The Pre-Raphaelites -- An Alternative History

Pre-Raphaelite Sisters doing it for themselves. That's the premise of the show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, an attempt to reclaim, to reassert the significance of the roles of women as models, wives, artists, muses in that most Victorian of art movements, one that's traditionally seen as being dominated by men with an abundance, nay, a profusion of facial hair.

So a Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood to rival the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais? It's a neat conceit, isn't it, but it's not one that's really borne out by this rather uneven exhibition. Because some of the dozen women highlighted here were certainly quite impressive artists in their own right -- and there's a couple of surprise discoveries to be made as we go through -- but in some cases we're talking about women who were mainly active as models. And, err, muses. There's an apparently deliberate reluctance to talk too much about sex in this show, and it's not often made very clear who was having a relationship with whom when, and to what extent (slightly problematic, because the Pre-Raphs' love lives were complicated, to say the least).

But what about the art? There are one or two really striking paintings here, but some of what's on show is only moderately exciting. And it's a bit of an exhausting experience, all in all. The older you get, the more a little of the Pre-Raphs seems to go a long way....

Some of the most interesting sections in this show deal with women who fall squarely into the model-and-muse category. Annie Miller grew up in poverty on the back streets of Chelsea close to the studio of Holman Hunt, who paid for her education. They were engaged, but he broke it off, on the grounds of her frivolity and "wilfulness".

Her attraction is evident in Il dolce far niente, where she stretches languidly and contentedly in front of the fire seen in the mirror behind her. Holman Hunt's rendering of her hair and dress is fantastic.

The first picture Miller posed for was The Awakening Conscience, in which she's shown as the mistress of a wealthy man suddenly filled with the awareness of the immoral life she's leading, rising from his lap as they're seated at the piano. That's here too, and it helps serve as a reminder of how hard sometimes it can be for us to read these pictures from a century-and-a-half ago. Look at Miller with today's eyes and it seems she's dressed up to the nines. In fact she's in her nightie.... No wonder it was so shocking.

Miller didn't end up a fallen woman. She married an army officer with aristocratic connections and died aged 90 on the south coast.

Fanny Cornforth caught the eye of Rossetti one day at the Surrey Pleasure Gardens. He "gave my hair a flick with his finger as if it were an accident, and it all tumbled down," she recalled. Cornforth first posed for Rossetti in Found, as one of those fallen women, discovered in the city by her sweetheart from the village on his way to market.

Here's Cornforth depicted by Rossetti a few years later in full alluring mode, that hair that so fascinated the artist on view in all its glossy luxuriance. She gazes boldly at the viewer, strumming an exotic Japanese instrument in front of equally exotic oriental tiles. 

Alas, Fanny Cornforth ended less well than Annie Miller. A record book from a Poor Law hospital in Chichester tells of her admittance with dementia aged 72 and her death two years later, her place in the world of art forgotten.

Rossetti's short-lived wife Lizzie Siddal is perhaps best-known as the model for Millais's Ophelia, depicting the scene of her drowning from Hamlet. Siddal posed in a tin bath full of water heated by candles, and what a job that must have been. Unfortunately we don't get the painting itself from the Tate in all its glory, just a small watercolour version.

Siddal was an aspiring artist and poet, but she really doesn't leave too much of an impression on you in this show, partly because the artworks representing her that we get to see have significantly less oomph than those with Cornforth and Miller in them.

Similarly, right at the start of the exhibition, there's little to illustrate the importance of Effie Gray's role as a working partner to Millais, after her marriage to John Ruskin was annulled. A portrait by Thomas Richmond makes Gray look like the droopily twee and ineffectual heroine of a Dickens novel. In fact, the best thing in this section is Millais's superb, remarkably modern-looking picture of Gray's younger sister Sophie.

Last year, we saw a show in Salford about LS Lowry's love for the Pre-Raphaelites, and in particular Rossetti's pictures of women. In 1964, Lowry paid 5000 guineas for this Rossetti portrait of Jane Morris as Proserpine, helping to push up the popularity of the Pre-Raphs. It wasn't actually on show in Salford, so we were glad to get the opportunity to see it here.

"Can you imagine being kissed by that woman?" Lowry said of Morris. "It would be like being kissed by a snake."

What else do we learn in this show? That Christina Rossetti had a terrible temper. That Jamaica-born Fanny Eaton made frequent appearances in Pre-Raph paintings, often modelling for biblical characters. And that Edward Burne-Jones's infatuation with Maria Zambaco makes The Beguiling of Merlin, with its autobiographical element, a bit more interesting than many of his rather overbearing mythological paintings.

But let's finish with perhaps the two most accomplished artists among the Sisters. Joanna Boyce Wells lived only from 1831 to 1861, but among the work she left was this exquisite child with angel's wings, painted in the year she died. The title, Thou Bird of God, is drawn from a poem by Robert Browning.

And, right at the end, just when you were least expecting it, comes perhaps the most astonishing picture in the entire exhibition. You know how it can be with the Pre-Raphs: those mythological themes, those classical tales and poetic references that are so hard to read today, all that big hair, historical costume and overblown decoration.

But sometimes you encounter a painting that you've never seen before by an artist you're only dimly aware of, and it can take your breath away. Night and Sleep by Evelyn De Morgan (wife of the great ceramicist, William De Morgan) is just such a picture. Night draws a cloak over the world, guiding along Sleep, who casts soporific poppies to the Earth.

Now here's the Renaissance revisited, Pre-Raphaelism pure. A stunning finale to an exhibition that had some memorable highlights and interesting stories, but which we found a bit of a slog in its attempt to be quite so comprehensive.

Practicalities

Pre-Raphaelite Sisters is on at the National Portrait Gallery in London until January 26. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays until 2100. Full-price tickets are £20 with a Gift Aid donation, £18 without. Allow yourself a couple of hours; it's a big show. The NPG is on St Martin's Place, just off Trafalgar Square and right next to the National Gallery. National Rail and London Underground services at Charing Cross and Leicester Square stations are just a couple of minutes' walk away.

Images

William Holman Hunt, Il dolce far niente, 1866, Private collection, c/o Grant Ford Ltd
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blue Bower, 1865, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1865-66. Private collection
John Everett Millais, Sophie Gray, 1856, Private collection
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1877, Private collection
Joanna Boyce Wells, Thou Bird of God, 1861, Private collection
Evelyn De Morgan, Night and Sleep, 1878, De Morgan Collection, courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation