ART.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM.
THERE has been during the past two months a curious revival of interest in what is usually called pre-Raphaelitism, a revival which will probably find its culminating point in the sale this week, at Messrs. Christie's sale-rooms, of the last portion of the collection of pictures formed by the late Mr. William Graham. The reasons for this renewed discussion about the "pre-Raphaelite Brethren" and their pictures are very simple, but have been rather happily arranged by circumstance to produce the greatest dramatic effect. First there came the Millais Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, which showed us all, side by side, for the first time, the early and late—the pre-Raphaelite and anti-pre-Raphaelite- works of this master, and naturally thereby brought the subject prominently before the public. Which were the best ; the painter's early or late paintings P That question greatly tickled the somewhat jaded palate of society for a month or so, and before the query had received any authoritative answer, another exhibition — that of Mr. Holman Hunt's pictures—gave a fresh impulse to the subject. " Here was a pre-Raphaelite unchanged,—what shall we think of him and his work ?" "Here is a man who is the development of what Millais was thirty odd years ago ;" and again the tongues wagged excitedly, and the critical heads shook as of old in somewhat garrulous negation. At this most dramatically appro- priate moment, Mr. Hunt himself appears upon the scene, and tells us in the pages of the Contemporary Review how the " Brotherhood " first came to be started, and the pictures which excited so much opposition to be painted. And now, to crown the work, we have the finest collection of pre-Raphaelite works in the world sold at Christie's. All the finest Rossettis (broadly speaking), and most of the finest Burne Jones's compositions, several very important early Millais's, including the "Apple Blossoms" and the "Vale of Rest," Fred Walker's "Moths," some lovely Turner drawings, two or three of Holman Hunt's compositions, and many others, were included in the sale, which was remarkable not only for the extreme merit of the examples, and the rarity with which the works of these special men have been before the public, but because the whole collection differed from that of ordinary picture-buyers in one very remark- able way. It was representative not only of certain artists, or even of a certain school of artists, but of certain principles of Art which, consciously or unconsciously, guided the late Mr. Graham in the choice of his gallery. It is for this reason above all others that we regard it as important. Here was a man who had a very exquisite taste and most refined judgment in the works of the great early Italian painters, and who formed of their works one of the choicest collections ever made ; and he at the same time, with the calmest indifference to the contemporary judgment around him, buys, in the chief in- stances from the artists themselves, all these great English pre-Raphaelite pictures, and hangs them up side by side with the old Italian masters, with his Titians, Bellinis, and Ghir- landajos, in the most absolute assurance that they will stand the test ; that they possess the same qualities, or at least the essential germ of the same qualities, as those works which for centuries have been accepted as excellent. How was it this could be done ? Was it a mere piece of ignorance and foolish- ness, or was the man right after all P It was, we may say, speaking broadly, Mr. Graham on one side, and the Royal Academy, all the Art critics, save Ruskin (rather an important exception that), and the public on the other. Why, the very papers which are now going into ecstasies over this collection, were in those days calling all Heaven and earth to witness of the atrocity of these works, and demanding that they and their painters should be anathema maranatha. This question is a very important one, for we see that it really means this. Is it true that there is between all paintings of the finest quality certain definite relations ? That all, as it were, are to be traced back to the same parent stock P That in all really fine art there is to be found, amid all diversities of subject and technique, some common quality P Why is it that these pictures of the English pre-Raphaelites will hang with those of the greatest of the early
Italian masters ?* Surely no one will say it is because they are copies of the outward form of Italian work ? Besides, such is notoriously not the case. One might, perhaps, find some affinity between Rossetti and, say, Ghirlandajo, Mune Jones and Botticelli; but take the most pre-Raphaelite Millais which was ever painted, e.g., the " Ophelia," and think whether there can be truly said to be any analogy in the motive and meaning of the picture, with ancient work. It is impossible not to recognise that the picture is English. to the core. Even in a Rossetti, what an entire nineteenth-century spirit it is that prevails ! The unrest, regret, and morbid reiteration of grief, and hopeless or mournful love, "the questionings of self and outward things," which constitute the prevailing flavour of his art, have no analogy, as far as we are aware, with the painting of former times. Let us again, therefore, ask why it is that these pictures have this decided affinity with early masters ; in what does their likeness consist ? Why does this young gentleman, in nicely varnished boots, taking leave of his mistress in a green flock drawing-room, which Mr. Millais (as he was then) called the "Black Brunswicker," find a genuine ancestor in Carpaccio's processions and Ghiberti's gates ? Why does a long-necked woman with a fuzz of wild hair, washing her hands in a brass basin, or sitting on the bough of an apple-tree, take us back to the days of Romola Why cannot Mr. Holman Hunt paint a Professor of natural history without reminding us of Van Eyck or Matsys ? In what do these points of resemblance consist, and what do they mean ? What, in truth, is this pre- Raphaelitism of which so much has been said, or, rather, what is the spirit which animates these so-called pre-Raphaelite works,—for the name, after all, is only a more or less inappro- priate and unfortunate label ?
