married in 1871 against her father’s wishes, causing a rift that would never fully heal.

In 1873 both her young daughter, Euphrosyne “Effie,” and her sister Christina fell ill. Stillman wrote to Ford Madox Brown that she was preoccupied with their health and felt “too weak to paint.” She later clarified that whenever she did work she found herself depicting her sister in a grim state. Because of this, she took some time off painting, however Madox-Brown always speculated that she stopped because of her husband’s jealousy over her successful career and continued relationship with himself.

The subjects of her paintings were typical of the Pre-Raphaelites: female figures; scenes from Shakespeare, Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio; also Italian landscapes. She exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1875, then at the Grosvenor Gallery and its successor, the New Gallery; at the Royal Academy; and at various galleries in the eastern USA, including the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Stillman exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. A retrospective show of her work took place in the United States in 1982, and another one at the Delaware Art Museum in 2015. The latter show transferred to the UK in 2016, opening at the Watts Gallery at Compton near Guildford in Surrey on 1 March 2016 until 5 June 2016.

The couple had three children of their own and were raised alongside William’s other three children from a previous marriage. William Stillman died in 1901. Marie Spartali died in March 1927 in Ashburn Place in South Kensington, four days shy of her 83rd birthday. Spartali Stillman was cremated at Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey, and is interred there with her husband. The grave is marked by a simple lawn headstone.