Page 48 - Studio International - May 1972

Pre-Raphaelite problems

Tim Hilton

The Pre-Raphaelite show at the Whitechapel
Gallery (16 May-14 June) is a remnant of the
large (350 works) exhibition at the Petit Palais
this winter, which was entitled La Peinture
Romantique Anglaise et les Préraphaélites. Et
aussi G. F. Watts too for that matter. It was an
odd collection, and ran the risk of seeming
incoherent at some points and inconsequential
at others. Perhaps the man known in France as
le très honorable Sir Christopher Soames et son
ami le vieux écossais Sir Alec Douglas-Home had
a hand in the selection. They seemed to be the
most enthusiastic about it. The whole
business, of course, was a diplomatic package
deal, conceived years ago as a putative
celebration of things going well with the
Common Market. Abominably lit, as is the
French fashion, and only valiantly hung, one
can hardly imagine such a show in England. But
what we have at the Whitechapel is the not-too-
ragged Pre-Raphaelite selection. 2
The difficulties of assembling a
comprehensive Pre-Raphaelite exhibition being
what they are, this may be the last chance for
very many years to see a number of the paintings
together. This at least might stimulate some
discussion, which will perhaps not be
determined by the approaches which bipartite
the Paris catalogue and so much other art
history, belle-lettriste guff from Lord Clark at
the front and arid pedantry from promising
Courtauld post-graduates at the back. The
interest, and that is to say the importance, of the
Pre-Raphaelites is as follows; that they got
from late academic baroque painting to Art
Nouveau and Symbolism in the astonishingly
short span of thirty or forty years, and did so via
Historicism, Realism and what-have-you en
route. While it is distressing that they didn't
make a larger number of better paintings on the
way, the pace and pressure of their talent for
3
innovation should be given its due. John Everett Millais
Study for Christ in the
A modern sensibility could conceivably be
House of His Parents 1849
more illuminating about their problems and Courtesy Tate Gallery
solutions than an academic catalogue. That the
Pre-Raphaelites had more problems than 2 John Everett Millais
The Disentombment of
solutions, and that this separates them from Queen Matilda 1849
what we recognize, historiographically, as being Courtesy Tate Gallery
excellent in the modern tradition, is not in 3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti
doubt. But suppose we chose to think of the Paolo and Francesca
PRB as a proto avant garde, and thus a modern Courtesy Tate Gallery
concern to some extent ? Their avant-garde 4 Dante Gabriel Rossetti
credentials are superficially pretty good; Monna Vanna 1866
forward-looking and with a sense of the novel Courtesy Tate Gallery
importance of what they were doing, embattled
against an establishment, reliant on subsequent
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