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Art on the line

EXHIBITION REVIEW – Pre-Raphaelites and Other Masters

Marianne Camus

Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

Marianne.Camus@u-bourgogne.fr

This is going to be a very personal review.Pre-Raphaelites and Other Masters, theexhibition at the Royal Academy of theAndrew Lloyd Webber collection, attractedme, along with many others on the afternoonI went, as an opportunity to see for real somany Victorian paintings normally seen onlyin reproductions of varying quality. For if onecannot deny, on reaching the final rooms, thebeauty of Alfred Munnings’ horses or thecharm of Stanley Spencer’s vision of life,there is no doubt that it is the Pre-Raphaelites who are the real stars of thisshow.

Actually, the first impression, as oneenters the exhibition, is almost one of disbe-lief at the sheer number of works gatheredhere. I must say straight away, though, that Ido not agree with Lindsay Duguid’s com-ment, in Times Literary Supplement, 21November 2003, that it is a ‘crowded jumble’.Or if it is, it is very much in the spirit of theVictorians and their fondness for clutter. I amnot sure that a presentation along the lines ofour more sober visual taste would be as rep-resentative of the cultural and artisticexuberance of the times. It is true, however,that the enormous variety makes the viewer,and the reviewer, a little dizzy at first. For thepictures range from John Everett Millais’James Wyatt and his Grand Daughter MaryWyatt (figure 1) and Four Children of the

Wyatt Family, by today’s standards almostnaive in their early Pre-Raphaelite meticu-lous and slightly stiff rendering of reality, toJames Jacques Tissot’s sophisticated bril-liance, as in L’Orpheline or The Return fromthe Boating Trip. They go from the mystical,of at least dream-like quality typical ofEdward Burne-Jones to the overtly titillatingsubtext in Lawrence Alma Tadema’s or JohnWilliam Godward’s representations of pseu-do-harem creatures. The pictures also gofrom the glamour of Albert Moore’s RedBerries or John Atkinson Grimshaw’s DolceDomum to the ordinary domesticity of KateHayllar’s A Thing of Beauty and EdithHayllar’s A Summer Shower. These two, bythe way, being, in their quiet understatedmanner, amongst the most charming andeffective paintings on show.

But beneath the diversity, one can soonsee some unifying lines of force runningthrough the exhibition, the first one, of course,being the narrative aspect of many of thesepaintings. Some stray remarks overheard asI went through the rooms would indeed tendto indicate that the Victorian taste for storytelling is still very much alive. To my mind,though, the anecdotal dimension of muchVictorian painting is one of its limitations.Pictures are almost systematically anchoredin myth (John William Waterhouse’s Pandoraor The Awakening of Adonis), old legends

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(Arthur Hughes’ The Knight of the Sun orGale’s The Wounded Knight, to cite only twoof many), or the narratives of contemporarylife (Michael Frederick Halliday’s The BlindBasket-Maker with his First Child or TheMeasure for the Wedding Ring). This tends toobscure the painting as such. What, all toooften, is brought to light are the less pleasantcharacteristics of the period, its sentimental-ism and self-righteousness. The absolutelyludicrous is, in my opinion, reached withWilliam Holman Hunt’s The Shadow ofDeath, which represents an apparentlyecstatic Christ, doing what? dancing? pray-ing? or – as his shadow on the wall behindseems to show – rehearsing his crucifixion?

More serious perhaps is the way in whichthis narrative bias probably prevented gen-uine artists from progressing. I am thinkinghere in particular of some of Burne-Jones’late works, The Challenge in the Wilderness,

for example, with its almost monochrome fig-ures and their strictly stylised draperiesfalling in variations of the triangle whichanswer the three golden circles of the trum-pets. There is a glimpse there of what willlater become cubist painting, but I cannothelp feeling that this move away from narra-tion was frozen by the perceived andoverpowering necessity to tell a story.

