William Holman Hunt,
The Hireling Shepherd, 1851-1852.
Oil on canvas, 76.4 x 109.5 cm.
Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester.
William Holman Hunt,
A Converted British Family Sheltering
a Christian Missionary from
the Persecution of the Druids, 1850.
Oil on canvas mounted on panel, 111 x 141 cm.
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology,
University of Oxford, Oxford.
But they did. One must remember that this narrow theory of realism was never anything but a training method used by twenty-year-old painters, which they invented to place a necessary tool in their hands, even if they would later abandon it. It was a framework for study, not a plan for execution; a learning manual, not a Bible for an ideal; a path, not a goal.[23] If, in the moments of exaggeration that are natural in youth, a writer in Germ described things differently, he had misunderstood. It is a great error to go looking through Germ, where neither Millais, nor Hunt, nor Rossetti explained their ideas, to find the secret of their hopes for art. Let us instead look at their works. Rossetti, in keeping only rarely to the rules that he himself had laid down, proved that in his eyes, painstaking realism was not the goal of art. Millais, by abandoning the Pre-Raphaelite theories starting at the age of twenty-eight, showed even more clearly that he considered them to be constraints from which he should one day free himself. Hunt thinks in exactly the same way: “In agreeing to use the utmost elaboration in painting our first pictures,” he said, “we never meant more than to insist that the practice was essential for training the eye and hand of the young artist; we should not have admitted that the relinquishment of this habit of work by a matured painter would make him an apostate Pre-Raphaelite.”[24] Finally, even Ruskin, who has often been accused of exaggeration, pointed out as early as 1843, in the book that the young Hunt read at night, that the realistic study of nature was in his opinion only a training method. Immediately after the call to “reject nothing, select nothing and scorn nothing”, which is always quoted, come these words which are never cited but nonetheless clarify his thoughts: “Then, when their memories are stored, and their imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, and show us what their heads are made of. We will follow them wherever they choose to lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are fit to be so. They have placed themselves above our criticism, and we will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher Authority and Master.”[25] It is therefore neither shocking nor extraordinary that Madox Brown, who was more knowledgeable than his followers, did not constrain himself to their method, or that Rossetti left it behind rather early, after one or two half-works, such as The Annunciation and Found, or that Millais did the same a few years later. There is no Pre-Raphaelite that did not, at some time, ignore the realist method. Identifying Pre-Raphaelitism with the Pre-Raphaelite theory of the early days leads to the conclusion that the movement was abandoned by all of its members.[26]
Ford Madox Brown,
Walton-on-the-Naze, 1859-1860.
Oil on canvas, 84 x 174.2 cm.
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Birmingham.
Ford Madox Brown,
The Hayfield, 1855-1856.
Oil on panel, 24.1 x 33.3 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
Thus, there was something more lasting than the Pre-Raphaelite theory. There was an idea that united these innovators more closely and guided them for longer. But in order to find it, one must leave theory behind and examine their practices, stop consulting the newspapers where the P.R.B. members wrote and go into the museums and the galleries where their paintings are – put simply, one must judge them not by their words, but by their deeds, by their works. Then one sees, in all of them, and to the same degree, a furious effort, a desperate attempt to escape the inexpressive gestures and lifeless colours of the Academy in 1850. Whatever work one stands before, whatever master one chooses, at whatever period one considers his work, excepting the second half of Millais’ life, one finds these two characteristics: original poses and brilliant colour. The heads are perhaps inclined too far in meditation, the arms are sometimes subtly more rounded than necessary to attain a novel pose and express something new with the human body, like the branches of fruit trees that are forced into certain strange poses along a trellis. This desire to delve into the meaning of the slightest gestures, to restore meaning to the most vulgar interplay of muscles, is often carried to the point of mania. But on the other hand, this insistence on original poses often simply means remaining true to nature and changing the false aspect of a classical pose. The colours sometimes shriek from being juxtaposed without transition, from being left raw and unconcealed, and the brushstrokes, clumsily applied while working towards a difficult shade, are upsetting to look at, as the painter’s prejudices kept him from covering up his laborious process of trial and error. But, beneficial or not, these same characteristics are seen everywhere. Whether or not these are faults, the expressive originality of poses and the raw brilliance of colour can be seen in any Pre-Raphaelite painting, while they are completely lacking in the works that preceded them. They can be seen in Madox Brown’s work Christ washing Saint Peter’s Feet in the Tate Gallery, in Saint Peter’s deeply bowed head, in his furrowed brow, in his knees bent up under his chin and his hands joined around his knee, in all these aspects of the human machine straining to express the state of difficult reflection that envelops the apostle. This is the same highly significant pose that Holman Hunt would later give to the Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, who is listening to the boy Jesus in the Temple. The desire for brilliant colour can be found in the virulence of the basin’s copper tones and in Saint Peter’s feet. These characteristics are again found in Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix, only a few steps away from Madox Brown’s Saint Peter. Her head tilts painfully back, her throat opens out like a fan, her eyelids are half lowered and her mouth is half open, her hands rest passively on her knees in an attitude of excessive languor and prostration. She is entirely coloured in green, red, orange, and violet tones, extremely bright, but strong, solid, and even light when compared with the browns of the academic school.[27] We find these characteristics in all of Hunt’s works, and also in those of Millais until well after he is supposed to have abandoned Pre-Raphaelitism.
Ford Madox Brown,
Pretty Baa-Lambs, 1851-1859.
Oil on panel, 60 x 75 cm.
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Birmingham.
John Brett,
Glacier of Rosenlaui, 1856.