Revisiting the Pre-Raphaelites

 

Rossetti: The Beloved

(reproduced courtesy of Tate Britain)

 

 

I went up to London yesterday to see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain.  I've never really cared for the PRB (this trendy acronym was adopted by the exhibition organisers, and denotes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - feminists can refrain from comment).  But I wanted to see the exhibition to see whether I might have changed my view, with the passing of time.  But alas, no. 

 

I did come away with two things, however: the first was that I had always thought of the PRB as being later in the nineteenth century than they were: in fact they kicked off in the middle, rather than towards the end, and were therefore ahead of the Impressionists.  So the idea of them as a rather pathetic alternative to their more successful French contemporaries isn't correct, since they weren't really contemporary at all.  Secondly, though, on reflection it had not occurred to me that their preoccupations were more social than the Impressionists' concern with paint and how things are seen. 

 

It may be for this reason that, in the final analysis, they continue to leave me cold.  The anachronistic nature of many of the paintings is incongruous: the costumes are medieval, the facial expressions and poses distinctly Victorian.  More disconcertingly, a number of the persons portrayed are just begging to have bubble comments put beside them: take the lady on the right in the picture above.  She's obviously asking the girl behind whether she's remembered to bring the tickets.  The one on the left appears to be saying to the central figure: "Keep looking him in the eye and he'll give way".  While the central figure herself seems to be saying to the onlooker:  "Ok, this is who I am."  This all builds up to the idea of girls confronting a bouncer outside a nightclub. 

 

I don't want to press the point too much.  Some of the smaller paintings are beautiful.  I also particularly liked the stunning William Morris rug, portrayed below (again courtesy of the Tate), which I could happily have packed up in my bag and brought home had we a room large enough for it.  The colours still gleam like jewels.  But the great set-pieces of the PRB continue, I'm afraid, to leave me unmoved.

 

 

Antony Mair