in the afternoon, alluded, but always in a pleasant way, to the
difference of tone concerning Millais in my preliminary observations
of last week, and the reviews of previous years. I of course stuck
up; and whether this is to be the beginning of the end, or whether
its end was simultaneous with its beginning, remains to be seen.
However, the opening remarks in my notice for this week will probably
tend to bring the point to an issue. I claim the certain reversion of
supremacy in art for the newcomers, and Brown is reviewed at a triple
allowance of space....
Thursday 8th to Saturday 10th.--... On Saturday Hunt, Gabriel, and I,
met at Hannay’s; when Hunt informed us (having it from Patmore), that
Ruskin had wished to buy Millais’s picture of _The Return of the Dove
to the Ark_, which is already sold; and that Patmore has suggested to
him to write something about the P.R.B. The result is not known yet;
but, were Ruskin to do so, this is the very thing we want--evident
as it is from the affair of Millais’s picture (were it from nothing
else) that he must be an admirer of the P.R.B. Indeed so desirable
would something of the kind be that it had been proposed among
ourselves to write to Ruskin requesting him to express his opinion in
some public manner....
Sunday 11th.--The picture Hunt is purposing to do for next year
is a life-sized one on the passage from one of Moses’ hymns or
exhortations where it is said that God found for Jacob honey in the
clefts of the rock.[261]
Monday 12th.--Woolner called, having returned to his study to-day
after cold and fever. His model for the Wordsworth monument
competition was sent in a few days ago according to the regulations;
among the other models is one, also with symbolical figures, by
Behnes.[262] He explains to me that it was Ruskin’s _father_ who
wanted to buy Millais’s picture, but this makes little difference
in the state of the case. Ruskin himself has, in conformity with
Patmore’s suggestion, written a letter to _The Times_, on the P.R.B.,
and, if it do not appear there, will send it to _The Chronicle_. This
ought to be worth something to us....
Tuesday 13th to Thursday 15th.--On Tuesday Ruskin’s letter appeared
in _The Times_. He says that he believes Millais and Hunt to be at
a turning-point of their career, “from which they may either sink
into nothingness or rise to very real greatness.” The explanation he
gives of the name “Præraphaelite” is very sensible; “They intend to
return to early days in this one point only--that, as far as in them
lies, they will draw either what they see or what they suppose might
have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent,
irrespective of any conventional rules of picture-making; and they
have chosen their unfortunate though not inaccurate name because all
artists did this before Raphael’s time, and after Raphael’s time did
_not_ this, but sought to paint fair pictures rather than represent
stern facts; of which the consequence has been that, from Raphael’s
time to this day, historical art has been in acknowledged decadence.”
Ruskin then deals with the nonsense about “imitation of false
perspective”; asserting that the only error in the five pictures
(including Collins’s) is that the top of the green curtain in the
distant window (of the _Mariana_) has too low a vanishing point; and
that he will undertake to prove a dozen worse errors in any twelve of
the most popular pictures of the day containing architecture;--and,
as to the accusation of “drapery snapped instead of folded,” that,
“putting aside the small Mulready, and the works of Thorburn and
Sir W. Ross, and perhaps some others of those in the miniature-room
which he has not examined, there is not a single study of drapery in
the whole Academy, be it in large works or small, which, for perfect
truth, power, and finish, could be compared for an instant with the
black sleeve of the Julia, or with the velvet on the breast and the
chain-mail of the Valentine; or with the white draperies on the table
in _Mariana_, and of the right-hand figure in _The Dove returning
to the Ark_; and further that, as studies both of drapery and every
minor detail, there has been nothing in art so earnest or so complete
as these pictures since the days of Albert Durer.” He concludes with
objecting to the Sylvia and the figure in the _Dove_ picture, on the
score of deficient beauty, and hopes “to be permitted to enter into
more special criticism in a future letter.” Altogether the letter is
very satisfactory; anything but unqualified praise, which is well in
one sense, as doing away with the accusation of partisanship. Ruskin
himself expressly disclaims personal acquaintance. One point which
I think it might be advantageous to notice in a letter from some of
ourselves to _The Times_ is that Ruskin says something of P.R.B.
