Edward Burne-Jones,
Psyche’s Wedding, 1895.
Oil on canvas, 119.5 x 215.5 cm.
Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.
William Rossetti protested in The Spectator, but what use was a single voice against this tempest? The purchases stopped and the purses of art collectors snapped shut in indignation. For an entire year, the struggle continued. The P.R.B. persevered and participated in the Exhibition of 1851, but the slander against them knew no bounds. Millais’ Mariana was disparaged and Holman Hunt’s Valentine and Sylvia was especially showered with insults. Some went as far as to ask that the Pre-Raphaelite paintings be removed from the walls of the Academy before the end of the Exhibition, now that it was proved beyond a doubt that they offended the audience. They were scorned in the schools, and the students responded to the names of the P.R.B. with jeers. The young painters’ families blushed with shame. While working at his business in the City, the elder Hunt even ran into friends who bet him ten pounds that his son’s painting would be thrown out of the Exhibition within a fortnight. Some people wondered if he might give in under the pressure of the public’s scorn and leave for Australia. Madox Brown, who had not wanted to be an integral part of the Brotherhood but who was interested in it, was filled with desperation at seeing his hopes vanish and his followers ruined. It seemed that Pre-Raphaelitism was lost.
This was when the young man who worked in Denmark Hill rushed up to the movement’s defence. With his warm heart, combative spirit, and diverse and brilliant intelligence, John Ruskin could not see such an unequal struggle without feeling indignation and seeing an opportunity for a blazing battle, in which he would fight single-handedly against everyone, armed with the marvellous weapons that nature and his studies had put into his hands. He did not know the P.R.B., but it did not take long for him to disentangle their disorderly cries and discover something that resembled his own words, and he glimpsed in their flawed essays the talent that they promised for the future. These were perhaps the followers that he had dreamed of. He said: “It is rather extraordinary that two young men, one eighteen years old and the other twenty, have conceived an entirely independent and sincere working method, and that they have enthusiastically persevered, no matter what has been done to discourage them or block their way. It is no less surprising that after three or four years of effort, they have produced works that are in many ways equal to the best of Albrecht Dürer’s. But the unanimous wrath with which the critics of the press have welcomed them, the profound, cruel, stupid laughter of those who are unable to accomplish either of these unusual things, these are the most unusual of all!” So, in his two memorable addresses to The Times, John Ruskin took hold of the official criticism and shook it roughly. The P.R.B. had been reproached for their perspective, and this is one of the very rare questions in art which are subject to demonstration. Ruskin declared that he could find worse errors of perspective in any architectural painting by any fashionable painter that one would care to mention.
Edward Burne-Jones,
The Baleful Head, 1885-1887.
Oil on canvas, 150 x 130 cm.
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.
William Holman Hunt,
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1867.
Oil on canvas, 185 x 113 cm.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.
William Holman Hunt,
Claudio and Isabella, 1850.
Oil on mahogany, 99.7 x 66.8 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
John Everett Millais,
Lorenzo and Isabella, 1849.
Oil on canvas, 103 x 143 cm.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
The Brotherhood’s fastidious attention to detail had been criticised, but Ruskin established it as one of their strong points, showing that merely from a botanical point of view, the water lily and the alisma plantago included in one of their paintings were invaluable, and that it would be impossible to find something worth as much as this part of Hunt’s work in terms of truth, energy and finishing in academic painting. It had been proclaimed that the P.R.B.’s works were lacking in effect, that is to say that there were not large areas of shadow which brought out the highlights. This was, for any artist, an important point in the debate. Ruskin, with his sure eye trained through the direct study of nature, spotted everything creative in the Pre-Raphaelite endeavour and hailed it immediately. Just as his praise for Turner in 1843 had led him, by a circuitous route, to give the exact formula of realism, the necessity of defending the P.R.B. led him on this day, May 26th 1851, to give the exact formula for plein air some thirty years before the Impressionists: “The apparent lack of shadows,” he said, “is perhaps the fault which stands out the most. But if there is indeed a fault, it is not so much in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings than in those they are being compared with. It is the others that are in error, not the Pre-Raphaelites, disregarding the fact that all painting is false, in that it wishes to represent a living ray of light with inert colours. I think that Mr Hunt has a slight tendency to exaggerate reflected light, and if Mr Millais has ever taken a close look at good stained glass, he must have noticed that its colour is dimmer and more sober than the window in his Mariana. But overall it is wrong to condemn their paintings, considering that the only light we are accustomed to seeing represented is the dubious light which falls on an artist’s model in the studio, and not the sun shining in the fields.”[15] Finally, after having cleared these innovators of the accusation of Romanism, which was in those days a dreadful epithet across the Channel, Ruskin declared with his usual imperative confidence that in England, the Pre-Raphaelites had laid “the foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for 300 years.” This furious attack against the Academy confused public opinion. The enemy lines drifted uncertainly, afraid that they had been mistaken. The exchange of blows slowed, and the Liverpool Academy dared to take the lead. It awarded a prize to Hunt’s Valentine and Sylvia and the press coverage generated by the event convinced a Belfast collector to buy the painting without even having seen it. The letter that announced this fact, like the dove seen flying toward the arch in Millais’ painting, indicated that a great crisis was past and that new light would soon shine on a calmed world... Pre-Raphaelitism had been saved.