Tate Britain: Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition

Today I headed down to the Tate Britain to see the exhibition on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, or "PRB." Created in 1848 in London (actually just a few blocks away from where I live!!), the leading members were John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt.

They called themselves "Pre-Raphaelite" because they admired the work done BEFORE Raphael, considering his work (which was considered the gold standard by the Royal Academy at that time) to be too decadent. Firm believers that the industrial revolution left the world devoid of beauty, spirituality, and morals, they sought to reassert these ideas into society through art.

The work of the PRB is sometimes difficult to identify and place if one is not familiar with the movement. At first glance, many paintings appear to come from the early Renaissance. They use bold colors (think Venetian High Renaissance/Titian), intense realism (think Northern Renaissance/Holbein), and religious/moralizing imagery. For example, Rossetti's work The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 1848-9, has all of these elements:

Not only is it clearly a religious scene, but Mary and St. Anne sport visible golden halos, the child has the wings of an angel, and the dove in the background on the window pane is encircled by a golden circle. But this was the 1850s, not 1450s...didn't artists know how to render figures religious without making an obvious halo? Yes, they did, but this symbolism was one way they asserted the spirituality and morality of their message.

Sharp outlines, bright colors, and meticulously painted historical dress also defined their aesthetic, as in the work by Millais, Isabella, 1848-9

Still not seeing the "modern" in these pictures? What made this group of artists radical to Victorian Society?

Well, first...they were very self-conscious about their movement. They had a manifesto and saw their work as espousing intellectual and philosophical ideals, something unique to modern artists and not present in Renaissance art. They firmly believed art could change society. Aesthetically, figures are depicted with harsh and unforgiving realism, unlike the idealized figures praised by the Royal academies. Also, they intentionally painted controversial subjects. Instead of history paintings with military heroism or idealized Greco-Roman scenes with reclining nudes, the PRB would make things like this...scenes from Shakespeare:

Millais, Ferdinand Lured by Ariel 1849-50

I think I've read The Tempest about 4 times between high school and college...loved this interpretation of what Ariel looked like.

Here is Ophelia by Millais as well, taking the scene from Hamlet but using such vivid greens, blues, and purples that nature itself becomes just as striking a character as Ophelia herself.

Important to note that nature was another important motif - concerned with the compromising effect the industrial revolution was having on the environment around London, they made nature a prominent theme. They intentionally engaged with issues of conservation, natural sciences, botany, meteorology, etc.

Also important to the PRB was the idea of "aestheticism," or making art just because it was beautiful. Art without an agenda was also a new concept at this time. Rossettti's simple philosophy was to make "art for art's sake." It was at this point that the PRB movement actually turned away from the sharp lines that define their early work and embraced soft and rich colors, especially when depicting the female face...

The Beloved by Rossetti, 1865-6

Clearly, the PRB had a lot to say. About everything. Theirs is not the easiest movement to define because they had so many defining aspects, treating history, nature, religion, and beauty with a very unique perspective. A very far-reaching movement, I recommend reading up a bit more if you're interested! Very difficult to distill it all in a few paragraphs. But these pictures are quite pretty.

One total digression on this whole thing - I LOVE this painting by Rossetti of Lady Lilith from 1866.

The character of Lady Lilith came from Goethe's Faust (<--what I did my thesis on!) and a poem from the play is inscribed on the frame:

'Tis the first wife of the first man. Adam's first wife, Lilith. 

Beware, beware of her bright hair. . . 

Many a young man she beguileth, smiles winningly on youthful face, 

But woe to him whom she embraces! 

(Faust I, 4208-4211)

So we know the PRB sough to challenge many aspects of Victorian society. We saw this above where they rejected Academy regulations for art by refusing to do heroic history painting, choosing instead subjects from poetry like Shakespeare. HERE, they challenge the politics of sexual relations in Victorian society. Lady Lilith was the first wife of Adam but refused to obey him... She represented the classic femme fatale, personifying  violence, danger, and allure. Interesting that Rossetti chose to make her the subject of his painting.

The Tate Britain advertised this exhibition by calling the PRB the "Victorian Avant-Garde." I believe this was a deliberate move on the part of curators to make the PRB easier to digest intellectually - the general pubic understands the term "avant-garde." Apply this concept to the Victorian era and one understands that this exhibition is about doing something that was perhaps radical and risqué for Victorian-era eyes.

There is much more to say about the exhibition as a whole - it included decorative arts as well like furniture/tapestries/stained glass and the PRB movement was closely tied to the Art and Crafts movement in Britain, but more time to think about that later.  It was overall a beautiful exhibition, extremely comprehensive (it took 5 years to put together!) and very informative. Well done, Tate Britain!!