Pre-Raphaelite Art Research Articles

Kingdom of the soul: symbolist art in Germany, 1870-1920

Published to accompany an important exhibition, this richly illustrated volume outlines the link between the Pre-Raphaelite artists in Britain and the Expressionists on the Continent. It focuses on the crucial contribution made by artists in Germany to the European Symbolist movement as a whole, providing for the first time a much-needed comparison to developments in England and other countries worldwide.Symbolism was a European cultural movement that was at its peak in the last two decades of the 19th century, profoundly affecting the visual arts and inextricably bound up with music and literature. While many Symbolists reacted against the materialism of 19th-century science and its implications, others sought to reconcile modern science with spiritual traditions. Symbolism stressed feeling and evocation over definition and fact, and emphasized the power of suggestion.The British artist Edward Burne-Jones is considered one of the most important precursors for other European artists who thought of themselves as Symbolists, while in France, Paul Gauguin played a seminal role. Edvard Munch charged his oeuvre with such strong personal meaning that his style and content became a source for Expressionism. These influences fell on fertile soil in Germany where artists including Arnold Bocklin, Ferdinand Hodler, and Kathe Kollwitz worked within the Symbolist tradition. By focusing on this neglected German axis between 1870 and 1920, Symbolist Art makes an important contribution to our understanding and appreciation of this fascinating period in art history.

Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire (review)

Reviewed by: Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire Wendy Graham John R. Bradley, ed. Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire. London: St. Martin’s, 1998. 149 pp. $30. Announcing his enterprise as “the first book-length work of criticism to explore the subject of Henry James and homosexuality,” John R. Bradley presents what is really a modest reevaluation of James’s life and oeuvre as a radical departure from standard critical practice (xi). Straddling the breach between “extremists” such as Sedgwick, who equate James’s fictional fantasies with the activities of the Tenderloin district, and “reactionaries” such as Leon Edel, who style James a vestal virgin channeling his passion into literary production, Bradley argues for a self-aware, if not sexually active, Henry James (52). Perhaps this is why he champions Sheldon M. Novick, an unlikely muse for a work of literary criticism given his summary acquaintance with the varieties of literary analysis. Announcing that “reports of the death of the author evidently have been greatly exaggerated” in his introduction to this volume, Novick smugly rejects [End Page 307] psychological and literary critical modes of analysis in favor of traditional approaches that allow for authorial intentionality (1). The position Novick adopts here, that James’s letters and tales suggest he was “a man at ease with sexuality in general” (13), reprises the reductive approach to James’s sexuality taken in Novick’s recent biography: “it has seemed most reasonable to assume that when [James] seemed to be having a love affair, he was” (Young Master xiii). Novick would have us believe that he alone truly understands what he calls Henry James’s “emotional reality,” an elastic concept that allows Novick to infer James’s feelings from his writings without reference to his actions, substituting conjecture for evidence gathering (Bradley 12). Armed with his intuition, Novick introduces a graphic anecdote concerning Walt Whitman’s purported tryst with a young man who was experiencing a “throbbing erection” (10) and then, improbably, advances this scenario as a governing metaphor for understanding James’s own passion for men. One is struck by the manifest absurdity of this image in connection with James, whose raciest romantic overtures pale in comparison: “The faint pink incense you exhale goes to my head” (129). In short, the contributors to this volume ought to be grateful for the distance Novick puts between himself and them when he deprecates their salutary tendency to see James as conflicted in his sexuality. Ironically, the essay that follows Novick’s, a reprint of Richard Ellmann’s “James Among the Aesthetes” of 1983, is arguably the crispest account of James’s homosexual panic on record, documenting James’s horror of Oscar Wilde, sodomite par excellence, to a fare-thee-well. According to Ellmann, James recognized his own “homosexual propensity” and endeavored to cover it up through negative portrayals of aesthetes in his fiction and a “counter-emphasis” on manliness in his art criticism (27). Ellmann’s meticulous elaboration of James’s relation to the aesthetic movement is well worth rereading, both because of good scholarship and as a point of departure for a very different argument, one that construes James’s enthusiasm for the nude male form. Ellmann contrasts Wilde’s and James’s response to the opening exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, remarking: “When they come to the [paintings of] the beautiful boys, Wilde is all atremble, James all aslant” (32). Ellmann attributes James’s diffidence to a marked anxiety about the manliness of Pre-Raphaelite art as well as to Ruskin’s chastening influence. Far from equivocating about the paintings of Edward Burne-Jones, James celebrates the artist’s androgynous figures in a manner worthy of Walter Pater. Although James qualifies his admiration for the “beautiful, rapt dejection of the mysterious young warrior” depicted in Le Chant d’Amour, there is no backlash against effeminacy: “Mr. Burne-Jones does not pretend to paint very manly figures, and we should hardly know where to look for a more delicate rendering of a lovesick swain” (Essays 276–77). Ellmann belongs to the faction that contends James became more comfortable with his homosexuality as he grew older and as society became more familiar...

