Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, Ballads and Narrative Poems, Hammersmith: Kelmscott, 1893, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, Poems. (Privately Printed), London: Strangeways and Walden, 1869; Poems, Privately Printed, July to Decr. 1869, London: Strangeways and Walden, Printers, 1869-70; Poems, London: F. S. Ellis, 1870, inscribed: 'To Fanny / from her sincere friend / DGR 187.'; Poems, London: F. S. Ellis, 1870, inscribed: 'To Dr. Llewellyn Williams / with regards and compliments / D. G. Rossetti 1870,'; Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, Binding, title page, and frontispiece in Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1862, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

William Morris, 1834-1896, The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbours, Their Foreman, and Their Fellows in Arms, London: Reeves and Turner, 1890, National Gallery of Art Library, David K. E. Bruce Fund.

William Morris, author, 1834-1896, Edward Burne-Jones, illustrator, 1833-1898, A Dream of John Ball; and A King's Lesson, London: Reeves and Turner, 1888, National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Mark Samuels Lasner.

William Morris, 1834-1896, Art and Socialism, London: W. Reeves, 1884, Chants for Socialists, London: Socialist League Office, 1885, Monopoly, or, How Labour is Robbed, London: Office of 'The Commonweal,'; 1890, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, number 1, London: Bell and Daldy, January 1856, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

William Morris, 1834-1896, Design for initial letters for The Tale of Beowulf, 1895, ink and pencil with Chinese white on paper, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, Proof print of illustration for 'The Palace of Art'; in Alfred Tennyson, Poems, London: Edward Moxon, 1857, wood engraving, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

National Gallery of Art
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Pre-Raphaelites and the Book
February 17-May 19, 2013

Artists of the Pre-Raphaelite circle were deeply engaged with integrating word and image throughout their careers. Pre-Raphaelites and the Book showcases 35 volumes and illustrations from the Gallery's Library and the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware, from poetry by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris to wood engravings and material related to the Kelmscott Press. The exhibition has been organized to complement Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848–1900.

The Pre-Raphaelites involved themselves not only in book design and illustration, but were also highly regarded poets in their own right. John Everett Millais and Edward Burne-Jones were sought-after magazine and book illustrators, while Rossetti devoted himself equally to poetry and the visual arts.

In 1891, after years of publishing his works elsewhere, Morris founded the Kelmscott Press to print books "with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty." He designed all aspects of the books — from typefaces and ornamental elements to layouts, where he incorporated wood-engraved illustrations contributed by Burne-Jones. Beautifully illustrated books from this press are displayed alongside Morris' elaborate ornament designs and his own manuscript illumination inspired by medieval volumes.

The exhibition also includes rare copies of The Germ and The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine — short-lived periodicals with poetry, illustrations, essays, and short stories created to promote the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites — as well as the Moxon Tennyson, an illustrated edition of Alfred Tennyson's poetry that was among the first commissions of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. A selection of pencil and ink caricatures by Burne-Jones depicting his family life and other members of the circle is also on view.

In addition to works by the Pre-Raphaelites, influential volumes by critic and later Pre-Raphaelite advocate John Ruskin are included, such as Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice.

William Holman Hunt, 1827-1910, Proof print of illustration for 'The Lady of Shalott'; in Alfred Tennyson, Poems, London: Edward Moxon, 1857, wood engraving, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

William Morris, 1834-1896, Design for a border for The Well at the World's End, c. 1892-1893, ink and pencil with Chinese white on paper, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Edward Burne-Jones, 1833-1898, Georgiana Burne-Jones Studying Latin in the Dining Room at the Grange, c. 1880s, ink on paper, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

John Everett Millais, 1829-1896, Proof print of illustration for 'Irene'; in Cornhill Magazine, 1862, wood engraving, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Eiríkur Magnússon and William Morris, translators, Volsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs & Niblungs, With Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, London: F. S. Ellis, 1870, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

William Morris, 1834-1896, The Earthly Paradise, London: F. S. Ellis, 1868-1870, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Edward Burne-Jones, 1833-1898, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Bringing Cushions to Jane Morris, c. 1868-1877, pencil on paper, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Edward Burne-Jones, 1833-1898, Self-Caricature, Painting, with Cat, 1891, ink on paper, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

William Holman Hunt (182-1910), Our English Coasts, 1852 (Strayed Sheep), 1852, Oil on canvas. support: 432 x 584 mm frame: 785 x 940 x 85 mm, Tate, N05665.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Self-Portrait, 1847, pen on paper, National Portrait Gallery.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith 1866-8.

Philip Web (1831-1915) and Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), The Prioress's Tale cabinet, 200d, 222 cm high. Designed by Webb in 1857, and decorated by Burne-Jones with scenes from the tale told by the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales.

John Everett Millais, A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew’s Day, refusing to shield himself from danger by wearing the Roman Catholic Badge 1851-2, Oil on canvas, 36-1/2 x 24-1/4", Arched top. Royal Academy of Arts, Makins Collection.

Tate Britain
Bankside
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London
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
September 12, 2012-January 13, 2013

Combining rebellion and revivalism, scientific precision and imaginative grandeur, the Pre-Raphaelites constitute Britain’s first modern art movement. This exhibition will bring together over 150 works in different media, including painting, sculpture, photography and the applied arts, revealing the Pre-Raphaelites to be advanced in their approach to every genre. Led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) rebelled against the art establishment of the mid-nineteenth century, taking inspiration from early Renaissance painting.

