The Pre-Raphaelite Society Newsletter of the United States

Number 17Summer 2007

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For general inquiries and membershipinformation please contact the Secretary:Barry C. Johnson37 Larchmere DriveHall GreenBirmingham, B28 8JB, England

All material for publication in the PRSUS Newsletter should be addressed to the Editor:Tim McGee1209 Palm AvenueSan Mateo, California 94402 USAtimmcgee@hotmail.comRegistered Charity: 1095111

Visit the PRS website at www.pre-raphaelitesociety.org

The Illuminated Books Projectwww.illuminated-books.com/The Illuminated Books Project is a private non-profit, collaborative effort of three individuals, Alfredo Malchiodi, Anita Malchiodi and Carlos Alonso Cabezas. They share a vision to make available, in high-resolution, many illuminated and illustrated books from their private collections.

These books are mainly from the Victorian period and include works from the Arts and Crafts Movement and private presses, extending from 1800s to the 1920s.In the selection of books exhibited, particular emphasis is given to the illustration, illumination and book design over the literary content.

English Heritage’s Viewfinder Picture Archivehttp://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/ ViewFinder presents a selection of historic and more recent photographs from the National Monuments Record’s important collections, dating from the 1840s to the present day. All the photographs are presented seamlessly on ViewFinder, allowing users to search across the whole archive at once.

The Helen Allingham Societywww.helenallingham.com/Devoted to the appreciation of the life and works of one of the finest watercolour artists of Victorian times.

Poemhunterwww.poemhunter.comThis database, which originates from France, contains 168,207 poems from 16,474 poets.

In the Studios of Paris: William Bouguereau and his American Students Frick Art and Historical Center ■ Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ■ July 7, 2007 - October 14, 2007This exhibition, the first to examine Bouguereau’s role as an influential teacher, features paintings, drawings, and prints by Bouguereau and some of his most prominent American students, including: Cecilia Beaux, Minerva Chapman, Eanger Irving Couse, Elizabeth Gardner, Robert Henri, Anna Klumpke, and others. A fully-illustrated color catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ■ Richmond, Virginia ■ July 11, 2007 - September 30, 2007This major exhibition, spanning approximately 100 years from the emergence of watercolor painting in the mid-18th century to its high point in the late-19th century, investigates a historically important technique - a medium that was for a time greatly underappreciated. Through his patronage, Paul Mellon helped initiate a reassessment of this demanding technique.

During the 1850s several factors contributed to the birth of a Pre-Raphaelite movement in the United States late in that decade. Among the most important were: the enormous popularity of John Ruskin’s writings; an exhibition of several hundred pieces of British art, including several important Pre-Raphaelite paintings that visited New York, Philadelphia, and Boston in 1857-8; and the nearly simultaneous arrival in America of a young English artist named Thomas Charles Farrer, who had actually learned to draw from Ruskin himself. Farrer eventually became t h e l e a d e r o f t h e A m e r i c a n counterparts to the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group that called itself The Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art. The Association consisted of eight founding members when it came into being at a meeting in Farrer’s New York studio on January 27, 1863. Only two members of the group were actual artists, Farrer and Charles Herbert Moore, and at no time during its existence

did membership exceed 27. The Association itself was short-lived. It met for the last time in March 1864, admitting Henry Roderick Newman to its ranks just before formally disbanding. Moore and Newman, however, remained practicing Pre-Raphaelites for the remainder of their long lives, and through their influence they cultivated a younger generation of artists, centering mainly around Harvard University, in the ideas of John Ruskin and the practice of Pre-Raphaelitism. American and English Pre-Raphaelitism differed greatly from each other. Whereas the English Pre-Raphaelites mostly adhered to the tradition of large oil paintings with figurative subjects, mainly historical, mythological, religious or literary, in contrast, the Americans took to heart Ruskin’s exhortation to “go to nature,” adapting Pre-Raphaelitism to the American landscape tradition dating back to the 1830s. Indeed, Moore was

friendly with the son of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, and used his painting studio in Catskill,

www.dmvi.cf.ac.uk/ The Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration, which was funded in 2004 to digitize and index a sampling from the 1860s heyday of wood-engraved illustration, is now online.

A team at Cardiff University has overseen the reproduction, description, and subject tagging of almost 900 such illustrations from

a selection of major illustrated publications, taking 1862 as the sample year.

The aim of the project was to digitize and mount on a publicly accessible website a cross section of illustrations from different literary texts and by a range of artists and engravers. The year 1862 was chosen because it saw the emergence and growth of major illustrated periodicals, including the Cornhill Magazine and Good Words, and allowed for the inclusion of familiar illustrated works like Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, illustrated by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, alongside those that are less well known.

Of course, these pictures only represent a fraction of the range of images that appeared in books and periodicals in the period, but the database gives a sense of the richness of the material and the place of illustration in Victorian visual culture.

Paul Goldman, familiar to the Pre-Raphaelite Society as an expert on 19th century book illustration, served as project advisor.

— Anthony Trollope on John Everett Millais

“To see him has always been a pleasure; his voice has always been a sweet sound in my ears. Behind his back I have never heard him praised without joining the eulogist;I have never heard a word spoken against him without opposing the censurer.These words, should he ever see them, will come to him from the grave, and will tell him of my regard—as one living man never tells another.”

Henry Roderick Newman, View of Florence from the East1888, 14 x 7 7/8 inches Private collection

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s American Cousins

Mid-Victorian Illustration

In the 1880s, Newport, Rhode Island was a bustling port city, marked by droves of seasonal visitors and the Gilded Age élite who decided to build summer “cottages” on the water. In 1882, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe — at that time, the single richest woman in America — commissioned Peabody and Stearns to build her dream cottage there. Peabody and Stearns, a renowned architectural firm from Boston, Massachusetts, had recently designed the Breakers (1877-78) for her cousin, Pierre Lorillard. A close neighbor to the Breakers, Vinland would also be located along the Cliff Walk. Vinland is an excellent example of Peabody and Stearns’s 1880s design work. The mansion was initially built as a long, low structure in the Romanesque Revival style, complete with turrets, bay windows, and porticoes

on the south and east sides (fig. 1). Carved capitals and decorative scrollwork accentuate the façade. The iconography on the exterior ranges from Celtic, Nordic, and Runic symbols to other, more common medieval motifs, abstract geometric patterns, and vegetal and animal forms. Leaves, vines, flowers, and grape clusters appear at intervals, and cover a portion of each façade. In addition, a figurehead of a Viking ship appears at the northeast corner of the roof. Vi n l a n d o r i g i n a l l y

featured an interior decorative scheme by the British design firm of Morris & Company. Lavish details such as Morris & Company’s recognizable stained glass windows, portières, embroideries, and carpets combined to create a Nordic theme. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe became interested in Icelandic history after viewing the legendary Old Stone Mill in Newport, supposedly built by Vikings during their

Rediscovering Vinland

Fig. 1 Vinland, Newport, Rhode Island

Royal W. Leith

Adrienne Leigh Sharpeand Sarah Kuchta

PRB’s American Cousins Continued

New York during the 1860s. Unlike the Hudson River painters, however, the American Pre-Raphaelites preferred watercolor over oil paint. Most notably, they used a minute, painstakingly detailed technique that greatly limited the size and number of their works. The Association’s infl uence stretched beyond its brief 14-month existence. Its monthly journal, called The New Path, continued for two years. Furthermore, during the 1860s, the American Pre-Raphaelites steadily gained power and prestige, reaching their zenith in 1867. Founding Association member Peter Bonnett Wight completed the new National Academy of Design building in 1865 and Yale’s new fi ne arts home, Street Hall, in 1866, both designed according to Ruskin’s Gothic Revival architectural principles; American Pre-Raphaelites were instrumental in the creation of the American Society of Painters in Watercolor in 1866, which represented an important step in the elevation of watercolor, the Pre-Raphaelite medium, to a status equal to oil; former Association members Clarence Cook and Russell Sturgis were art critics for the New York Tribune and The Nation, powerful positions from which they acted as advocates for the American Pre-Raphaelites; and fi nally, at the fi rst exhibition of the American Society of Painters in Watercolor, 40 American Pre-Raphaelite works were shown, and, later that year, an exhibition celebrating the opening of Street Hall featured 69 Pre-Raphaelite works, a quarter of all pictures shown. Nonetheless, the movement never really caught on with the public or with many artists outside the small core of former Association members. Newman wrote about “a gentleman from Chicago [who] called…with some New York ladies…. The gentleman wanted me to do some work for him, but after looking over my studies concluded that I was too Pre-Raphaelite… I fi nd that Pre-Raphs are not fashionable here. ‘They are so ultra.’” Artists were reluctant to invest the considerable time required to produce Pre-Raphaelite work. Moore wrote that it took him about three to four hours to fi nish a section the size of his thumb-tip. Newman said, much later, after many years of practice, that he spent an hour on each square inch of his watercolors. Thus, by the end of the decade, the American Pre-Raphaelite movement ended. T.C. Farrer, who had led the movement, returned to England in 1869, first to visit, then permanently in 1871, and though he continued to paint, he completely abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style. So, to varying degrees, did other artists affiliated with the movement, including Farrer’s brother Henry, the eminent academician William Trost Richards, and Richards’s protégé Fidelia Bridges. In 1985 the Brooklyn Museum organized the superb exhibition “The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites.” This exhibition resurrected the almost forgotten story of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. The story the exhibition told ended in the late 1860s. But that story had a sequel, documented by the Fogg Museum’s recently concluded exhibition “The Last Ruskinians: Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Herbert Moore, and Their Circle.” Readers interested in learning more about the American Pre-Raphaelites are directed to the superb catalogues that accompanied both exhibitions.

Royal W. Leith is an independent art historian who teaches at the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, MA. He is the author of a book and several articles about Henry Roderick Newman.

