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| Mariana, John Everett Millais, 1851 |
Published on The London Word
http://www.thelondonword.com/2012/09/which-pre-raphaelite-supermodel-are-you/
A hundred and fifty years before Kate Moss and Naomi
Campbell, what you might call the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood modelled for Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, the founding members
of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their timeless beauty, made more luminous by
the vision (and no doubt the sexual acrobatics) of the Brotherhood, is now on
display at the Tate, in a special survey of the works of the Pre-Raphaelites
and their many followers. The exhibition looks at the PRB’s work from the time
they formed in September 1848 through to the works of artists influenced by
their style and ideology. The exhibition is a delicious prequel to the V and
A’s display of the Aesthetic Movement last year.
While the PRB’s hedonistic pursuit of beauty at any cost is well
known, it is their worship of nature that is embroidered all through their
paintings. At the exhibition, I stood in front of Millais’s Ophelia for a good fifteen minutes,
staring at the pathos of Hamlet’s Ophelia, her supplication to eternity, the
splashes of colour from the wildflowers that cling to her drowning body, the
delicate twines engulfing her gown as she slowly sinks. While the PRB made no
bones about the reproduction of nature as one of their main inspirations, what
you note in their paintings is actually the blissful harmony of people (well,
mostly women) and nature, a match so divine that both nature and humanity are
elevated by it.
So, if you were a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel, which one would
you be? Would you be Lizzie Siddal, the PRB’s favourite muse, immortalized by
Millais’s Ophelia, a woman whose life
changed one day as she walked out of the London
hat maker’s where she worked when she was spotted by the Brotherhood? Her
addictive personality, the enormous abyss of longing in her for beauty,
self-fulfillment, and for Rossetti’s loyalty make her a haunting figure. She
was the perfect muse – while Millais was painting Ophelia, Siddal modelled for him submerged in a bathtub, and she
stayed mute as the water slowly turned ice cold. She was a painter in her own
right and found a supporter of her art in John Ruskin, though her art never
quite matured enough and looks a little unfinished and childlike, all the way
up to 1862 when she died of a laudanum overdose at thirty-two years of age. While
her own paintings feature at the Tate, it is paintings like Ophelia and Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix that really speak of
Siddal’s lingering impact on modern art.
Would you be Fanny Cornforth, another of Rossetti’s many
flings? Earthy, sexy and gloriously unself-conscious, Cornforth was a stark
contrast to Siddal’s other-worldly, somewhat consumptive looks. Cornforth
became Rossetti’s housekeeper after Siddal died in 1862, and had a relationship
with him that lasted till his death in 1882. Paintings like Rossetti’s The Blue Bower and Monna Vanna of this red-headed beauty give the exhibition a special
sumptuous light, and it is these paintings that helped Rossetti mature from a
hankering amateur to a full-blown artist.
Or would you be Jane Morris – keenly intelligent, self-made,
of an ambitious and steadfast disposition? Morris – born Jane Burden, daughter
of a stableman – taught herself Italian and French, learnt the piano, and
developed what were often noted as “queenly” manners. She was married to
William Morris, but had an on-again off-again relationship with Rossetti all
his life.
Besides these iconic paintings, the exhibition also
showcases cabinets and stained glass works by people like Edward Burne-Jones
and William Morris. While the exhibition is quite yummy, I have to say I was
expecting a Tate Pre-raphaelite survey to be full of excess. I thought I’d be
running breathlessly from room to room full of panic about not being able to
take it all in. There are some works missing like Rossetti’s Love’s Greeting or later works like John
William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shallot (1888).
Still, if you are a fan of the PRB, the exhibition is not to be missed.
Tate Britain
September 12, 2012 – January 13, 2013
Tickets: £14
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