THE "PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD"
In relating afresh the history of the "Pre-Raphaelite" movement, one
has many precedents to choose from. According to the point of view
selected one may see in it the conscious expression of a great
artistic revival, deliberately planned by a body of zealots, and
based upon a structure of lofty principles; or one may go to the
opposite extreme and regard it merely as an exuberant freak, an
irresponsible outburst on the part of a few impulsive youths linked
together for one brief moment by a mutual combination of enthusiasm
and high spirits. For both of these points of view ample authority
might be quoted, and the truth as usual lies somewhere safe between
them.
The tendency has been, on the whole, not unnaturally, to exaggerate
the significance of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood," which after all
was but the grain of mustard seed from which a great tree sprung.
Its formation came about in the following way. We have noted the
somewhat sudden alliance between Rossetti and Holman Hunt, and their
plan of sharing a studio to carry out work in common. Through Hunt,
Rossetti had become acquainted with Millais, and had joined, or
helped to start, a "Cyclographic Society," numbering several members,
to wit, Thomas Woolner, F. G. Stephens, Walter Deverell, John Hancock
the sculptor, James Collinson, William Dennis, J. B. Keene, and some
four or five besides. The scheme was for members to contribute
drawings to a portfolio which was sent round for all the rest to
criticise. Like other institutions based upon mutual candour, this
society enjoyed a very brief existence, and was mainly of service in
weeding out those who did not sympathize with the new ideas which
were ripening in Rossetti and his friends from those who did. The
final development of these ideas was brought about by a meeting at
Millais's home in Gower Street, where the three alighted upon a
volume of engravings after the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
Ruskin has spoken scornfully of this work as "Lasinio's execrable
engravings," but whatever their quality they at least served to show
that in the earlier men, who preceded Raphael, there was a feeling
for earnest work, a striving after lofty expression, which was worth
more as an inspiration than the stereotyped fashion of painting which
had come into vogue in England. Why this mechanical cult should ever
have become grafted on to the ill-used name of Raphael, and shadowed
by his stately fame, is a difficult matter to explain, and requires
an excursus into the history of European art. Its effect on the
teaching of the day, however, is summed up in the following incisive
passage by Ruskin:
"We begin, in all probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or
sixteen that Nature is full of faults, and that he is to improve her;
but that Raphael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael
the better; that after much copying of Raphael, he is to try what he
can do himself in a Raphaelesque, but yet original manner: that is to
say, he is to try to do something very clever, all out of his own
head, but yet this clever something is to be properly subjected to
Raphaelesque rules, is to have a principal light occupying
one-seventh of its space, and a principal shadow occupying one-third
of the same; that no two people's heads in the picture are to be
turned the same way, and that all the personages represented are to
have ideal beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists
partly in a Greek outline of a nose, partly in proportions
expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin; but
partly also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen
is to bestow upon God's work in general."
This canting and misdirected worship of Raphael by men who had
discarded his spirit, and the realization that before Raphael there
were painters of lofty aim, may well have determined the title under
which the three enthusiasts conspired to band themselves in revolt.
From most points of view it was unfortunate. It meant very little in
actual fact, it was misleading so far as it did mean anything, and it
was responsible for much of the acrimony and abuse which the devoted
trio afterwards brought down upon their most meritorious efforts.
One curious feature of the matter is that they appear to have
possessed between them at this time a comparatively slight
acquaintance with pre-Raphaelite pictures, not more, perhaps, than
the average intelligent visitor to the National Gallery to-day.
Scarcely anywhere in their writings (we must except one article by
Mr. F. G. Stephens) do we find praise, or even mention, of most of
the great pre-Raphaelite painters. Nothing of Mantegna, Botticelli,
Bellini, Orcagna, Fra Angelico, Melozzo, Lippo Lippi, or Piero della
Francesca. At a slightly later date Rossetti visited Bruges, and
fell in love with Memling; but his letters even then reveal some very
crude preferences in art. Whatever was perceived or imagined in the
work of the men they decided to follow must have been largely a
matter of instinct, backed up by a strong sympathy for the naïve and
simple charm of the few early Italian pictures which they had seen.
