For many, the works of the Pre-Raphaelites are an acquired taste – their concern with the moody, introverted and soul-searching can cast an unwelcome air of melancholy and uncertainty. Yet, in their time, these artists were viewed as revolutionaries, rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist painters who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo – hence their adopted title. Flowing compositions, classical poses and the freer use of form they believed was the bedrock of art. This, they believed, should be based on a solid, academic approach, much of which involved drawing from the life – hence a wall of drawing from the life room.
They thoroughly disapproved of the influence of artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy of Art, whom they dubbed “Sir Sloshua”. To the Pre-Raphaelites, according to William Michael Rossetti, “sloshy” meant “anything lax or scamped in the process of painting… and hence… any thing or person of a commonplace or conventional kind”. By contrast, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.
Some see the Pre-Raphaelites as the first avant garde art movement, although this was not widely accepted because they continued to accept both the concepts of history painting and of mimesis, or imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. However, the Pre-Raphaelites saw themselves as a radical movement, creating a distinct name for their form of art and publishing a periodical, The Germ, to put forward their ideas.
The group of radical young artists, who banded together in London in 1848 and dubbed themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was revolutionary in questioning the concerns of the artist – a point well made in The Poetry of Drawing. The exhibition emphasises the importance and significance of drawing and design in their work, fully examining the wide variety of Pre-Raphaelite drawing and watercolour. It also looks at the training of artists, the development of their theories of naturalism, the Brotherhood’s progressive promotion of new, “intense” subjects for painting and illustration, and their use of watercolour as opposed to oil as a medium for subject painting. In addition to highly detailed watercolours and works in pen and ink and pencil, there are paintings, mostly notably The Last of England by Ford Maddox Brown. This is the sentimental portrayal of a couple sailing in away in a “circle of love” sitting in the packet steamer for France. There are also designs for stained glass, textiles and ceramics alongside the some actual objects.
Through the sharp portraits and caricatures, the artists made of one another and frequently exchanged as gifts, the drawings provide an insight into the Pre-Raphaelites’ often-complex relationships with their fellow artists, friends and lovers. With examples by all the leading figures of the movement, including the original Brotherhood, their mentor John Ruskin, Elizabeth Siddal, and the “second generation” of Pre-Raphaelites including Edward Burne-Jones, Frederick Sandys and Simeon Solomon, is an ambitious sweep of 19th century history. As a codicil, it includes work by later artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, such as Aubrey Beardsley.
Comprehensive and wide-ranging, there are many stories to be told here such as Rossetti’s intense portraits of Jane Morris, wife of William, and the androgyny depicted by Edward Burne-Jones that suggest not all was untroubled or without its tensions, which adds a further dimension to this intriguing exhibition.
The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphaelite Designs, Studies and Watercolours, which continues until May 15, is accompanied by an excellent, fully illustrated catalogue by Colin Cruise