“Romanist and tractarian tendencies,” in reference to the _Mariana_
and to Collins’s picture. Such tendencies, as utterly non-existent
in fact, it might not be amiss to repudiate; the doing which would,
besides, afford an opportunity for entering into any other details or
rectifications seeming advisable. But perhaps it will be preferable
to wait for Ruskin’s sequel.... On Wednesday I had a letter from
Gabriel, enclosing a notice of Hunt,[263] and bidding me to Millais’s
to-morrow. Brown, Hunt, and Gabriel, were there; and we are all
agreed that Ruskin’s letter will do good. Patmore, at whose instance
it was written, thinks we should send Ruskin our thanks; but this
seems of doubtful propriety, as it might be interpreted into making
interest with a view to his second letter. When that is out,
something of the kind suggested would certainly appear right. Millais
has had another request (from a Mr. Boddington) for his _Dove in the
Ark_, and a particular invitation from the Birmingham Exhibition for
him to send it thither. Mr. Combe also (who bought Hunt’s picture
of last year) has written to ask the price of the _Valentine and
Proteus_, and of Collins’s. A laudatory review of Hunt and Millais
appears in _The Guardian_, devoting to them three or four times as
much space as to any other artist.... As to abuse, it seems to be in
the air, so much does the infection spread among critics in word and
print.... A nuisance which has revived within these three days is
the buried _Germ_; George Tupper having called on me to say that he
is winding up its money-matters, and finds himself a clear loser by
some £30. Outstanding accounts are of course in requisition; and I
find that the copies of Nos. 3 and 4 with which he credits me have so
almost entirely disappeared that, what with making good their value
(the money-value of _The Germ_!) and paying for the etching-plates
which I could scarcely leave Tupper to defray, I have still a pretty
sum to fork out; whilst most of the other quondam proprietors have to
look up their share of the expenses of Nos. 1 and 2.
Friday 16th to Friday 23rd.--A hit at the P.R.B. (conscientiously
speaking, very stupid) appears in _Punch_ of Wednesday, introducing
caricatures of the _Mariana_ and of Collins’s picture. It is
admitted, however, with a reference to Ruskin, that the P.R.B.
pictures are _true_; and the article is directed in part against
supposed Romanizing tendencies. On the 16th Woolner, Gabriel, and
myself, were at Tupper’s; this being the first day since his illness
that Woolner has returned to work, doing something on the minor
Wordsworth monument[264] for which he was commissioned. He is to
be introduced next week at Carlyle’s to Ruskin; who, as Patmore
informs him, had written his second letter to _The Times_, but now
thinks of withholding it on the consideration that it casts so
strong a slur on all non-P.R.B. living painters.... Carlyle the
other night, in talking with Woolner was speaking of “Alfred” (as he
calls Tennyson) and Browning in reference to their embodying their
thoughts in verse, when there is so great need of doing things in the
directest way possible: “Alfred” he said, “knows how to jingle, but
Browning does not.” He spoke however of Browning’s intellect in the
highest terms. He then referred to the P.R.B.; “These Præraphaelites
they talk of are said to copy the thing as it is, or invent it as
they believe it must have been: now there’s some sense and hearty
sincerity in this. It’s the only way of doing anything fit to be
seen.” Woolner’s medallion pleased him very greatly. We saw Tupper’s
bas-relief which the Academy rejected. It is illustrative of _The
Merchant’s Second Tale_, by (or ascribed to) Chaucer, and represents
the chess-playing between the merchant and the old man he meets in
the strange city. It is at the extremest edge of P.R.Bism, most
conscientiously copied from nature, and with good character. The
P.R.B. principle of uncompromising truth to what is before you is
carried out to the full, but with some want of consideration of
the requirements peculiar to the particular form of art adopted.
According to all R.A. ideas, it is a perfect sculpturesque heresy,
whose rejection--especially seeing that it is the _introductory_
sample of the P.R.B. system in sculpture--cannot be much wondered at,
though certainly most unjustifiable....
Saturday 24th.--... Gabriel, who has given notice to quit his present
studio in Red Lion Square, has received from Brown the offer of a
share in his; and purposes to accept it. He is inclined to paint
this year, instead of _The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice on Earth
and in Paradise_ (which he is re-designing), some other Dantesque
subject--probably from the _Vita Nuova_.
* * * * *
1853, 23rd January.--I at last resume the P.R.B. Journal, not too
sanguine of continuing it for long.
Our position is greatly altered. We have emerged from reckless
abuse to a position of general and high recognition, just so
much qualified by adverse criticism as suffices to keep our once
would-be annihilators in countenance. I limit myself to the briefest
recapitulation of last year’s public doings and our present state.