It is a mistake to suppose that what Rossetti and his companions
admired or sought to imitate in these old masters was their mediaeval
and primitive style of painting. The mediaeval quality proved
infectious, no doubt, and may have influenced all more or less at
first in the direction of angularity and awkward composition. But
there were other causes which also contributed to this. Amongst them
may be mentioned an idea that for every scene an actual unidealized
room or landscape must be painted, and the figures grouped without
reference to arrangement; also that for each figure a definite model
must be taken and followed even to the extent of blemishes. This
counsel of perfection, if it was ever seriously accepted, was
certainly not followed even from the first; but the fact of its
proposal shows the austere lines upon which these youthful painters
proceeded, and helps to explain what many people have found a
stumbling-block, the lack of grace and harmony in some of their
earliest compositions. What they sought to follow in the old Italian
models, however, with all their archaism and immaturity of skill was
the honest striving after nature, sincerity of style, decorative
simplicity, and, by no means least, the pious selection of worthy
subjects. It is this last quality, exhibited alike by all the
members of the Brotherhood, that more plainly than anything marks the
cleavage between their "pre-Raphaelite" work and the commonplace
painting of the day. They set themselves to paint great and
ennobling subjects, often greater than they could achieve, out of
their imagination, when the rest of the world (always excepting men
like Madox Brown, who belonged to them in spirit) were painting what
Ruskin calls "'cattle-pieces,' and 'sea-pieces,' and 'fruit-pieces,'
and 'family-pieces'; the eternal brown cows in ditches, and white
sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in saucers, and foolish faces in
simpers."
In the inauguration of the "Brotherhood" Rossetti took a specially
active part, and the title itself was invented by him. "Rossetti,"
says Mr. Hunt, "with his spirit alike subtle and fiery, was
essentially a proselytiser, sometimes to an almost absurd degree, but
possessed, alike in his poetry and painting, with an appreciation of
beauty of the most intense quality." Mr. Hunt adds that the title of
"Pre-Raphaelite" was adopted partly in a spirit of fun, and, like
other names which have acquired honour, was originally a term of
reproach invented by their enemies. On this account they prudently
decided to keep it secret, and to let no outward symbol of their
union appear beyond the mystic initials P.R.B., which were to be used
on all their pictures and in private intercourse.
The next step was to enroll sympathetic fellow members. Besides the
three founders of the Brotherhood, Rossetti, Millais, and Holman
Hunt, four more or less active adherents were enlisted. Hunt
introduced Mr. F. G. Stephens, who at that time was a painter, but
very soon abandoned art for criticism. Woolner, the sculptor, whose
contributions to the movement were mainly poetical, was introduced by
Millais, or possibly Rossetti; and the latter certainly was
responsible for the remaining two recruits, his brother and James
Collinson. Collinson, a torpid member at the best, and elected
apparently on the strength of one picture which Rossetti thought
"stunning," was mainly useful as a butt to the others, who used to
make fun of his sleepy nature and drag him all reluctant from his bed
to go for midnight walks. Shortly afterwards, being seized with
religious propensities, he vacated his membership and retired to
Stonyhurst.
For the doings of the Brotherhood the curious reader will do well to
consult the "Memoirs" and the "Rossetti Papers" published by Mr. W.
M. Rossetti. Mr. Rossetti, not being an artist, was himself elected
secretary, and with business-like care preserved in a diary all the
daily and weekly occurrences that came under his notice. It is
sufficient to say here that the weekly attendances of the Brethren,
at first a constant source of pleasure and mutual help, had become
very irregular by December, 1850, that an attempt was made to revive
them in January, 1851, but without effect, and that Millais's
election to the Academy in 1853 gave a final quietus to the
organization, which for some time previously had ceased to exist save
in name. The ranks of the Brotherhood had not even remained intact.
In addition to Collinson, it had lost Woolner, who went to Australia
when the emigration craze was at its height. To replace the former a
young painter, Walter Howell Deverell, had been nominated, but his
election was regarded by some as invalid. Deverell, whose picture of
Viola and the Duke in _Twelfth Night_ remains an almost solitary
testimony to his genius, unhappily died young. He possessed many
graces of appearance and manner, and was in all respects a
fascinating personality. Behind the Brotherhood, and hitherto
unmentioned, we seem to catch a glimpse of another very gracious, but
retiring figure, that of Rossetti's sister Christina, who in addition
to her deeply religious and poetic gifts, possessed a quiet fund of
humour to be expended on the events that occurred within her little
circle.