Re-framing the Pre-Raphaelites: Historical and Theoretical Essays edited by Ellen Harding (review)

292Victorian Review Ellen Harding, (ed.). Re-framing the Pre-Raphaelites: Historical and Theoretical Essays. Aldershot England: Scolar P, 1996. xiv + 287. $76.95 US (cloth). The Pre-Raphaelite movement fascinates scholars with the diversity of the people and the broad range of themes involved. And the collection of essays edited by Ellen Harding for Scolar Press reflects the heterogeneity of Pre-Raphaelitism. The fourteen essays, five of them based on papers given at the 10th Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, examine the production and reception of Pre-Raphaelite art in relation to questions of gender, class, ethnicity, national and regional identity, and patronage. The figures discussed range from well-known participants such as Holman Hunt (three essays) to lesser known figures such as P.H. Calderón, and works such as Ford Madox Brown's Work to Simeon Solomon's Bacchus. But some of the most interesting essays are those which consider aspects of influence, both on the PRB and the PRB on those who followed. The collection begins with an examination of Pre-Raphaelite patronage by Dianne Macleod. Assessing the value of different theoretical approaches, she argues that critical-theoretical analysis needs to be made in an historical framework, "!«conceptualizing the way in which the historic, professional, familial, cultural and personal interact with one another," in order to avoid "the danger of turning scholarship into fantasy" (25). The second essay, Philip McEvansoneya's "The Cosmopolitan Club Exhibition of 1863: The British salon de refusés" investigates the 1863 protest exhibition organized by Holman Hunt, and discusses the exhibition as an important precursor the later London salons des refusés. From there the collection examines individual artists and works, then themes and influences. For example, Jan Marsh's essay, " 'For the Wolf or the Babe He Is Seeking to Devour?' The Hidden Impact of the American Civil War on British Art" is a fascinating reading of Rossetti's The Beloved contextualized by the debates over racial supremacy in nineteenthcentury Britain and the impact of the American Civil War. Marsh concludes that "The Beloved is not at all about the power of female beauty to arouse men. It is about male power to look, to depict to buy, to sell, to possess and to display. Ostensibly a picture about femininity, The Beloved is actually a depiction of white masculinity" (124). Gender issues pervade several of the essays in the collection. Allison Smith's examination of Millais's Knight Errant finds the public debate about the nude encompassing issues of female enfranchisement as well as religion and morality, and finally one of nationalism. The role of women as the center of moral strength and convention is also an issue Reviews293 in Susan Casteras's essay examining the presentation of women in scenes of traditional domesticity. She finds that despite the "air of serenity and seeming order," there are often hidden complexities centering around sexuality and the prescribed roles of everyday life (149). Masculinity is the central theme in two essays, Colin Cruise's " 'Lovely Devils': Simeon Solomon and Pre-Raphaelite Masculinity" and Julie Codell's "The Artist Colonized: Holman Hunt's 'Bio-history,' Masculinity, Nationalism and the English School." Cruise's comparison of Solomon's male figures with Rossetti's female figures leads to the conclusion that the similarity in representations creates a sexual ambiguity in Solomon's male figures resulting in homoeroticism. Cruise then moves to the criticism of Walter Pater to argue that Pater created a new type of masculinity in response to muscular Christianity, and concludes that while Solomon's priestly men can not be directly linked to Pater's later concept of "masculine expression/expressionlessness," one does help us recognize and understand the other. In contrast, Codell focuses on Holman Hunt's Pre-Raphaelitism and the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood as a means of revising conceptions surrounding the PRB, distancing it from Pre-Raphaelite aestheticism and its associations with the effeminate and the perverted. She concludes that "Hunt's manly artistic persona" was intentionally gendered and nationalistic in order to assert both the Englishness and the authority of Pre-Raphaelitism. All of the articles within the collection are well written and insightful, and the varied topics ensure...

