Millais, written by Jason Rosenfield and Alison Smith

From the Publisher:
As a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Everett Millais (1829-1896) spearheaded one of the most radically modern artistic groups in the history of British art. Later in his career, Millais was considered an establishment figure who swapped artistic innovation for commercial gain. For the first time, this book allows us to see Millais in the context of his whole career, arguing that his late works, especially his landscapes, are as dramatic in their freshness of vision as those of his Pre-Raphaelite period. He is revealed as a complex artist with significant links to Manet, Whistler, and Sargent; and one who helped to spark a renewed interest in British eighteenth-century art.

About the Authors
Jason Rosenfeld is Assistant Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College, New York. Alison Smith is a curator at Tate Britain specializing in nineteenth century British art.

Browse the Millais category here at Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood

Or visit the Millais category at ArtMagick where you can learn about his works and send images as e-cards, free of charge.

Mrs. Herbert Duckworth, Photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is presenting Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940 which will include Julia Margaret Cameron. The exhibit lasts through September 1st. Images from the exhibit can be seen here.

This exhibit shares images from photographers who, in the first 100 years of the medium, helped propel photography forward into an art form of expression.

Julia Margaret Cameron interests me.  She embraced many of the elements of Pre-Raphaelitism in her work, including a series of photos based on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.  I will link to my favorites below.  I would love to see those in person!

Gareth and Lynette 

Enid 

Vivien and Merlin 

Another Vivien and Merlin (this one is my favorite)

Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat

Elaine in the Barge (also known as the Lady of Shalott which I wrote about here)

Elaine at Camelot, which is almost stunningly sad and morbid, yet peaceful.

The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere 

 The Little Novice and the Queen

King Arthur 

The Passing of Arthur 

The tilt of her head and the look on her face captivates me. I’ve never been quite sure what I sense in her face: peace or sorrow? Curiously enough, given her situation, I do not see fear. Or regret.

The Martyr of Solway is one of my favorite Millais paintings. It is gorgeous, to say the least. She was originally nude, which in my mind would only capture the severity of her plight. But Millais had to add clothes in order not to offend the Victorian public. (Scroll to the bottom of this page at the Liverpool Museum to see x-rays of the painting that shows her to be originally nude.)

Loving this painting as I do, I have been thrilled to encounter it unexpectedly online a couple of times this week. The lovely Grace at The Beautiful Necessity shares a link to Martin Beek’s work at Flickr. His painstaking attention to detail! He has captured and shared the spirit of Millais with us all. His hard work and photographs give a unique perspective into the works of Millais.

At Unusual Historicals Anita Davison shares the true story behind The Matyr ofSolway (whose name was Margaret Wilson). It is a sad tale of a young Scottish girl who refused to swear an oath declaring the King of England as Head of the Church. She and a friend were chained to stone stakes in Solway Firth, forced to drown in the tide.

Other links:

The Solway Martys @ executedtoday.com

The Martyr of Solway @ ArtMagick

Women in History of Scots Descent: Women in Covenanting Times: @ electricscotland.com

Venus Verticordia, painting and poem both by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Alexa Wilding posed for the painting, although I’ve read that Rossetti also used Fanny Cornforth.

Venus Verticordia

She hath the apple in her hand for thee,
Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;
She muses, with her eyes upon the track
Of that which in thy spirit they can see.
Haply, “Behold, he is at peace,” saith she;
“Alas! the apple for his lips, - the dart
That follows its brief sweetness to his heart, -
The wandering of his feet perpetually!”

A little space her glance is still and coy,
But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
Those eyes shall flame as for her Phygian boy.
Then shall her bird’s strained throat the woe foretell,
And her far seas moan as a single shell,
And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.

External Links:

Venus Verticordia @ the artmagick illustrated poetry collection

Scholarly commentary at The Rossetti Archive

More commentary

Rossetti’s sketches for Venus Verticordia:

Summer has officially arrived!  So in celebration, I offer you a few images that embrace summer:

Flaming June by Frederic, Lord Leighton (1895):

From Sir Edward Burne-Jones The Four Seasons series:  Summer, (1869)

Simeon Soloman, Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1866):

And last but certainly not least, the painting that hangs in the hallway of my home.  Edward Hughes, Midsummers Eve:

Ophelia is a captivating character, one that many of the Pre-Raphaelites and other Victorian artists drew inspiration from. For those unfamiliar with Ophelia, she is Hamlet’s innocent and young love interest in one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays (Hamlet). Hamlet loved Ophelia - but after his meeting with the ghost of his father (Act I) he feels compelled to set their love aside in order to focus on avenging his father’s murder. Poor young Ophelia is unaware of Hamlet’s motives or his inner turmoil. He chooses not to express his sense of betrayal (really, who can blame him for feeling betrayed when his uncle murdered his father and then married his mother, Queen Gertrude). Ophelia is perplexed and hurt by Hamlet’s madness — and when Hamlet kills Ophelia’s father (Polonius) in an irrational fit, the beautiful Ophelia is herself driven to insanity. Picking flowers and singing songs, Ophelia accidentally drowns. Perhaps the most famous painting of Ophelia is by John Everett Millais, using Elizabeth Siddal as a model. Siddal took great pains to pose as Ophelia, both literally and figuratively. The son of the artist, John Guille Millais, wrote of the incident:

“Miss Siddal had a trying experience whilst acting as a model for Ophelia. In order that the artist might get the proper set of the garments in water and the right atmosphere and aqueous effects, she had to lie in a large bath filled with water, which was kept at an even temperature by lamps placed beneath. One day, just as the picture was nearly finished, the lamps went out unnoticed by the artist, who was so intensely absorbed in his work that he thought of nothing else, and the poor lady was kept floating in the cold water till she was quite benumbed. She herself never complained of this, but the result was that she contracted a severe cold, and her father wrote to Millais, threatening with an action of 50 lbs. for his carelessness. Eventually the matter was satisfactorily compromised. Millais paid the doctor’s bill, and Miss Siddal, quickly recovering, was none the worse for her cold bath.”

(For more on the painting by Millais, see Ten Things You Never Knew About Ophelia)

Ophelia, by Millais

Dante Gabriel Rossetti chose to portray Ophelia in a different way, drawing inspiration from the passages I’ve transcribed below the painting.

HAMLET: I did love thee once.

OPHELIA: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET: You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old shock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA: I was the more deceived.

HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery, why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things…

Hamlet says he loves her, only to turn around and say he loves her not? Can we read similarities between this and his relationship with Elizabeth Siddal? It is interesting that he chooses this passage of Hamlet and uses Siddal as his model for Ophelia.

Arthur Hughes painted this version of Ophelia in 1852. (see painting below) Hughes shows Ophelia beside the stream that will eventually take her life. The water seems stagnate, with a slimy film on top. I don’t think you can see it in your monitor, but on the right hand side of the painting (just under the tree trunk) there is a bat flying close to the surface of the water. Is he portraying a feeling of doom perhaps? I’ll see if I can zoom in on th bat and post it later.

The above depiction by Hughes is a bit cartoonish, elfish. Maybe pixie-ish is a better word? (Assuming that it’s even a word)

Hughes was not done with our beloved Ophelia yet, it seems. He painted her again. And this time she has more of a quality of tragic beauty:

Other artists painted their own versions of Ophelia, but it was John William Waterhouse who not only did it best, but did it repeatedly:

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, circa 1889

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1894:

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1910:

The following are my favorite lines from Hamlet….Hamlet’s words, written to Ophelia in Act 2, Scene 2:

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.

The italics are mine, but the line has always struck me as so beautiful. Hamlet eventually went mad and denied his love (in an attempt to protect Ophelia?) but these words of his allow us to look back and see Hamlet and Ophelia before the murder and drama and see them as two young people in love. And then Ophelia, driven insane, dies:

Painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1872.  Once again, Rossetti used model Alexa Wilding.  Rossetti described this painting in a letter to F. R. Leland, whom the painting was for:   “The girl is in a sort of passionate reverie, and is drawing her hand listlessly along the strings of a violin which hangs against the wall, while she holds the bow with the other hands, as if arrested by the thought of the moment, when she was about to play.  In color, I shall make the picture a study of varied greens.”

In typing this, it struck me that many of Rossetti’s later works depict a woman who seems to be “arrested by the thought of the moment…”

As mentioned in this post, Rossetti painted several paintings in which musical instruments are used.

Elsewhere:

Veronica Veronese at the Rossetti Archive 

One of my favorite blogs to visit is Beautiful Century.  The author, Gatochy, shares stunning images of yesteryear with an emphasis on Pre-Raphaelite, Art Deco, and vintage ephemera.

And her Flickr page is a dream.

