Chapter II: The "pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood"

In relating afresh the history of the "Pre-Raphaelite" movement, one has many precedents to choose from. According to the point of view selected one may see in it the conscious expression of a great artistic revival, deliberately planned by a body of zealots, and based upon a structure of lofty principles; or one may go to the opposite extreme and regard it merely as an exuberant freak, an irresponsible outburst on the part of a few impulsive youths linked together for one brief moment by a mutual combination of enthusiasm and high spirits. For both of these points of view ample authority might be quoted, and the truth as usual lies somewhere safe between them.

The tendency has been, on the whole, not unnaturally, to exaggerate the significance of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood," which after all was but the grain of mustard seed from which a great tree sprung. Its formation came about in the following way. We have noted the somewhat sudden alliance between Rossetti and Holman Hunt, and their plan of sharing a studio to carry out work in common. Through Hunt, Rossetti had become acquainted with Millais, and had joined, or helped to start, a "Cyclographic Society," numbering several members, to wit, Thomas Woolner, F. G. Stephens, Walter Deverell, John Hancock the sculptor, James Collinson, William Dennis, J. B. Keene, and some four or five besides. The scheme was for members to contribute drawings to a portfolio which was sent round for all the rest to criticise. Like other institutions based upon mutual candour, this society enjoyed a very brief existence, and was mainly of service in weeding out those who did not sympathize with the new ideas which were ripening in Rossetti and his friends from those who did. The final development of these ideas was brought about by a meeting at Millais's home in Gower Street, where the three alighted upon a volume of engravings after the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Ruskin has spoken scornfully of this work as "Lasinio's execrable engravings," but whatever their quality they at least served to show that in the earlier men, who preceded Raphael, there was a feeling for earnest work, a striving after lofty expression, which was worth more as an inspiration than the stereotyped fashion of painting which had come into vogue in England. Why this mechanical cult should ever have become grafted on to the ill-used name of Raphael, and shadowed by his stately fame, is a difficult matter to explain, and requires an excursus into the history of European art. Its effect on the teaching of the day, however, is summed up in the following incisive passage by Ruskin:

"We begin, in all probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen that Nature is full of faults, and that he is to improve her; but that Raphael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the better; that after much copying of Raphael, he is to try what he can do himself in a Raphaelesque, but yet original manner: that is to say, he is to try to do something very clever, all out of his own head, but yet this clever something is to be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules, is to have a principal light occupying one-seventh of its space, and a principal shadow occupying one-third of the same; that no two people's heads in the picture are to be turned the same way, and that all the personages represented are to have ideal beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of a nose, partly in proportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin; but partly also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen is to bestow upon God's work in general."

This canting and misdirected worship of Raphael by men who had discarded his spirit, and the realization that before Raphael there were painters of lofty aim, may well have determined the title under which the three enthusiasts conspired to band themselves in revolt. From most points of view it was unfortunate. It meant very little in actual fact, it was misleading so far as it did mean anything, and it was responsible for much of the acrimony and abuse which the devoted trio afterwards brought down upon their most meritorious efforts. One curious feature of the matter is that they appear to have possessed between them at this time a comparatively slight acquaintance with pre-Raphaelite pictures, not more, perhaps, than the average intelligent visitor to the National Gallery to-day. Scarcely anywhere in their writings (we must except one article by Mr. F. G. Stephens) do we find praise, or even mention, of most of the great pre-Raphaelite painters. Nothing of Mantegna, Botticelli, Bellini, Orcagna, Fra Angelico, Melozzo, Lippo Lippi, or Piero della Francesca. At a slightly later date Rossetti visited Bruges, and fell in love with Memling; but his letters even then reveal some very crude preferences in art. Whatever was perceived or imagined in the work of the men they decided to follow must have been largely a matter of instinct, backed up by a strong sympathy for the naïve and simple charm of the few early Italian pictures which they had seen. It is a mistake to suppose that what Rossetti and his companions admired or sought to imitate in these old masters was their mediaeval and primitive style of painting. The mediaeval quality proved infectious, no doubt, and may have influenced all more or less at first in the direction of angularity and awkward composition. But there were other causes which also contributed to this. Amongst them may be mentioned an idea that for every scene an actual unidealized room or landscape must be painted, and the figures grouped without reference to arrangement; also that for each figure a definite model must be taken and followed even to the extent of blemishes. This counsel of perfection, if it was ever seriously accepted, was certainly not followed even from the first; but the fact of its proposal shows the austere lines upon which these youthful painters proceeded, and helps to explain what many people have found a stumbling-block, the lack of grace and harmony in some of their earliest compositions. What they sought to follow in the old Italian models, however, with all their archaism and immaturity of skill was the honest striving after nature, sincerity of style, decorative simplicity, and, by no means least, the pious selection of worthy subjects. It is this last quality, exhibited alike by all the members of the Brotherhood, that more plainly than anything marks the cleavage between their "pre-Raphaelite" work and the commonplace painting of the day. They set themselves to paint great and ennobling subjects, often greater than they could achieve, out of their imagination, when the rest of the world (always excepting men like Madox Brown, who belonged to them in spirit) were painting what Ruskin calls "'cattle-pieces,' and 'sea-pieces,' and 'fruit-pieces,' and 'family-pieces'; the eternal brown cows in ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in saucers, and foolish faces in simpers."