To answer this fully, would require more pages than we- have words at our disposal; another "Modern Painters" would hardly exhaust the subject. But the root of the matter may, we think, brutally be put as follows :—In the same way as the "Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," so Art was made for purposes of life- and truth, and not life and truth for purposes of Art. Man and his emotions, perceptions, and sufferings, is a more im- portant and more vitally interesting subject, than any rules which he can excogitate, or traditions which he may preserve, for the construction of pictures. For, after all, it must in the end come to a choice, more or or less definite, between the rule and the fact Truth cannot always be arranged so as to suit the- stage or the picture. Nay, perhaps it is right to say that truth can never be arranged except in one way. The idea which lies at the root of the post-Raphaelite art is that beauty can be produced by a formula,—such- and-such colours, and forms and methods of combination, and you have your picture. And the idea which the English painters who are called pre-Raphaelites had, and which they considered their Italian ancestors had possessed before them, was—though, perhaps, they never formulated it even to them- selves—that beauty was a far more complex matter, that it depended upon truths of sight and truths of emotion, upon, above all, the utmost carrying-out of the feeling and the subject- matter of a picture, that lay in the painter's power. To dexterously arrange an imperfect, a trivial, or an inconsistent scene, was in their opinion to do what was unworthy of the doing, and what was never done in the earlier times of Italian art. But this in no way was intended by them to imply that, because they refused to consider rules of composition, contrast, chiaroscuro, (tc., as sufficient of themselves to supply the place of detailed truth both of emotion and material objects, therefore they intended to forego all the benefit of such late- discoveries. Like all men who set to work to break down an established tyranny, they unconsciously exaggerated their truth, and flung it, so to speak, in the faces of the public and artists. That they did this to some extent is unquestionable ;. the only wonder to us is that they did it so little. It is positively extraordinary to think that they did not paint, under the influence of this revolt against the clnvention of artifice, pictures which were unbearably ugly and violent. But with the exception of two or three wilfully ugly faces, for the most of which Millais was responsible, and a few awkward gestures, their pictures from the first were beautiful, not only in the un- conventional, but even the conventional manner. With all its elaborate detail, its truth of gesture and expression, the picture
• And, alas 1 the question naturally follows, though we cannot discuss it here in our limited spaoe.—Why is it that the great majority a contemporary pictures cannot be thus hung without betraying their incompetence ?
of "The Huguenot" is remarkable for that very beauty of com- position the absence of which was made one of the fiercest charges against these young painters, and literally dozens of other in- stances might be given as showing how unjust was the supposition that the pre-Raphaelite was to return to the state of knowledge of the earlier artists. What they did not see, and what we think even their great defender failed to realise, was that the work they were trying to do was bound to fail, as far as any general adoption of its principles by other artists was concerned ; not because it was opposed to ordinary practice, not because it had all the weight of tradition against it, but because it was wholly alien in temper to the spirit of the age ; because it demanded from the artists and the public what they no longer had in them to give to Art, or to other matters,—simplicity, intense feeling, and unhurried and unwearied labour. For just think of the time— we will say from 1846-1876—in which these three young artists tried to found this society. Art in England, after a long stagna- tion in popular estimation, was growing every year more fashion- able; artists, and art schools, and galleries were springing up in profusion on every hand ; the whole land wanted to spring at a bound to heights of elegance and art-culture ; and in a certain sense it did so. But it by no means wanted art of this slow, un- sparing, unconventional kind. Something which should be pretty, and mildly interesting, and suitable for young people, and which, above all, should be smart, rapid, and taking,—that was what was required, and what was produced accordingly. Artists began to flourish exceedingly, prices went up day by day, and day by day the competition grew keener, and pictures were painted more rapidly, more showily, and, alas ! in many in- stances more badly. Nor have matters changed to-day. Though at this sale great prices have been realised for those once- despised pre-Raphaelite works, though, for instance, a little "pot-boiler replica" (to use the artist's own words), of " The Light of the World" has been bought for 2750, that indicates no reversal of the popular judgment. They have been bought because there are a certain limited number of people who know that, alike in their merits and their faults, they are, at all events, genuine works of art ; and they have been bought still more on speculation as investments, because their painters' names have become famous. But as far as present art is concerned, there is no trace (and no hint of a trace) that the theory of pre-Raphaelitism, such as we have tried to explain it, has any recognition by the public, or any hold upon the artists. More and more daily, till it becomes a painful and invidious task to write about pictures, do our most popular painters sink further and further below any worthy con- ception of their art. If it were only for their silent protest against such theories of Art and artists, these pre-Raphaelite pictures would have done worthy and much-needed work ; but they have done far more than this. They have struck a blow, which is still resounding, not only against all mone- tary influence in Art, but against all sham sentiment, affectation, and conventionality. "Mrs. Grundy" and the "cheek of the young person" can never again wholly rule our art as they have done in time past, for it has asserted its right to deal not only with "brown trees," romantic waterfalls, sunny meadows, and purple mountains, with illustrations of "The Vicar of Wakefield" and She Stoops to Conquer, but the strongest passions and the most every-day actions and scenes. That the ideal of the picturesque has been to a great extent abandoned, that people are beginning to find that beauty resides rather in what is near than what is remote from their lives, that the way lies broad and open for, and the public mind is willing to consider, any work which goes to the root of its subject-matter, that we have had of late years a few painters (alas ! all dead in early life) like Walker, Pinwell, Mason, and Lawson,—these good things are mainly due to the pre-Raphaelitism which we have tried in this article to characterise.
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