Hunt, Millais, Stephens, and Woolner, exhibited at the R.A.--Hunt
sent _The Hireling Shepherd_; Millais, _Ophelia_, and _A Huguenot
on the Eve of St. Bartholomew_; Stephens, a small portrait of his
Mother; Woolner, his cast for the competition monument to Wordsworth,
and medallion heads of Carlyle, Wordsworth, and Miss Orme.[265]
Gabriel exhibited three designs (water-colour) in the Exhibition of
Sketches opened in December--_Giotto painting Dante’s Portrait_,
_Beatrice denying Dante her Salutation_, and a _Lady in Venetian
Costume_.[266]
At present Hunt is preparing for next exhibition. He purposes
exhibiting his old picture from _Measure for Measure_, _Christ at
the Door_, a picture of Sheep commissioned by Maude, a portrait,
and probably two others of which I shall be able to speak more
certainly hereafter. Soon after sending in, he intends to go to
Syria. Millais is painting two subjects of invention--one of the
Stuart period,[267] the other named _The Ransom_. Gabriel has in
hand a picture in two compartments,[268] symbolizing, in life-sized
half-figures, Dante’s resolve to write the _Divina Commedia_ in
memory of Beatrice. Woolner is absent from England since July last,
having gone to the diggings in Australia, where he hopes to make
money sufficient to enable him to return in a few years, and pursue
sculpture with endurable prospects. Stephens is doing a portrait of
his Father. I am still on _The Spectator_.
Monday 17th to Saturday 22nd.--Better than art-news signalizes this
week--that, namely, of the arrival of Woolner’s vessel, the Windsor,
at Melbourne on the 22nd October last. It is the first we have heard
about him since he reached Plymouth on his passage out. The Howitts,
whom he had gone to join, with Bernhard Smith and Bateman, had
started into the interior of the country only two days before. Thus
much is gathered from the shipping news in the _Times_ and Howitt’s
letters to his family: from Woolner himself we have yet to wait for
news. Another item of information is rather sad. Poor Collinson,
our once P.R.B., is said to be on the eve of relinquishing art and
entering a Jesuit college[269] as a “working brother,” I am told,
whatever that may mean.... Gabriel has been giving the finishing
touches to some alterations he has made in his old _Annunciation_
picture, consequent on an offer from McCracken of Belfast to buy
it, on Hunt’s recommendation, for the original price, £52. 10s. I
have been sitting to him to assist his repainting of the Angel’s
head. Friday was to have been a P.R.B. meeting at Stephens’s, but
no one attended except myself. Hunt had to take advantage of the
moonlight night for his picture of _Christ at the Door_.... The only
change in domicile that has taken place since I dropped this journal
is that Gabriel and I now have Chambers overlooking the river at
Blackfriars Bridge, 14 Chatham Place.... I should not have forgotten
to premise that, though both Præraphaelism and Brotherhood are as
real as ever, and purpose to continue so, the P.R.B. is not and
cannot be so much a matter of social intercourse as it used to be.
The P.R.B. meeting is no longer a sacred institution--indeed is, as
such, well-nigh disused; which may explain the quasi-non-attendance
at Stephens’s. And the solemn code of rules which I find attached
to these sheets reads now as almost comic.[270] In fact it has been
a proof of what Carlyle says in one of his _Latter-day Pamphlets_,
that the formulation of a purpose into speech is destructive to that
purpose--for not one of the new rules has been acted on, and the
falling off of that aspect of P.R.Bism dates from just about the time
when those regulations were passed in conclave.
Sunday 23rd to Saturday 29th.--Gabriel finished and sent off the
_Annunciation_ picture. It has now lost its familiar name of “The
Ancilla,” the mottoes having been altered from Latin to English, to
guard against the imputation of “popery.” He is now possessed with
the idea of bringing out his translation of the _Vita Nuova_,[271]
revised and illustrated. He had intended photographed designs a short
time ago, but now again purposes etchings.
FOOTNOTES:
[148] This pen-and-ink design was quite different from the
water-colour which Dante Rossetti afterwards executed of the same
subject. The design was sold in 1898 among other works which had
remained in the hands of Sir John Millais up to his death.
[149] This design (we all considered it a very fine one, and with
good reason) represented the spoliation of the grave of Queen
Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror. It was included in the
Millais Exhibition of 1886.
[150] About this poem I remember now next to nothing. I suppose it
was never finished.
[151] No doubt the poem named _Dante at Verona_.