The Victorian HouseJudith Flanders HarperPerennial;New Ed edition

An incisive and irresistible portrait of Victorian domestic life. The book itself is itself laid out like a house, following the story of daily life from room to room. Through a collage of diaries, letters, advice books, magazines and paintings, Flanders shows how social history is built up out of tiny domestic details, through which we can understand the desires, motivations and thoughts of the age. The houses are familiar, but the lives are not. The Victorian House will change all that.

The Last RuskiniansHarvard University Art Museum2007

The catalogue accompanying the Last Ruskinians exhibition examines Ruskin’s signifi cant infl uence on taste, collecting, and art instruction, with special emphasis on the role of his close friend and emissary in America, Charles Eliot Norton. The 104-page catalogue contains 57 color and 24 black-and-white illustrations.

Performing the VictorianSharon Aronofsky Weltman

In works as celebrated as Modern Painters and obscure as Love’s Meinie, Ruskin uses his voracious attendance at the theater to illustrate points about social justice, aesthetic practice, and epistemology.

In addition to Ruskin on theater, Performing the Victorian interprets recent theater portraying Ruskin (The Invention of Love, The Countess, the opera Modern Painters) as merely a Victorian prude or pedophile against which contemporary culture defi nes itself. These theatrical depictions may be compared to concurrent plays about Ruskin’s friend and student Oscar Wilde (Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Judas Kiss).

Rediscovering Vinland Continued

New England settlement. It was this Viking heritage that inspired the name of Lorillard Wolfe’s estate, “Vinland.” Also fascinated with Icelandic stories, William Morris traveled to Iceland, learned the Icelandic language, and translated many sagas. For Morris, Iceland represented both escape and isolation and romance and happiness. Utilizing such contrasting themes added an air of mystique to the Vinland home, showcasing the imaginative nature of both Lorillard Wolfe and Morris. Above all, the highlight of this interior was the stained glass window provided by Morris & Company for the fi rst-fl oor landing at Vinland. Designed by Burne-Jones in conjunction with Morris, the window was originally composed of nine lights or panes; three rows of three lights each (fi g. 2). In the top portion, the Sun and the Moon fl ank the middle window, the centerpiece of which is a Viking ship complete with roaring fi gurehead “a toss” on the sea (fi g. 3). The central portion of the window presents the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Frey as seated figures placed centrally with their respective castles nestled into rocky landscapes behind them.

The lower portion of the window features three full-length figures, Thorfi nn, his wife Gudridr, and ‘Leif the Lucky’ or Leif Erikson, renowned for their travels and exploration of North America. The men are dressed in full suits of armor and their helmets bear a strong similarity to those that appear in the early work of Burne-Jones.

Viewers today can only piece together the original artistic vision for Vinland through archives and scrapbooks, as the house was deconstructed and many of the furnishings redistributed. Archival records can be found at

the Newport Historical Society, the Headquarters of the Preservation Society of Newport County, Salve Regina University’s McKillop Library, and the Delaware Art Museum. Recently, new information regarding the Vinland windows has come to light; it seems that fi ve of the windows were offered for sale at an auction in 1993, and are currently housed in a private collection. Further study of these windows will undoubtedly contribute to our understanding of Morris & Company’s legacy in the United States.

Fig. 3

Fig. 2

Among the many amazing collections at Princeton University Library is the Henry Virtue Tebbs collection of Pre-Raphaelite photographs. Henry Virtue Tebbs (1846-??) was a close friend and admirer of Rossetti, and many letters to him and his wife Emily are recorded among Rossetti’s correspondence. He bought works by Rossetti, promoted his work, and after his death wrote the preface to the 1883 exhibition of Rossetti at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. His intimacy with the artist was such that he was among a very few to be present at the disinterment of Rossetti’s wife, Elizabeth Siddal, in 1869 when he wished to rescue the manuscript volume of poems which he had buried with her.

The collection consists of mounted photographs of drawings and paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his wife Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, and a few other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, put together for or by Henry Virtue Tebbs. Many of the mounts have been inscribed by Rossetti himself—most importantly, the photographic portfolio of his late wife’s drawings, but also a good number of the “detached” photographs. One is inscribed by Rossetti to Tebbs’s wife Emily, and the letter which accompanied the gift is printed by Dr. William Fredeman. In addition, many of the mounts are inscribed in pencil with Tebbs’s name, sometimes with reference to other collectors of the time such as Charles Fairfax Murray. It is perhaps no coincidence that a number of the originals of these photographs were owned at one point by Fairfax Murray himself. A photograph of a well-bearded man also in this collection (item 76) may be of Tebbs. The present collection was purchased by Princeton in 2005.

The American Collections

Study of Elizabeth Siddal byDante Gabriel Rossetti (photograph)

Princeton University LibraryManuscripts DivisionOne Washington RoadPrinceton, New Jersey08544 USA www.princeton.edu/~rbsc

Adrienne Leigh Sharpe recently completed her MA at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in NYC, focusing on Victorian art and architecture. She is a member of the Victorian Society in America and a governing board member of the William Morris Society in the United States.

Sarah Kuchta is a second-year MA student at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT, studying art therapy.