YOUTH, POWER, ENTHUSIASM
Founded in 1848 as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this revolutionary group of young art students “really were the first British modern art movement” says Carol Jacobi, Curator of Tate Britain’s new exhibition The Rossettis, which opens this April.
It was a revolutionary era, and the Brotherhood felt a new art was required for a new world. Founding members Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais were all frustrated by the Royal Academy, London, who espoused strict rules as to what a painting could be.
“Closer to the spirit of the revolutionary times than most, Rossetti was named after his father, an Italian freedom fighter forced into exile in London. Their house was always full of revolutionaries and . . . he was the only brother never to exhibit at the Royal Academy, and never to settle into a conventional lifestyle. The exhibition shows him reinventing art and life right to the end of his career.”
It was both the Pre-Raphaelites’ subject matter and style which was so controversial, aiming to highlight the suffering of the lower classes, including the plight of women, as well as creating bright and vivid landscapes. A key painting by Dante in the exhibition is Found ,on loan from the Tate’s exhibition partner, Delaware Art Gallery. Depicting a sex worker (modelled by Cornforth) as she is recognised by her childhood sweetheart, this elevation of such a figure to high art was radical. Rossetti never finished his image of Cornforth in this repentant role. The Pre-Raphaelites were also criticised for their work being highly sensualised such as Dante’s Bocca Baciata, meaning “the kissed mouth”, for which Cornforth modelled, and described by contemporary poet Swinburne as “more stunning than can be decently expressed because of its sexual implications.” Critics were often left reeling by their art driven by, as Oscar Wilde put it, “three things the English public never forgives: youth, power and enthusiasm.”
The Brotherhood’s style is incredibly detailed, achieved using tiny brushes. They used the brightest colours and varnish to create a smooth, almost mirror-like surface. They often drew influence from literature. Painting from life, of “truth to nature”, was also of vital importance to counter the effects of Protestantism and the clinical science that was emerging. For Ophelia, Millais sat “all summer, all autumn, painting every leaf and blade of grass, the ripples in the water,” says Jacobi. Every single detail was imbued with meaning. The movement lasted until roughly the turn of the century.
Many of the paintings in the show were once Cornforth’s. “So many of the questions their poems and pictures were asking, about how we live, how we love, are still with us today, ” says Jacobi. “Like many teenagers, I became fascinated by the romance and rule-breaking of the Rossettis who I came across by accident sheltering from the weather in the Birmingham Art Gallery. I have been studying and writing about them ever since.”
The Rossettis, 6 April-24 Sep, Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG; tate.org.uk; Learn more about the Pre-Raphaelites at henitalks.com/talks/pre-raphaelite