[152] From a song in Browning’s _Pippa Passes_.
[153] Cottingham was an architect, who first came into our circle by
offering to buy Rossetti’s earliest picture, _The Girlhood of Mary
Virgin_. He never did buy it, and his transactions with the P.R.B.
were considered anything but satisfactory.
[154] It will be understood that the year 1849, to which the
beginning of this Journal belongs, was the first year when pictures
pertaining to the “Præraphaelite” movement were exhibited. Hunt’s
picture was _Rienzi Vowing Revenge over his Brother’s Corpse_;
Millais’s was the _Lorenzo and Isabella_ (from Keats), now a leading
ornament of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Though that
distinguished authority, _The Court Journal_, was thus contemptuous,
the general tone of press-opinion regarding the Præraphaelite
pictures of 1849 was moderate and sometimes laudatory; the systematic
abuse developed in 1850.
[155] The first beginning of _My Beautiful Lady_.
[156] Edward L. Bateman, the Decorative Artist, who, not long
afterwards, emigrated to Australia. Bernhard Smith contemplated at
this time emigrating to America. He relinquished that project, but
went to Australia towards the same date as Mr. Bateman.
[157] Two poems in Mr. Patmore’s first volume, published in 1844.
Dante Rossetti read the volume soon after publication, delighted in
it much, and must have introduced it to other P.R.B.’s.
[158] This was not done.
[159] Lowes Dickinson.
[160] This would be the room appropriated to my brother and myself at
the top of our family residence, 50 Charlotte Street, Portland Place.
It was certainly an anti-luxurious apartment, but we had of course
the run of the rest of the house.
[161] These are two paintings by Hunt; they may have been finished,
or may not.
[162] Augustus Leopold Egg, the R.A. painter.
[163] William North, author of _Anti-Coningsby_, and of some other
novels etc.
[164] This project, as will be seen, resulted in the publication of
_The Germ_.
[165] Mr. Orchard was a young painter, of very feeble physique, whose
brief and harrassed term of life barely allowed him to do more than
show that there was something in him much beyond the commonplace. I
have a faint recollection of one exhibited picture which I believe to
have been his--_Thomas à Becket escaping from England_.
[166] _The Girlhood of Mary Virgin._ It had been exhibited in this
same year, 1849.
[167] Of this song no trace now remains. It had not, I think, any
definite relation to his English poem, written ere now, _My Sister’s
Sleep_.
[168] Must be the same as _On the Refusal of Aid between Nations_.
[169] My brother did not ever paint these subjects, as forming “side
pieces” in a larger composition. He did however, at a later date,
paint an important water-colour named _The House of John_ (the second
proposed subject); and I believe that, soon after our present date in
1849, he executed the first subject also, though I do not recollect
it.
[170] Something has been torn away here. The passage relates to
Charles Wells, and his drama of _Joseph and his Brethren_. The
narrator was William Smith Williams, who preceded myself up to
November 1850 as art critic to _The Spectator_, and who, as literary
adviser of Messrs. Smith and Elder, secured the publication of _Jane
Eyre_.
[171] The book entitled _Stories after Nature_. The proposal of
republication with etchings &c. did not take effect.
[172] Afterwards named _Democracy Downtrodden_.
[173] I was now at Cowes, along with James Collinson; soon afterwards
at Ventnor by myself. The blank-verse poem which I composed is the
one which, in 1868, got published under the title of _Mrs. Holmes
Grey_.
[174] Not executed.
[175] A sculptor then of some mark and promise.
[176] The poet, Coventry Patmore. This is the first mention of him
(as a matter of personal acquaintance) in my journal. I am not
now quite sure how Woolner came to know of him, but think it may
have been through Mr. Vom Bach, a Russian gentleman who had some
employment in the British Museum, to which Mr. Patmore also belonged.
[177] This was not done.
[178] The composition of _Kate the Queen_ included various figures of
women occupied in tapestry or embroidery work.
[179] I was then writing, or intending to write, for _The Germ_, a
review of Clough’s poem named _The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich_.
[180] In Oxford.
[181] He did so--the picture currently termed _The Carpenter’s Shop_.
[182] A Phrenologist, then well known.
[183] There is a gap before these words, I think it was Hunt and my
brother who, with Stephens, looked over the house--being the same
house which, after an interval of thirteen years, my brother actually
tenanted.
[184] One sonnet thus entitled has been already named. It had
apparently been intended to use the same title as applicable to a
series.