The same can be said about one of thestrong points of many of the paintings onshow, the beauty of the colours. The depthand luminosity of Burne-Jones’ blues andreds are a sheer pleasure to the eye. I amthinking of the blues in Night and Vesper,and the accumulated and saturated reds ofThe Annunciation, or their contrast with darktones in The Adoration of the Kings. ButBurne-Jones is only one among many. Thereare few oils by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in thiscollection, but A Vision of Fiammetta (figure

Figure 1 Sir John Everett Millais, James Wyatt and his Grand Daughter Mary Wyatt, 1849, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 45 cm, © Collection LordLloyd-Webber

2) gives a fair example of the painter’s jewel-like colours. The royal purple of the skirt inApril Love by Hughes, the sensuous apricot,pale yellows and greens of Alma Tadema,the subtle juxtaposition, by Waterhouse, ofsoft reddish purple, olive green, dark dullblue, leaf brown and burnished gold in TheDanaides, without forgetting the sumptuousrusset/gold/orange of the woman’s skirt inMillais’ The Proscribed Royalist, all con-tribute to the enchantment one feels onmoving from one picture to the next. Butsomehow, the colour never breaks free,enclosed as it is in the narrative.

This richness and depth of colour is also

a hallmark of the items of decorative art col-lected by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the carpets,and above all William de Morgan’s stunningceramics in the reds and blues that appear inretrospect as one of the characteristics of theperiod. But with one difference, namely, thatunlike the paintings which, despite thewealth of talent, remain determinedlyVictorian and insular, the objects of decora-tive art often give the feeling, through theirdesign, that they belong to a Europeanmovement, to what will later be called ArtNouveau. Some pieces are actually veryclose to the École de Nancy in inspiration.

Another common feature that I would liketo mention may be feltas politically incorrect.But I must admit that tomy woman’s eyes,used to the constantdeconstruction, not tosay disintegration, ofthe female body intwentieth-century art,the obvious love ofwomen in these paint-ings was quite striking,however stereotypedor lewd the expressionof it might be in someof them. I will not dwellon those, but rathergive place of honour toRossetti’s colouredchalk portraits. Thesoftly and elegantlycurving lines of neck,wrists and hands,drapery and hair allreveal, in these bustsor heads, the artist’slove of the female

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Figure 2 Dante GabrielRossetti, A Vision of Fiametta,1878, oil on canvas, 146 x 88.9cm. © Collection Lord Lloyd-Webber

body. It is as if the caress of chalk on papertranslated the sensuousness of Rossetti’seye. A sensuousness which is, however, notas fancy driven as has often been said. Theclearly different feelings produced by theseportraits, despite similarity of treatment, indi-cate a basic respect for the sitter’spersonality. The best proof of this being thesuperb portrait of Christina Rossetti, whosespiritualised sensuality he renders perfectlyin an unusually austere-looking work. Onpale blue paper the poet’s table and book areroughly outlined, as is the bulky, rathershapeless gown that she is wearing. Butfrom this uncompromising bluish greyishmass rise the quiet but rounded curves ofeyebrows and mouth, all in, again, quiet butat the same time warm tints, curves and tintssomehow contrasting with and completingthe lines and colour of the heavy dark hairdemurely gathered at the nape of the neck.

But I will leave this somewhat dangerousground to conclude with something totallydifferent, with what was to me the real reve-lation of the exhibition, Grimshaw’s

landscape and townscape paintings. Thenarrative aspect is here cut to the minimum,so that, in the Lane pictures for example, onefeels that the golden or silvery light is simplywashing over you. But Grimshaw’s masteryof light in all its forms is best seen in paint-ings like Liverpool, On Hampstead Hill orCornhill, in which the dimness of a wetmoonlight, the warm points of artificial lightand the reflections of both on damp pave-ments and streets make this self-taughtpainter a northern cousin of the earlyImpressionists.

The great number and diversity of workson display mean that this review is neces-sarily incomplete and probably unfair in whatit has chosen to distinguish, but I hope it hashelped, even if a little, to dispel some of theprejudices about nineteenth-century Britishpainting and to look at it for what it is, art, andnot simply Victorian artefacts.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection was onshow at the Royal Academy, London from 20September – 12 December 2003.

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