In the inauguration of the "Brotherhood" Rossetti took a specially active part, and the title itself was invented by him. "Rossetti," says Mr. Hunt, "with his spirit alike subtle and fiery, was essentially a proselytiser, sometimes to an almost absurd degree, but possessed, alike in his poetry and painting, with an appreciation of beauty of the most intense quality." Mr. Hunt adds that the title of "Pre-Raphaelite" was adopted partly in a spirit of fun, and, like other names which have acquired honour, was originally a term of reproach invented by their enemies. On this account they prudently decided to keep it secret, and to let no outward symbol of their union appear beyond the mystic initials P.R.B., which were to be used on all their pictures and in private intercourse.

The next step was to enroll sympathetic fellow members. Besides the three founders of the Brotherhood, Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt, four more or less active adherents were enlisted. Hunt introduced Mr. F. G. Stephens, who at that time was a painter, but very soon abandoned art for criticism. Woolner, the sculptor, whose contributions to the movement were mainly poetical, was introduced by Millais, or possibly Rossetti; and the latter certainly was responsible for the remaining two recruits, his brother and James Collinson. Collinson, a torpid member at the best, and elected apparently on the strength of one picture which Rossetti thought "stunning," was mainly useful as a butt to the others, who used to make fun of his sleepy nature and drag him all reluctant from his bed to go for midnight walks. Shortly afterwards, being seized with religious propensities, he vacated his membership and retired to Stonyhurst.

For the doings of the Brotherhood the curious reader will do well to consult the "Memoirs" and the "Rossetti Papers" published by Mr. W. M. Rossetti. Mr. Rossetti, not being an artist, was himself elected secretary, and with business-like care preserved in a diary all the daily and weekly occurrences that came under his notice. It is sufficient to say here that the weekly attendances of the Brethren, at first a constant source of pleasure and mutual help, had become very irregular by December, 1850, that an attempt was made to revive them in January, 1851, but without effect, and that Millais's election to the Academy in 1853 gave a final quietus to the organization, which for some time previously had ceased to exist save in name. The ranks of the Brotherhood had not even remained intact. In addition to Collinson, it had lost Woolner, who went to Australia when the emigration craze was at its height. To replace the former a young painter, Walter Howell Deverell, had been nominated, but his election was regarded by some as invalid. Deverell, whose picture of Viola and the Duke in _Twelfth Night_ remains an almost solitary testimony to his genius, unhappily died young. He possessed many graces of appearance and manner, and was in all respects a fascinating personality. Behind the Brotherhood, and hitherto unmentioned, we seem to catch a glimpse of another very gracious, but retiring figure, that of Rossetti's sister Christina, who in addition to her deeply religious and poetic gifts, possessed a quiet fund of humour to be expended on the events that occurred within her little circle.

We left Rossetti, in order to describe the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, at the point where he had just settled down in a joint studio with Holman Hunt to paint his first picture. In an enthusiasm for community of action, and a spirit of devotion to Keats, it had been proposed that each of the Brethren should illustrate, by an etching, a scene from that poet's "Isabella." Hunt, however, was already engaged upon his picture of _Rienzi_; Millais had work of a less than Pre-Raphaelite character to finish off, and Rossetti himself was seized with desire to paint a subject which much commended itself to his mystical and symbol-loving mind, _The Girlhood of Mary Virgin_. The only one of the three eventually, who touched Keats that year (1848) was Millais, who achieved a triumph with the striking picture, _Lorenzo and Isabella_.

Rossetti's subject, as can well be imagined, gave him endless trouble, and was a source of violent fits of alternate depression and energy. Madox Brown's diary, a document full of dry humour and quaint touches, to say nothing of its pathos, contains many anecdotes of Rossetti's exasperating changefulness and want of consideration which show that kindness did not blind the painter to his pupil's foibles. To Brown's description of Rossetti, "lying, howling, on his belly in my studio," and, at another time, reduced by struggles with impossible drapery to an almost maudlin condition of profanity, we may add Hunt's description of how he had solemnly to take his companion out for a walk and explain that if the interruptions of temper and multiplication of difficulties did not cease, neither of them would have a picture finished to show alongside of Millais's--a remonstrance which he says was effectual and taken in perfect good part.