[185] Another poem begun by Woolner. It remained, I think, a mere
fragment.
[186] John Harris was a painter of some promise, who about this
time took a great interest in Egyptian antiquities. His face is
very exactly reproduced in Millais’s picture of _Lorenzo and
Isabella_--the brother who is kicking out at a dog. He died towards
1853.
[187] The blank-verse poem previously mentioned. In 1849 it went
under the name of _A Plain Story of Life_.
[188] Major Calder Campbell, a retired officer of the Indian army
and light _littérateur_, was a very cordial friend of my brother and
myself in youth.
[189] In the picture of _Ferdinand lured by Ariel_.
[190] Hereabouts comes a tatter of the MS.
[191] This is somewhat noticeable. Patmore, who became a fervent
Roman Catholic towards 1863, was in 1849 a strict and indeed
prejudiced Protestant.
[192] The picture referred to is, I suppose, the _Lorenzo and
Isabella_.
[193] Is this performance at all remembered now? The engraving from
it (a very poor engraving from a very poor picture) was endlessly
popular in its day.
[194] The Virgin’s Death was never painted.
[195] I think this was the grotesque poem named _An Incident in the
Siege of Troy_, published in _The Germ_.
[196] This was an early work by Woolner; I should say a good one, and
easy to “understand.”
[197] Mr. Thomas had presented me on 4 December with a list of no
less than 65 alternative titles. The MS. list was reproduced in 1897
in the book, _Letters of Dante G. Rossetti to William Allingham_.
[198] North has been already mentioned. Clayton is John R. Clayton,
then a young painter, and now for many years senior partner in the
Glass-painting firm Clayton and Bell. Bliss was a son of a Q.C. and
had some literary tendency: he emigrated not long after this date.
[199] I wrote the sonnet--don’t now recollect it. The picture was
exhibited, not at the British Institution, but at the Royal Academy.
[200] This gentleman was correspondent in London to some American
journal or journals.
[201] A poem by Collinson, published in _The Germ_, No. 2.
[202] The etching which Collinson executed for his poem _The Child
Jesus_.
[203] It did not come in.
[204] He was in fact the son of this gentleman.
[205] As I have said elsewhere, this was a name bestowed by Madox
Brown upon Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, then Editor of the _Art Journal_.
Brown intended thus to mark the extreme decorum of appearance
maintained by Mr. Hall, whose face, it may be added, was a very fine
one.
[206] John Abraham Heraud, a Poet and writer then of some note,
author of _The Descent into Hell_.
[207] _i.e._ My criticism of Arthur H. Clough’s poem _The Bothie of
Toper-na-fuosich_.
[208] I don’t now remember about these poems. Some verses of mine had
at an earlier date, 1848, been published in _The Athenæum_.
[209] George Patten A.R.A. was a painter of some elevation of aim,
but not a successful executant.
[210] A tolerably clear indication of the fact that money was not
plentiful among the members of the P.R.B.
[211] F. S. means Frank Stone, a painter to whose style of work the
P.R.B. were much opposed. He was said, and I believe with truth, to
be, at or soon after that time, the Art-Critic of _The Athenæum_; a
paper which shortly became very hostile to the P.R.B., but which had
not as yet, I think, said anything in their disfavour--rather the
contrary.
[212] The brother here in question is Alexander Tupper--not John
Lucas Tupper, who did not belong to the printing firm.
[213] _Jane’s Portrait_ (or _Mary’s Portrait_, as it was sometimes
called) is the poem which, under the title of _The Portrait_, was
published in Dante Rossetti’s volume of 1870. It was to a great
extent re-written before publication.
[214] I have no recollection of the poem _Hubert_.
[215] It appeared in _The Germ_ under the title _Repining_.
[216] This second paper did not come out, and I know nothing further
of it. Pity that the opportunity of printing it did not occur.
Another thing which did not come out (indeed it was not written) was
the projected review, as mentioned above, of W. B. Scott’s _Life of
David Scott_.
[217] These designs, a series, had been done some years before--very
forcible compositions. They were purchased towards 1890 by Sir Henry
Irving.
[218] No trace of this is extant; I perhaps never saw it.
[219] Strange as it may seem to some readers, Dante Rossetti had a
strong liking for hair of so vivid and positive a tint that most
people would call it red.
[220] A sketching club, to which Hunt, Millais, Dante Rossetti, and
others (besides Collinson himself), had belonged.