THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD AND

SYMBOLIC REALISM

 

 

Ø    Introduction:

The Victorian Era, since the coronation of the Queen Victoria, in 1837, until her death, in 1901, was an era of social transformations which obliged the writers to take place in the more immediate questions of their society.

 Although the expressive forms of the Romanticism continued dominating the English literature during almost all the century, the attention of a huge amount of writers was focused on questions as the development of the English democracy, the mass education, the industrial progress and the materialist philosophy that this progress took with it, and the working class situation.

On the other hand, the questioning of specific religious beliefs, as the new scientific advances (particularly the theory of the evolution and the Bible study) encouraged some writers to abandon traditional literary matters and to reflect on faith and truth questions.

The three more excellent poets of the Victorian Era were concerned about social matters:

Alfred Tennyson was soon interested about religious problems like those of faith, the social change and the political power. His style contrasts with the intellectualism of Robert Browning. The third of this Victorian poets, Matthew Arnold, is apart from the others because he is a more keen and equilibrated thinker. His labour as literary critic is very important and his poetry expose a pessimism counteracted by his strong duty sense.

However, Algernon Charles Swinburne was oriented to the aestheticist escapism with very musical verses but pale in the emotion expression.

Dante  Gabriel Rossetti and the also poet and social reformist William Morris were associated in the Pre-Raphaelite movement which tries to apply to the poetry the reform that was already introduced into the painting.

 

Ø    THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD BRIEF HISTORY:

The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood was an association created in London, in 1849 by the English painters, poets and critics: John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti y William Holman Hunt.

The members of this association rejected the academic art that predominated in the XIX century England. They saw the academic paintings as a form of perpetuation of Italian   Manierism and as “the stale, formula-driven art produced by the Royal Academy at this time.” (1)

As they were following Ruskin’s praise of the artists as prophets, they wanted to change the established realism by testing and defeating the conventions of art and emphasizing more realistic representations of objects and combining it with typological symbolism, producing, this way, a magic or symbolic realism.

Another characteristic of this artists was that they encouraged the artists to practice each other’s art to be closely allied and they drew upon artists as Shakespeare, Keats or Tennyson.

This artists recruited some members of the Royal Academy and Rossetti’s brother Thomas Woolner, other members who took part in this circle in growth were Ford Maddox Brown, Arthur Hughes, Charles Collins, and Henry Wallis (painters), William Bell Scott (painter-poet), John Tupper (sculptor-poet), Christina Rossetti (poet) or John Ruskin (artist and social critic).

The first period of the brotherhood was soon faded out because of the differences in opinion of the three founding members. While Milliais and Hunt chose a direction to a more popular view, with Manieristic and Victorian traces, Rossetti’s works were falling into a more mystical and individual direction.

Finally, some artist working with elements between the Pre-Raphaelite style and the aestheticism of Leighton were also called Pre-Raphaelites.

 

Ø    The Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism:

Later on, Rossetti encouraged young artists to follow the Romantic ones and the medieval type of paintings, example of this were Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Simeon Solomon or Evelyn de Morgan. This is the second stage of this movement, the so called Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism in the late 1850’s which in turn produced the Arts and Crafts Movement, the modern functional design and the Aesthetes and Decadents (1890’s) and it can be viewed as an advance of the Modernism. The Pre-Raphaelitism had more influence upon the writers of the Decadence, who at the same time were influenced by Ruskin and visual Pre-Raphaelitism, examples of that are W.B Yeats or Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Rossetti and Burne-Jones “emphasized themes of eroticized medievalism (or medievalized eroticism) and pictorial techniques that produced moody atmosphere”. (2)

The essence of this movement was to embody this attenuated romanticism to make the artist “cultivate his own emotions and imagination and then express them(3) as their only duty, promoting the art as a power to provide self-pleasure rather than morality or sentimental messages. They believed that art did not had any didactic connotation, it was not moral and, for that reason, they did not accept Ruskin manifest of the utilitarian conception of art. The aesthetic conception of art was that of beauty: “Life should copy Art” as their motto, and the main characteristics were:

-         suggestion rather than statement

-         sensuality

-         massive use of symbols

-         synaesthetic effects, the correspondence between words, colors and music.(4)

This stage was most influent upon poetry and literature, we can see the combination of  the realistic style and the elaborate symbolism in few poems, principally the Rossetti’s ones.

The best representatives of this movement were Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne (very influenced by the French Symbolists) and the so mentioned Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

 

Ø    SYMBOLIC REALISM and SOCIAL CRITICISM

There was an evident change of direction what the Pre-Raphaelite art represented in the Victorian English art context and, generally, in the European art.

In the middle of the XIX century the art that was realized in England, the academic one, was basically centred in landscapes and portraits. The Brotherhood’s innovation then came by its thematic, including contemporary scenes and social matters, and its intention of reproduce nature as it is manifested in front of our senses and therefore be able to create a much more realistic art.  