We left Rossetti, in order to describe the formation of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, at the point where he had just settled
down in a joint studio with Holman Hunt to paint his first picture.
In an enthusiasm for community of action, and a spirit of devotion to
Keats, it had been proposed that each of the Brethren should
illustrate, by an etching, a scene from that poet's "Isabella."
Hunt, however, was already engaged upon his picture of _Rienzi_;
Millais had work of a less than Pre-Raphaelite character to finish
off, and Rossetti himself was seized with desire to paint a subject
which much commended itself to his mystical and symbol-loving mind,
_The Girlhood of Mary Virgin_. The only one of the three eventually,
who touched Keats that year (1848) was Millais, who achieved a
triumph with the striking picture, _Lorenzo and Isabella_.
Rossetti's subject, as can well be imagined, gave him endless
trouble, and was a source of violent fits of alternate depression and
energy. Madox Brown's diary, a document full of dry humour and
quaint touches, to say nothing of its pathos, contains many anecdotes
of Rossetti's exasperating changefulness and want of consideration
which show that kindness did not blind the painter to his pupil's
foibles. To Brown's description of Rossetti, "lying, howling, on his
belly in my studio," and, at another time, reduced by struggles with
impossible drapery to an almost maudlin condition of profanity, we
may add Hunt's description of how he had solemnly to take his
companion out for a walk and explain that if the interruptions of
temper and multiplication of difficulties did not cease, neither of
them would have a picture finished to show alongside of Millais's--a
remonstrance which he says was effectual and taken in perfect good
part.
So by the following spring (1849) all three pictures were ready for
exhibition, and were hung, Millais's and Hunt's in the Academy, and
Rossetti's either from choice or necessity in the so-called Free
Exhibition held in a gallery at Hyde Park Corner. Here it was bought
for £80 by the Marchioness of Bath, in whose family an aunt of
Rossetti's was acting as governess. The picture is on many accounts
a favourite one with lovers of Rossetti's work. Considering the
painter's age and want of proper training, it is a masterly
performance. The scene shown is a room in the Virgin's home, with an
open balcony at which her father, St. Joachim, is tending a
symbolically fruitful vine. On the right of the picture, are the
figures of the Virgin and her mother seated at an embroidery frame.
The young girl, a most untypical Madonna, in simple gray dress with
pale green at the wrists, pauses with a needle in her hand, and gazes
with a rapt ascetic look at the room before her, where, as if visible
to her eyes, a child-angel is tending a tall white lily. Beneath the
pot in which the lily grows are six large books bearing the names of
the six cardinal virtues. These, and a dove perching on the trellis,
are amongst the peaceful symbols of the picture, whilst the tragedy
also is foreshadowed in a figure of the cross formed by the young
vine-tendrils and in some strips of palm and "seven-thorned briar"
laid across the floor. Rossetti painted the calm face of his mother
for St. Anna, and his sister Christina for the Virgin, giving her,
however, in contravention of the rule mentioned above, golden instead
of dark brown hair.
Although 1848 is intrinsically the year of the Pre-Raphaelite
movement, much of the work of the next two years comes within the
scope of its influence. As an example may be cited the important
pen-and-ink drawing called _Il Saluto di Beatrice_, representing in
two compartments the meeting of Dante and Beatrice, first in a street
of Florence and secondly in Paradise. The whole composition was
repeated in oil in 1859, and the meeting in Paradise formed the
subject of more than one separate drawing. The cream of Rossetti's
Pre-Raphaelite work, however, during the two years subsequent to
1848, is the _Ecce Ancilla Domini_, a sequel in sentiment to his
picture of the previous year. This is well known to frequenters of
the National Gallery at Millbank, and is described elsewhere. It was
exhibited in 1850 under the same auspices as its predecessor (though
the gallery this year was moved to Portland Place), and was priced at
£50. Its appearance was the signal for a storm of abuse and
raillery, which descended with impartial violence also upon the
pictures of the other "Pre-Raphaelites" exhibited at the Academy, and
pursued them relentlessly until time and success finally established
their position.
[Illustration: ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI.]