Simeon Solomon and the Biblical Construction of Marginal Identity in Victorian England

During the formative stages of his sexual development (1855-1860), the Pre-Raphaelite artist Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) appropriated the authority of the Bible to explore, camouflage, and ultimately, legitimize his own homoerotic yearnings. Using Plummer and Troiden's four-stage constructionist model of Gay Identity Acquisition to provide an interpretive framework for six of the artist's early Old Testament drawings, this paper charts Solomon's development from awareness, to crisis, to acceptance. Solomon's use of biblical subjects to express his inner states reflects his construction of a socially marginal homosexual identity, an act which allowed him to overcome the despair and the isolation engendered by his peripheral standing in Victorian society.

Pre-Raphaelite art in its European context

Pre-Raphaelite art in its European context

Irish Literature and Culture ed. by Michael Kenneally

on by feminist theorists in other contexts. But she is alert to the ways in which the text at times almost celebrates (albeit grudgingly) women’s witty and resourceful evasions of a patriarchal system that could have been suffocating. This book is a welcome addition to Grosart’s 1884 edition and F.P. Wil­ son’s 1929 edition, both out of date and neither very user-friendly to non­ specialists. Its modern spelling and its “nonspecialist” glosses and notes will make it accessible to students; any chance to enrich the classroom with Renaissance texts outside the usual Shakespeare/Spenser/Marlowe/Jonson range is always cause for rejoicing. lin d a w o o d b r id g e / University of Alberta Michael Kenneally, ed., Irish Literature and Culture. Irish Literary Studies 35 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1992). x, 196. Illustrated. Irish Literature and Culture is a collection of eleven essays, nine of which were presented at the 1988 conference of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies, held at Marianopolis College, Montreal. The remaining two papers, one by Andrew Carpenter tracing the transformation of attitudes toward Irish musical and literary culture in eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish litera­ ture from rejection to acceptance, and the other by Mary Helen Thuente demonstrating the literary, cultural and political importance of The United Irishman, were solicited for this volume. These two essays, along with Terry Eagleton’s study of the aesthetics and politics of Edmund Burke, and Patrick Rafroidi’s assessment of the complex social and aesthetic impact of the work of Thomas Moore, provide a rich literary/historical background for the other seven essays whose focus is on more contemporary aspects of Irish literature and culture. Three of these examine the relationship between modern Irish literature and the sister arts. In the first, “No More Poems About Paintings?,” Edna Longley explores the influence of Pre-Raphaelite art on modern Irish poetry from Yeats to Paul Muldoon. In the second, “Music and Ritual in Ulysses,” Zack Bowen argues that Joyce’s treatment of music and song is complex and ironic. For most of the characters in Ulysses, according to Bowen, music is the means by which they create and heighten profane rituals. Bowen, however, views Bloom differently. Using music and song, Bowen sees Bloom ironically debunking the phony rituals to which the other characters are devoted. In the third, “Stage Design As A Form of Dramatic Criticism,” Richard Cave carefully compares the stage designs of different productions of plays by Wilde, Yeats, and O’Casey and convincingly demonstrates that 102 stage design at its best not only involves a high degree of dramatic criticism and appraisal, but is also, despite its collaborative nature, an art form in itself that can significantly enhance the dramatic effectiveness of a play. The final four essays in the collection discuss more generally the cultural contexts of Irish drama, cinema, and politics. Wolfgang Zach’s “Criticism, Theatre and Politics: Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City and its Early Re­ ception,” describes the highly polemical nature of the Irish, English, Amer­ ican, and German responses to the first productions of Friel’s The Freedom of the City in Dublin, London, New York, and Wiesbaden. He concludes that both the immediacy and the engagement typical of such reviews in­ variably tell us at least as much about the aesthetic views, the theatrical expectations, and the political opinions of the reviewers and the audiences as the play does. One of the more discouraging implications of this essay, particularly when it is read in conjunction with Richard Cave’s analysis of stage design, is that theatrical verisimilitude remains a fiercely held expec­ tation and “value” by a wide cross section of post-Brechtian reviewers and audiences both in Europe and North America, and that dramatic experi­ mentation is still not well understood or welcome. Such a state of dramatic affairs may well have a negative impact on the production and reception of the non-realistic dramatic works of Yeats and O’Casey as well as some of Friel. Declan Kiberd’s “Fathers and Sons: Irish-Style” introduces the cultural cliché that Irish domestic relationships are characterized by an over-intense relationship...

