Arts
No flights of fancy
John McEwen
The Pre-Raphaelites (Tate Gallery till 28 May) he main cniticiau oldie Pre-Raptadraes
is that they were illtstratorss„ painters dependent on a text_ Millais went incognito iso a famous phrenologist, Donorau, to have his bumps read, and received the unpleasant news that he was devoid of im- agination. Lack of imagination is also the criticism levelled at their slavish obligation to the facts — thuds riskiaag his fife by the Dead Sea to pant the true biblical terrain; Millais making fireman Baker charge up and down the stairs carrying three large children; and all those trenches dug to get a tabbies eye view of English sward_ As Series' 'pointed out: 1-lopirth"s "Madan Mifidrogla
Conversation" was not done hum 11 men simultaneoudy drunk in the gado from 10 a.m. to 4 p_m_ with an inter- val fin landreca"
Tinsels no denying a Mr Paster side to Pre-Raphaelite pretension and at the Tate the droll pals, but most damaging of all is to see how much this dlogrative painfiag has benefited from AuctrahUn — which, of course, is hoar we know I. Who a COMM =Roper Rossetti is without the benefit Of redacting how slack and bay Millais gels with his 'clout mll shoricum what an old needlewo man Brat becomes under the bat- ty influence of Ruskin; Ruskin-s __runt to ye to Nature *rejecting nothia* sawing nothing and scorning nothine being the most identifiable mark of Pre-Raphaefition as a style, taken to its extreme by Brett in his "Val &Aosta% Milbis tarot= 'There is a wretched wart like a photograph of some place, in Switzerland evidently pained under [Ruskin's]] tatidance, for he seems to have lauded it up sky-high.'
This photographic tefirence is signifi- cant., because in many ways Pre- Raphaefaism is an attempt to outdo photography, consciously or no and I borrows a lot from photography, very coo- scimedy inked. Ford Madam Bonin linage it his diary. L2 Noraiber 1W: 'went to see That Anthony about a daguerreotype: think of having souse struck off for the Agates all a picture, to save time? Millais used photographers. indoing. his son Geoffrey, std so ad Rossetti. 1111/10 would note on his walks 'the best[ spots for pail- ting, and order photographs of then to be notle".. In 1/09 John Bret read a paper to the Camera Club entitled "The Relation of Photography to the Pictorial Are it which he declared that 'photography is an in- toluable sewer and an invaluable teacher to the Millie- This .perhaps explains the %oedemas of the Famines. pattiadarb, Alma-Taderna in anticipating the coww-iii-- the only thing its tireless pictures fa"it° is move: a realism, when taken 10„, and symbolic extranes„ also accaralt” be seen as the mecursor of Surreahsal -- Salvador Dab was a youthful acirrarcr,r; road midis En=art of Stank, SPenc' '— e Bat if there is a lot of dead pho wBri,
wood to be found in Pre- -
that is ewe i more redimrlant co- 'Theirs was the age of Refer is tbrof lr dies, the age of emigration, die ryef dust y (and what industrials 1Pawr.flijo- weret the age of Revelation (the hood was founded in 111411), Chartism and so on_ AS of dune tui.‘rao, da conscious beating on their Anise them provide the facts to fatten to7itbt and add to the biographical iutorsit, Palmas, but none of them can Pliomost tiny, Ddao-oil did not admilt me Or Hostel's 'Our English Coasts' 35 a ', 01' the reported defenceless state of the 'Toe in 1852. He took I at face %Taw-, aggist nue of sheep gran* oft a 1054r._„rg'fa
and delighted in
headbad, its.":1:17. truth towards what is red and ''''Tpolt in detail'_ This feeling far Utah —a." ore dthe physical n u re of *lags 700 Pre-Raphaelite painting, not tit. WO loser to that today itis tant12"' ttwe and muds Mugs-Med can runr catch the eye and hold the aleum7its vivid fink landscapes and dilitri00111* primes to do with lasalonlo 'worn dead_ Ana lysis. in these instanco cclebiation. 0°' On this basis Hobson Huta scu'ilis an chaikasailmcledk bigh„varilya facto; insize,forceqfeciaccooralg anitilitsse. Ford Madan Bralilld- lie pfahment„ though narrower.isM do "Jesus Washing Peter's F0111...Prii most convincing of the Ito On; Millais is a Oaths. dresapingw' In° - ways he is like Leaducar: _ Ob°1111 sportsman's hue and d et °pastry dikes — adfilais's,s 10 dor "Ophefia" is study as boll 11/7700 fly &hie as lost love — seed both went to " ,le both ended tar as Presides 001 Academy.. Jug how much )46'Sbors, seed is &spotted by 5rckert uott7stor the fasbiosabk True got &e- lm* after Ise was 30 is bat __di sod endorsed_ By contrast. 11:_fdol Ore 'haul stYfistic aaocinli°°
follower Berne-Jana have "Tiin RaPhaehrism_ Rossetti's little watercolours
more like pastel in the dryness of their technique — triumph over his tutti-frutti cils; and Burne-Jones, instead of being shown to have been an imaginative climax to the rest, is included as a chronological after-thought_ This chronological adherence makes a hotch-potch of the Presentation, which would surely have benefited from classification by subject and a fairer division of the selection in favour of 'he lesser lights. Did InchboId only paint one picture? Is Simeon Solomon only wor- th 1e: of two? Otherwise the message is clear: Pre-Raphaelitisre does betoken a shared style and interest (though only in painting the inclusion of sculpture at the Tate seems superfluous); and it passes this 130 Year survival test with pictures to spare.
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