They did not wanted an art opposed to the society and they thought they had the duty of represent the reality as it was at that moment, that is the reason because some of their symbols in their painting or expressions in their poems are difficult to understand nowadays without knowing what was going on in the Victorian England.

The Brotherhood’s art is characterized by its devotion about the natural truth against the human artifice. It is precisely the worry about a moral art and not only beautiful what makes the Brotherhood to represent an inflection point in the art realized in that time. The Brotherhood involved their art with the society showing social themes which were controversial with the Victorian morality that was dominating in the United Kingdom.

For example, Ruskin’s texts were characterized by its didactic character. In those texts there is a strong rejection to the notion of art as something decorative or simply beautiful. The purpose of art was to teach and the purpose of his critic was to interpret the lessons that can be extracted from art. Ruskin conception of art is a totalitarian expression, and any attempt to separate it from other human issues will finish with its view as a non important thing.  On that sense it is understood the position of the artist as an emissary that has the duty with the society of transmit a moral message with his art.

This way, is very important the existence of an idea which has to be related with the truth. The artist is who cares about showing the hidden truth, a typical Romantic idea.

The themes used by the Brotherhood were varying from the bourgeois intimacy, modern life matters, episodes inspired by literature or religious scenes. They manifested some influence of the German Nazarenes because of their search for a mythical and spiritual plane to reach the purity of feelings, they were also inspired sometimes in medieval themes.  A huge part of their works are surrounded of poetry, anticipating avant-garde movements, specially modernism and symbolism.

The modern moral theme was frequently elaborated by the Brotherhood members. On that sense is maybe how the more significant differences between the Pre-Raphaelite art and their contemporaries are perceived. The Pre-Raphaelite artists reacted against the academic art, which was interested in landscapes and portraits, introducing moral and social references derived from the new society created in England after the Industrial Revolution. They seem more conscious about the problems of this new British society which is growing and then they adopt a critical posture throughout their art expressions.  

Although the Pre-Raphaelite artists do not belong to any concrete movement of the XX century, art history make an attempt to introduce them into a more wide group: the Symbolism. This association is based on the great quantity of symbols that characterizes their paintings as well as their unreal atmosphere but credible. They were also related with the symbolists because of their treatment of women as a negative and feared being: the “femme fatale” figure. 

 

Ø    DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AS EXAMPLE OF PRE-RAPHAELITE ART AND SYMBOLIC REALISM

Rossetti, the most famous  and important of the brotherhood painters, started his artist life in 1841 in the “SAS”, preparatory schools to enter in the Royal Academy and in 1845 he was admitted, but he soon abandoned his formation in the Royal Academy.

His work can be divided in two principal stages: The first one of religious and medieval influence and the second one influenced by the death of his wife, Elisabeth Siddal.

The first major paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti show some of the realists characteristics of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. He show the Verge Mary in paintings like “Girlhood of Mary” (1848-9) or “Ecce Ancilla Domini” (1850) as a emaciated and repressed teenager. Many of the women he depicted were based on the idealized Botticelli’s Venus.

Paintings as “Beata Beatriz” (1863) are strong influenced by the death of his wife Elisabeth under the effects of the laudanum but in his last stage Rossetti fell in love with Jane Morris, wife of William Morris, who was depicted in some of his painting although the more important tribute to Jane was “Astarte Syriaca” (1877) the painting and poem showing his love as a goddess with more attributes than Venus.

One of his pictures is an incomplete one called “Found” (1854), his only major modern-life subject, and this painting has its correlative in poem. Now this works are going to be analyzed as example of Pre-Raphaelite art and Symbolic realism.

 

Ø     Found: 

"There is a budding morrow in midnight:" -
So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
In London's smokeless resurrection-light,
Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight                 
Of Love deflowered and sorrow of none avail,
Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
Can day from darkness ever again take flight?
 
Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge                     
In gloaming courtship? And, O God! to-day
He only knows he holds her; - but what part
Can life now take? She cries in her locked heart, -
"Leave me - I do not know you - go away!"
 
(Painting and poem extracted from: http://users.pandora.be/gaston.d.haese/drossetti.html) 

 

As Rossetti was an admirer of Keats the two first verses are dedicated to him. That is not the first time Rosseti shows his admiration to Keats, he did it also in his first poem “The Blessed Damozel” as imitation of Keats works. Roossetti depicts here Keats as a nightingale, a bird with connotations of gentleman because of his position and elegance to sing and a beautiful voice representing the beauty and style of  Keats poems. This two verses are used to introduce the reader into the poem.

Following this, the next verses talk about the progressive and slow coming of the morning over the outside zones of London, firstly with the picture of “as the lamps across the river turn pale / In London’s resurrection-light” Here we can almost see a still dark sky but with little traces of light. Then, in the next verses light is more tangible. This depiction of sunrise in the poem is very realistic, almost a photography of that moment made words.