The tale of Lizzie Siddal posing as Ophelia in the famous Millais painting is legendary.  I wanted to share with you all a beautiful poem that is inspired by Lizzie’s experience posing for the painting.  It is a lovely poem, written by Carla Martin-Wood, aka “Angel” at The Well-Read Head (which I will be adding to my blogroll).  Link to the poem, link to the main page of her site.

Sue Tilley appears in Lucian Freud’s painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (a painting that recently sold for $33.6 million).

Obviously, this site is devoted to artist’s models who lived mainly in the Victorian era. But Tilley gives unique insight into the experience of modeling, having posed for long periods for many months. The Art & Architecture blog at The Guardian has published a riveting piece on Tilley: Sue Tilley and the eye of the muse. I was thrilled to see Elizabeth Siddal mentioned, being that I’m a wee bit obsessed with her tale.

Tilley has spoken of the exhaustion of posing for long periods, and has said that the first time she met Freud she was mortified “when I got there and he told me to take my clothes off. For the first picture I had to lie on the floorboards in a most uncomfortable position, with Leigh [Bowery] and Nicola, the woman he married, and a dog. I was in agony and I thought about giving up. But we work hard in my family, so I stuck it for the whole nine months.” The fact that she says she was in “agony” mirrors Siddal’s experience, but there is something so active and punchy about Tilley’s language, that it seems very difficult to imagine her doing anything that she didn’t want to do. In the portrait itself, we can also see the artist moving a world away from the idealised, dreamy view of womanly flesh that once signalled an artist was painting his muse.

The Guardian also ran a brilliant article in which Tilley chooses her favorite portraits of women, sharing what draws her to them. Among her favorites is Ophelia, one of my own personal faves.   Read the article here, image slideshow is here.

Flora Symbolica: Flowers in Pre-Raphaelite Art: Few artistic movements capture classic notions of beauty as romantically as the Pre-Raphaelites—a group of nineteenth-century painters and poets who aimed to revive the purer art of the late medieval period. Brilliantly colored and carefully composed, pre-Raphaelite paintings are revered for their idealistic portrayal of women, their emphasis on nature and morality, and their use of literature and mythology. Flowers figure prominently in many of these paintings, the blooms as physically lush as they are laden with symbolism. For this was the Victorian era, when the language of flowers was spoken by everyone.

In this beautiful volume, Debra N. Mancoff, an expert on Pre-Raphaelite art and the floral lexicon presents forty breathtaking examples, which illuminate the meaning of flowers in all aspects of Victorian culture. She offers brief commentaries on individual paintings as well as biographies of the period’s leading artists and their models. A captivating introduction to an artistic movement, this exquisitely produced book is also a romantic keepsake of an artistic sensibility that speaks volumes.

Flora Symbolica: The Secret Language
of Pre-Raphaelite Painting*

Saturday, May 17, 2008
2:00 p.m. | Click here to register.
$10 Members/$15 Non-Members/$5 Students

Lecture: During the Victorian age, flowers spoke a secret language to the initiated. The
Pre-Raphaelites used this floral code to tell stories and myths, encode personal messages, and celebrate the beauty of iconic women from legends and history. They also used flowers to honor the beauty of the women they loved. Join Dr. Debra N. Mancoff, art historian and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as the author of Flora Symbolica, for a close look at the favorite floral iconography of the Pre-Raphaelites and learn the secrets of their art. Program followed by tea.

Author Jack Challem emailed me several days ago. You may remember that Mr. Challem has been kind enough to share priceless info with me before, namely an article about Elizabeth Siddal and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s handwriting, an image of their marriage certificate, and photos of Lizzie Siddal’s grave.

Once again, I am grateful that he has shared with us a wonderful image! He writes:

Hi Stephanie,

We returned from England about a week ago. We walked by Rossetti’s
house in Chelsea a couple of times. At the Tate Britain, Edward
Burne-Jones’s “Author in Avalon” was on display. It’s a magnificent
painting. More info at these two sites

Pre-Raphaelite Painting of Arthur returns -temporarily- to Britain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/17/bapreraph117.xml

We drove out to Kelmscott Manor, where Jane Morris lived. The
highlights included an oil painting of Janey by DGR, chalk drawings of
her daughters (again by DGR), and at least a dozen pencil
illustrations by Burne-Jones.

Attached is a photo of the entrance to Kelmscott Manor that you’re
welcome to post, if you wish.

My best,
Jack

Kelmscott Manor

Kelmscott Manor @ Wikipedia

William Morris Society info on Kelmscott Manor

Kelmscott Manor on AboutBritain.com