D. G. Rossetti's use of photography

Abstract In investigations of the relationship between artists and the newly discovered invention of photography, the main thrust has been to show where the artist copied a photograph in producing his painting. A much more interesting question is, what were the uses to which nineteenth-century artists put photography? Although the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82) has been characterized as living in the past and being resistant to change or scientific invention, he perceived and employed many possible uses of photography extensively in documenting and disseminating his art from the very beginning of his career. In the multiple ways in which he employed the medium of photography as an aid to art, the paradigm of the possibilities of its use for artists in the nineteenth century is clearly spelled out. Because his activities are extensively documented in his letters, both published and unpublished, and in photographic reproductions of his art, we have more evidence of Rossetti's interest in and employment of the medium of photography than is available for many of his contemporaries. From this evidence it is possible to chart the great variety of ways in which nineteenth-century artists could respond to photography and how it could become an invaluable aid not only to creating and documenting art, but also to disseminating images of the artists' creation and enhancing their reputations.

Woman/image/text: readings in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature

Woman/image/text: readings in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature

Birds, cages and women in Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art

Birds, cages and women in Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art

English Pre-Raphaelitism and its reception in America in the nineteenth century

The pre-Raphaelite artists, especially John Everett Millais, Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are presented from the perspective of the popular and critical response of American audiences to their work. Complemented by more than one hundred photographs, the study also delineates the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites on American artists.

Ford Madox Ford and the Arts: Introduction

There passed from us this June a very gallant combatant for things of the mind and of which have been in our time too little prized. Ezra Pound wrote these words shortly after Ford Madox Ford's death on June 26, 1939. Fifty years after that event the essays in this issue of Contemporary Literature pay tribute Ford and those things of the mind and of letters which he loved and promoted with so much energy. Ford was born into the world of Pre-Raphaelite art as the grandson of Ford Madox Brown, in whose studio young Fordie trained his eye in line and color. The companionship first of Stella Bowen and later of Janice Biala kept him constantly in touch with the plastic arts. He devoted the pages of the English Review to the arts, and ideas, and his editorial column (The Functions of the Arts in the Republic) discussed music and the plastic arts as well as literature. He celebrated the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and he published reproductions of the work of Brancusi, Braque, Man Ray, and Picasso in the Transatlantic Review. Ford learned from his father the rudiments of music and went on study composition, compose for the piano and voice, and champion the new music of Richard Wagner. He ran a musical supplement in four issues of the Transatlantic where he published the music of George Antheil, Erik Satie, and Ezra Pound as well as Antheil's thoughts on Fanelli and Pound's theory of harmony. Although Ford held Holbein be the greatest of painters and Bach be the greatest of composers, he didn't allow his respect for their genius stifle his enthusiasm for lesjeunes. The essays by Joseph A. Kestner and by Sondra J. Stang and Carl Smith address Ford's lifelong absorption with art and music, suggesting, respectively, how

The Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford

During the second half of the nineteenth century, most of the Pre-Raphaelite artists had connections with Oxford at one time or another. Although Oxford can make no claim to having played a fundamental part in the foundation of the original PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, it nevertheless exerted a significant influence on the protagonists of the new movement. Both Millais and Holman Hunt had close friend-

Pre-Raphaelitism, Ruskinism, and French Symbolism

Parisians first saw English Pre-Raphaelite art at the Universal Exposition of 1855, but their initial excitement on cooled and the reputation of the movement fell into decline; the popularity of Pre-Raphaelitism in France was not solidly established until 1884, when, in his novel Rebours, J. K. Huysmans linked the British movement with the native Decadent-Symbolist movement which suddenly was growing extremely fashionable. The Symbolists headed a rebellion against naturalism, and we might think that when, in 1888, a Symbolist movement in painting was arising, rebelling against the “naturalistic” art form of Impressionism, the French painters would have turned to the British Pre-Raphaelites in same way. Such expectations, however, are not immediately satisfied, since the French painters themselves do not seem to have recognized any debt to the English. Charles Chasse says in his study of the Nabis: “Je ne m'attarderai pourtant pas a disserter sur ce preraphaelisme parce que, en realite, nos Nabis ont ete, ...