The exhibition establishes the PRB as an early example of the avant-garde: painters who self-consciously overturned orthodoxy and established a new benchmark for modern painting and design. It includes many famous Pre-Raphaelite works, and also re-introduce some rarely seen masterpieces including Ford Madox Brown’s polemical Work 1852-65 and the 1858 wardrobe designed by Philip Webb and painted by Edward Burne-Jones on the theme of The Prioress’s Tale, as well as John Everett Millais’s first painting en plein air Ferdinand Lured by Ariel 1849-50 and the politcially charged: A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew’s Day, refusing to shield himself from danger by wearing the Roman Catholic Badge 1851-2.

The exhibition shows the Pre-Raphaelite environment to be widely encompassing in its reach across the fine and decorative arts, in response to a fast-changing religious and political backdrop, and in its relationship to women practitioners.

New inventions changed the Victorians’ way of life dramatically. For instance, "The locomotive gave a new celerity to time," said political and social reformer, Samuel Smiles; "it virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size." Travel by train meant, for instance, that London-based artists could easily reach the coast for painting expeditions while photography provided them with an alternative to sketching and a fresh way of seeing the world.

Both their excitement over these changes and their struggles to adapt to the problems they brought with them remain with us, albeit in different forms. Our present day world is being transformed by the development of the internet while the proliferation of mobile phones offers instant communication wherever we go. For ecological reasons we are worried about the continuous encroachment of city into countryside, an expansion which first became a worrying feature in the nineteenth century. Fresh interpretations of how long ago the world might have come into being led Victorians to question their religious beliefs, yet religion continues to play an important, often disturbing part in our world affairs today.

Victorian artists responded to the changes affecting them by documenting their world minutely, drawing on their knowledge of science as well as their spiritual feelings. Many of today’s artists also respond to a changing world by recording its appearance closely. The documentary photographs of Martin Parr and Lucian Freud’s views from his window on to his backyard are just two examples.

The Appearance of nature: natural and man made The Pre-Raphaelites cared about nature. From the 1830s onwards the British became fascinated with geology as conflicting ideas about the formation of the earth were discussed. These theories, clearly explained by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology, 1830-3, involved on the one hand a series of cataclysms, on the other, slow, unceasing mutation. When artists painted a landscape they did so with an awareness of how it might have been formed. They studied geology and natural history so that they would be able to reflect their knowledge in the way they painted.

But they were also concerned with the way their own country was being changed by man very much more quickly than it was by geology. Victorian Britain had been altering rapidly as the population moved from the country to live and work in the cities. The census of 1851 revealed that for the first time more people lived in towns than in the country. Britain was no longer an agricultural nation: it was the start of the situation we have now — big towns and fewer and fewer people living and working in the countryside.

So part of what the Pre-Raphaelites aimed to do was to stop time in its tracks, to record in minute detail what certain places looked like at a given time before they were altered very slowly by geological change or very quickly by man.

They were right to expect change. The process has continued and greatly accelerated since the 1850s. The move from country to town has continued, leading to battles between developers wanting to build more and environmentalists trying to save some of what William Blake (1757-1827) had described as "England’s green and pleasant land." At the present time many people are worried by the threat of GM crops both to plant diversity and our long-term health.

Nature as an expression of faith Many people see the beauties of nature, such as a sunset sky or pearls of dew in morning grass, as evidence of God’s creation. Such beliefs became problematic for the Pre-Raphaelites as developments in geology cast doubt on Bible stories as fact. Geologists found out, for instance, that the world had existed for tens of thousands of years before the flood described in the book of Genesis. In his Origin of Species, published in 1859, Charles Darwin described our evolution from ape-like ancestors, casting doubt on man's privileged position set apart from all other living creatures by virtue of having a soul. Overwhelmed by all the speculation and tormented by what he called "the clink of the geologists’ hammers," John Ruskin, writer on art, critic and champion of J.M.W. Turner, lost his faith. Originally he had believed that to paint nature was a form of worship, claiming that "All great art is praise."

Women artists Painting was an unusual career for a woman in Victorian times. Men held the power in art as elsewhere and dictated what was permissible subject matter for women to paint - nudes, for example, were not considered suitable and women were not allowed to attend life drawing classes. Because the Pre-Raphaelites focussed on landscape, an unexceptional subject, it was possible for women to make a contribution in that field. They often painted their surroundings, the view from their window, for example, and this domestic emphasis fitted in with the contemporary attitude that woman’s place was in the home. The two women artists included in the show were the sisters of male artists. This was the usual pattern: generally only women who were connected to male artists were likely to consider art as a possible career. They are Rosa Brett (1829-1882), self-taught and sister to John Brett, and Joanna Boyce (1832-1861), sister of George Price Boyce. Joanna Boyce was described by D.G. Rossetti as a "wonderfully gifted woman" but her desire to paint repeatedly came into conflict with domestic duties. After caring for her brother George for five months while he was ill in 1850, she married miniaturist Henry Wells and died at the age of 28 following the birth of her second daughter.

The scant consideration accorded to Victorian women artists has persisted almost up to the present time. Only one woman, Elizabeth Siddal, had her work included in the Tate Pre-Raphaelite exhibition of 1984 and that may have been principally because she is known as the model for Millais’s Ophelia and as D.G. Rossetti’s wife who died from an overdose of laudanum at the early age of 33. Be sure to look at the paintings by Rosa Brett and Joanna Boyce in rooms 1 and 2. They are there because of their quality not because of the women’s connections with male artists.

John Everett Millais, Ferdinand Lured by Ariel, 1949-50, Oil on panel, 25-1/2 x 20". Private Collection.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Astarte Syriaca, 1877, © Manchester City Galleries.