Page 50 - Studio International - May 1972

he could not be sure, his surety being solidly Apart from the much-revised Lady of Shalott, art has over Symbolism is that things get spelt
social as much as artistic. Millais had already which had an early beginning, I think it might out. You say what you mean, and this is visibly
realized, in giving up The Deluge and having have been a good idea if Hunt had followed what you wish others to realize as what you
limited The Disentombment of Queen Matilda to Millais's example and gone conciliatory and mean. Realism is the art of what is the case, but
a drawing, that Pre-Raphaelite painting could commercial, if only because this might have it also challenges on the grounds that things
endanger itself by starting with too ambitious relaxed his steely grasp on his own self- might be improved upon. Symbolism is the art
and rigid a design. Usually this happened when righteousness, which is the main cause of his of implication rather than definition, and here
there were too many people in the picture doing unpleasantness and obtuse view of the world. As that which we do not know is more important
things. Millais rejected groups and crowds. it is, confronted with his later work, one can only than what can be comprehended by an
Many figures in the one picture had been have the feeling that while a gritty seriousness intelligent viewing of a picture's premisses.
especially the province of oldies of the previous about the social function of art is always involved, Realist art demands reasoned dissent in many
generation, like Maclise, Wilkie, Haydon; so painting itself is denied, again and again. Hunt ways, and there were few people around at
they were unpalatable. Groups of figures also would have been better off using his time in the time, apart from Ruskin, who could match
tended to be unmanageable outside academic activities more congenial to his character, this problem. This is why the properly informed
precedents, as had been the case in Lorenzo and grinding up granite or prosecuting whores or discussion of art dipped so sharply in the later
Isabella. To reduce them in number to five or worrying sheep or something. His art is the hard- nineteenth century; there was less work around
six, as in Christ in the House of his Parents, was hearted realisation of the uncongenial ; and while which commanded discussion rather than
to disperse them in a way too reminiscent of a there would be no reason to dismiss him on eliciting murky responses. (Modern art didn't
weak eighteenth-century conversation piece. It account of that alone, the sinister nature of his finally get over this until Picasso changed a
looked safer to have a concentration on one subject matter, snapping the manacles on guilt, basically symbolist manner for Cubism.) The
figure (Mariana or Ophelia, distressedly alone), makes one demand a charity he extended neither history of still-life painting is relevant here. The
or more often on two, generally people in to others, nor to himself, nor to his medium. realist Pre-Raphaelites, especially Madox
some sort of reciprocal trouble. This had the In view of the importance accorded by all Brown, treated the whole of the natural world
useful result of intensifying the emotional effect commentators to the 'private lives' of Pre- (apart from its atmosphere), its turnips,
while also making the pictures easier to do. The Raphaelite artists, some notes on venery are in corduroy, rope, brick, wood, stone, grass, as if
skids were down. order. Millais, Rossetti, Hunt and others were it could all be accommodated in the very way
Millais's Realism could have taken a number visibly affected in their art by their marital that one painted it. Symbolism always denies
of specific courses. In the long run, any of them difficulties. A clear advantage of the 197os over such all-embracing largesse, and the symbolist
might have been better for him. But he the 187os is that adultery has more chance of Pre-Raphaelites were the ones who first did
floundered among alternatives. There was the making you happy. It might therefore be argued so, giving up real things, and narrowing the
critic-directed and thus Turner-conscious that all the tangles and caresses occasioned such focus of art to something which was vaguer;
portrait of Ruskin. This is a fine painting, but an amount of remorse and pain that the only this produced a spurious intensity vis-à-vis the
not one that could be the beginning of a ointment in the painters' flies was a very abstract undefinable. When still-life got off the ground
development; nor does it seem an advance on notion of 'love', which first appears in Rossetti again, its interest was in the painting rather than
what had been done before. It is a neat and then becomes a constant feature of late, in the objects painted.
monument to a personal coincidence. There is non-realist Pre-Raphaelitism. This has too Because of a relatively minor interest in
The Rescue, too dependent on extra-pictorial much formed our view of the Pre-Raphaelite atmospherics, which I think was partially due to
help, and the Blind Girl, too near to sentimental sensibility, the Pre-Raphaelite 'ideal', etc., people giving up water-colour, Pre-Raphaelite
genre. Millais's adieu to the depiction of real whose implications we accept too easily, in so landscape tended in the fifties to have still-
contemporary life was in the drawing entitled far as we consider them at all. This is perhaps lifish characteristics, and was able to develop
The Race Course, a highly finished piece of work for women to decide, but the combination of something which is not generally a characteristic
and clearly a drawing rather than a painting the sensuous with the lointain seems to me a of hard realist painting, delicacy of treatment.
because he could see no way of getting that juggling feat which balances the real against the But it was always difficult to combine the lovingly
varied social panorama into a Pre-Raphaelite- false ideal with a good measure of social bitsy treatment of landscape with the social
style painting without loosening it up into a dishonesty, and is not a winning feature of actions and their implications which the artists
tableau rather than a picture. I understand Symbolism, especially since it's a major feature. felt to be their concern. Dyce's Pegwell Bay, for
Millais as a clever failure around this time, and Kate Millett convincingly maintains (Sexual instance, is a suffocated and despairing realist
as an artist looking around for something else, Politics, Chapter 6, talking about contemporary response to a horror vacui which is social. Ford
perhaps something less demanding. Again, who verse) that this distancing device allowed poets Madox Brown is the best painter in this area,
could he admire ? His friend Rossetti had given to evade moral scruples and 'enjoy the fatal and the Whitechapel's show should confirm his
him one idea in the Girlhood of Virgin Mary, woman undisturbed'. This was certainly the position as the most solidly intelligent of Pre-
which quickly reappeared in Christ in the House case with so many late pre-Raphaelite / Raphaelite artists. His paintings are certainly
of his Parents. Perhaps it could be done again. symbolist artists that even the most sensitive flawed, but with flaws which have an honestly
Autumn Leaves is clearly the result of looking of them only seem to be ogling their own instructive air to them, acknowledging their
to see if there was anything else he could get bourgeois hang-ups. A regular feature of art, difficulties. To take one example; many of his
out of Rossetti. There was; but it was not in his after all. But also to imprison freedom of social paintings had to employ (rather than be
temperament to dig that single sad furrow for action and emotion in a furtive form of governed by) shaped canvases. This was because
very long. Millais's proto-symbolist phase, worship, and to do so in the name of art, proffers of the problem of realist painting about what
culminating with the mysterious Sir Isumbras, little understanding of those on the model's side to do with the peripheral parts of the canvas
lasted no longer than anything else he had of the easel. if you were producing something which was
previously applied himself to, and then he seems Late Pre-Raphaelitism had a range of excuses avowedly a tranche de vie. This was perhaps most
to have given up totally. The restlessness and for pictorial, personal, and social problems. On successfully solved after the high realist period
changefulness disappeared. This was something all these fronts, the issues raised by Realism by using an obliquity of camera-vision, as in
which had never been characteristic of Holman were evaded by artiness rather than examined Degas. In English painting the real cop-out
Hunt, who could have done with some of Millais's within art. We ought to find Realism's problems was to compose as though your easel was in the
feeling that the 'true art' to which he had the key more to the point, in the first place because the stalls in front of a stage-set, an offender that
might not be the true art in five years' time. issues are stated. The major advantage realist comes immediately to mind being The Last Day

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