It would serve no purpose to go again and at length into the nature
of this attack. Charles Dickens and many other great men lent their
names to it, and the Brethren were compelled to face evil days in
consequence. But in the darkest hour a saviour appeared. Ruskin,
who before the outcry hardly knew of the existence of the school, had
his attention drawn to it by Coventry Patmore, and with
characteristic fearlessness and energy plunged into the fray. In a
series of letters to the "Times" he defended the artists at all
points, from the charge of being ignorant copyists and realists, the
accusation that they could not draw, the alleged conspiracy against
Raphael, and finally from the subtlest insinuation of all, because it
sounded so professional, the charge that they knew not the laws of
perspective. This ardent championship had one curious effect. In
his warmth of defence Ruskin had not only combatted the statement of
faults, but had revelled in laying down an elaborate statement of
principles. Thus it came about that the original ideas out of which
the Brotherhood had grown, ideas of a broad and possibly nebulous
character, became transmuted into hard and fast rules of conduct and
of practice, which the Brotherhood more or less had to accept, partly
perhaps out of gratitude to their benefactor, partly because they
agreed with them in theory, and partly because they may not have seen
how far they led.
On the other hand, if we are not to credit the "Pre-Raphaelites" with
all the fine sentiments attributed to them in Ruskin's inspired
defence, it is absurd to imagine, as some have done, that they failed
to take themselves or their work seriously because Rossetti in his
family letters used to speak flippantly of his unlucky little
picture, which, like a curse, had come home to roost. Men often
enough speak lightly to friends of things which have lain at the
heart; and if Rossetti joked to his brother about "the blessed
eyesore" and "the blessed white daub," it is none the less true that
he had striven to put all his thoughts and all his knowledge into it,
with such success that it reveals to us to-day an intensity of
feeling and reverence which few modern painters have emulated, and to
which Rossetti in his later work did not always attain.
A characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which has not yet
been touched on, and which here calls for digression, was its
remarkable literary strength. Of the seven original members, two--W.
M. Rossetti and Stephens--were writers by preference. The former did
not paint at all. Gabriel Rossetti was, as we have seen, a poet
before he could be called a painter, and a poet of the first order.
Woolner also was a poet, and in this capacity alone belonged to the
movement. Collinson made a third; Deverell a weak fourth. Millais
and Hunt showed no inclination this way; but, besides those
mentioned, the coterie included Christina Rossetti, William Bell
Scott, Coventry Patmore, and Madox Brown, who wrote occasionally in
verse. Even without the need of a propaganda such a body was almost
bound in the nature of things to produce literary thought allied in
sentiment with its artistic ideas and aims. Hence came about the
"Germ," that much-prized periodical, which had its origin in the
fertile brain of Rossetti, and which was ostensibly formed to be the
organ of the P.R.B., and to spread its opinions. The first number
included "My Sister's Sleep" and the prose romance, "Hand and Soul,"
by Rossetti. Subsequent numbers contained "The Blessed Damozel,"
"The Carillon," "Sea Limits" (under its first title of "From the
Cliffs"), and six or seven sonnets. Of the four numbers published
the first two only were called "The Germ," the title in the third and
fourth being altered to "Art and Poetry" at the suggestion of the
Tuppers, who as printers of the magazine had taken over the
responsibility on generous terms.
The "Germ," as its brief career sufficiently denotes, fell almost
stillborn upon an ungrateful world; but amongst a small class of
artists and admirers it undoubtedly served to strengthen Rossetti's
reputation. There was nothing feeble or immature about the poetical
ideas expressed in it, and one may even be surprised that such an
original piece of work as the "Blessed Damozel" did not attract
greater attention. Both it and "Hand and Soul" have frequently been
reprinted. The latter is interesting for the light it throws upon
Rossetti's mediaeval and mystical mind. To some extent it is an
autobiographical record, a memory of mental perturbations and
experiences which beset the young painter, striving to preserve and
foster the spiritual side of his nature at the expense of more than
commonly strong bodily inclinations. From an abstraction like this
story of the mythical young painter Chiaro dell' Erma we may feel we
get one truer glimpse of the real Rossetti than any number of
life-histories, overlaid with trivial incidents which obscure rather
than reveal his personality, can give us.