But, just in the middle of the first verse, when the dawn is coming over the darkness, Rossetti present us the two protagonists of the poem: the drover and the damaged prostitute who, at the same time, is the former love of the drover:

“Of Love deflowered and sorrow of none avail,
Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
Can day from darkness ever again take flight?”
 
The darkness here understood as the pain and shame of the prostitute to be in front of his former love and the sorrow of the drover to see that way the girl.
The second part of the poem reflects their sorrow and their memory of the love they had in the past
“Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge “
Then, he wants to help her but she is so ashamed to accept his help and she tries to reject his hand telling him she do not know him:     
“She cries in her locked heart, -
"Leave me - I do not know you - go away!"”
 
The poem is very pictorial, we can imagine the scene with a lot of detail when we read the poem and this is exactly presented in the painting although it was never
 finished. Rossetti himself described the painting to his friend William Holman Hunt in a letter saying: “The picture represents a London street at dawn, with the
 lamps still lighted along a bridge that forms the distant background. A drover has left his cart standing in the middle of the road (in which, i.e. the cart,
 stands baa-ing a calf tied on its way to market), and has run a little way after a girl who has passed him, wandering in the streets. He had just come up
 with her and she, recognizing him, has sunk under her shame upon her knees, against the wall of a raised churchyard in the foreground, while he stands
 holding her hands as he seized them, half in bewilderment and half guarding her from doing herself a hurt. These are the chief things in the picture
 which is to be called "Found" .... The calf, a white one, will be a beautiful and suggestive part of the thing.”  (5) 
 
The scene is premeditatedly situated outside the city to highlight the rural precedence of the girl. This way it is contextualized the common situation of that time, 
when the young country girls obliged to work in the city to survive did not have any other choice than the prostitution.
Through the union of the hands of both characters we can see the union among them and it is shown a good moral in the girl because the union of the hands in the
 Pre-Raphaelite movement means purity.
The calf appears trapped in a net which symbolizes the woman trapped in her own sexual wickedness, although form a feminist point of view the calf could
 represent the woman trapped in a society that forces her to sell her body. This work has in itself a very strong social critic.
 
This way, the woman is presented as a negative subject because the only woman accepted by society that time was that one subjected to man’s will in home and
 the family. However, the Pre-Raphaelite artists change that connotation introducing a critic to the man’s morality, but their religious formation have influence in the
 dualist vision of women. That new power of woman in society, already existent, but more patent, fascinates at the same time that terrorizes men because women
 start to use their sexuality more consciously.
 
However, prostitution was a problem that worried a lot some sectors of society, concretely those ones which defended the Victorian moral. This is how we can
 speak about two types of women: the honest one which is in home taking care of the family and the weak one who is easily manipulated to the bad path
 (prostitution). From this ideas it is created a big diffusion of works with the woman theme and her relation with man. The Pre-Raphaelites developed all an imagery
 about the “fallen woman” based in the narration with a moral component very important. Is in this works where the most important is the narration than the plastic
 devices.
 
“Founded” was a work painted in three phases. In the first one, started in 1854, only the churchyard wall and the calf in the cart were completed, in the second
 stage, 1859, Rossetti added Fanny Cornforth’s head to the panel and then probably transcribed the three completed elements of the painting to the larger canvas.
 Rossetti met Fanny a year before, who then became his mistress.
In the third stage, 1869, he was more concerned about the figure of the drover, he wanted to put him a head and finally Rossetti took his own head as model and
 after the addition of the head the work was abandoned again and nowadays the background is still incomplete.
 
___________________________________________________________
REFERENCES: 
1- The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Fortunecity. 14 Jan 2008. <http://members.fortunecity.com/jwwaterhouse/prb.html>
 

2- Landow, George P. Pre-Raphaelites: An Introduction. From: The Victorian web. Brown University. Last modified: 7 June 2007. Last Visit: 15 Jan 2008.<http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html>

3- Landow, George P. Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism. From: The Victorian Web. Brown University. Last modified: 13 march 2006. Last visit: 15 Jan 2008. <http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/3.html>

4- "Aestheticism." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 5 Jan 2008, 10:00 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 13 Jan 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aestheticism&oldid=182281018>.

5- Morgan, Hilary. Found by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From: The Victorian Web. Last modified: 9 Feb 2005. Last visit: 15 Jan 2008. <http://victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/paintings/11.html>

 

 

 

 

 

 

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-         D’Haese, Gaston. Dante Rossetti. His poems and paintings. From: Poetryweb. Last modified: 16 Feb 2006. Last visit: 15 Jan 2008 < http://users.pandora.be/gaston.d.haese/drossetti.html>

 

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-         The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Fortunecity. 14 Jan 2008. <http://members.fortunecity.com/jwwaterhouse/prb.html>

 

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