So by the following spring (1849) all three pictures were ready for exhibition, and were hung, Millais's and Hunt's in the Academy, and Rossetti's either from choice or necessity in the so-called Free Exhibition held in a gallery at Hyde Park Corner. Here it was bought for £80 by the Marchioness of Bath, in whose family an aunt of Rossetti's was acting as governess. The picture is on many accounts a favourite one with lovers of Rossetti's work. Considering the painter's age and want of proper training, it is a masterly performance. The scene shown is a room in the Virgin's home, with an open balcony at which her father, St. Joachim, is tending a symbolically fruitful vine. On the right of the picture, are the figures of the Virgin and her mother seated at an embroidery frame. The young girl, a most untypical Madonna, in simple gray dress with pale green at the wrists, pauses with a needle in her hand, and gazes with a rapt ascetic look at the room before her, where, as if visible to her eyes, a child-angel is tending a tall white lily. Beneath the pot in which the lily grows are six large books bearing the names of the six cardinal virtues. These, and a dove perching on the trellis, are amongst the peaceful symbols of the picture, whilst the tragedy also is foreshadowed in a figure of the cross formed by the young vine-tendrils and in some strips of palm and "seven-thorned briar" laid across the floor. Rossetti painted the calm face of his mother for St. Anna, and his sister Christina for the Virgin, giving her, however, in contravention of the rule mentioned above, golden instead of dark brown hair.

Although 1848 is intrinsically the year of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, much of the work of the next two years comes within the scope of its influence. As an example may be cited the important pen-and-ink drawing called _Il Saluto di Beatrice_, representing in two compartments the meeting of Dante and Beatrice, first in a street of Florence and secondly in Paradise. The whole composition was repeated in oil in 1859, and the meeting in Paradise formed the subject of more than one separate drawing. The cream of Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite work, however, during the two years subsequent to 1848, is the _Ecce Ancilla Domini_, a sequel in sentiment to his picture of the previous year. This is well known to frequenters of the National Gallery at Millbank, and is described elsewhere. It was exhibited in 1850 under the same auspices as its predecessor (though the gallery this year was moved to Portland Place), and was priced at £50. Its appearance was the signal for a storm of abuse and raillery, which descended with impartial violence also upon the pictures of the other "Pre-Raphaelites" exhibited at the Academy, and pursued them relentlessly until time and success finally established their position.

It would serve no purpose to go again and at length into the nature of this attack. Charles Dickens and many other great men lent their names to it, and the Brethren were compelled to face evil days in consequence. But in the darkest hour a saviour appeared. Ruskin, who before the outcry hardly knew of the existence of the school, had his attention drawn to it by Coventry Patmore, and with characteristic fearlessness and energy plunged into the fray. In a series of letters to the "Times" he defended the artists at all points, from the charge of being ignorant copyists and realists, the accusation that they could not draw, the alleged conspiracy against Raphael, and finally from the subtlest insinuation of all, because it sounded so professional, the charge that they knew not the laws of perspective. This ardent championship had one curious effect. In his warmth of defence Ruskin had not only combatted the statement of faults, but had revelled in laying down an elaborate statement of principles. Thus it came about that the original ideas out of which the Brotherhood had grown, ideas of a broad and possibly nebulous character, became transmuted into hard and fast rules of conduct and of practice, which the Brotherhood more or less had to accept, partly perhaps out of gratitude to their benefactor, partly because they agreed with them in theory, and partly because they may not have seen how far they led.

On the other hand, if we are not to credit the "Pre-Raphaelites" with all the fine sentiments attributed to them in Ruskin's inspired defence, it is absurd to imagine, as some have done, that they failed to take themselves or their work seriously because Rossetti in his family letters used to speak flippantly of his unlucky little picture, which, like a curse, had come home to roost. Men often enough speak lightly to friends of things which have lain at the heart; and if Rossetti joked to his brother about "the blessed eyesore" and "the blessed white daub," it is none the less true that he had striven to put all his thoughts and all his knowledge into it, with such success that it reveals to us to-day an intensity of feeling and reverence which few modern painters have emulated, and to which Rossetti in his later work did not always attain.

A characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which has not yet been touched on, and which here calls for digression, was its remarkable literary strength. Of the seven original members, two--W. M. Rossetti and Stephens--were writers by preference. The former did not paint at all. Gabriel Rossetti was, as we have seen, a poet before he could be called a painter, and a poet of the first order. Woolner also was a poet, and in this capacity alone belonged to the movement. Collinson made a third; Deverell a weak fourth. Millais and Hunt showed no inclination this way; but, besides those mentioned, the coterie included Christina Rossetti, William Bell Scott, Coventry Patmore, and Madox Brown, who wrote occasionally in verse. Even without the need of a propaganda such a body was almost bound in the nature of things to produce literary thought allied in sentiment with its artistic ideas and aims. Hence came about the "Germ," that much-prized periodical, which had its origin in the fertile brain of Rossetti, and which was ostensibly formed to be the organ of the P.R.B., and to spread its opinions. The first number included "My Sister's Sleep" and the prose romance, "Hand and Soul," by Rossetti. Subsequent numbers contained "The Blessed Damozel," "The Carillon," "Sea Limits" (under its first title of "From the Cliffs"), and six or seven sonnets. Of the four numbers published the first two only were called "The Germ," the title in the third and fourth being altered to "Art and Poetry" at the suggestion of the Tuppers, who as printers of the magazine had taken over the responsibility on generous terms.

The "Germ," as its brief career sufficiently denotes, fell almost stillborn upon an ungrateful world; but amongst a small class of artists and admirers it undoubtedly served to strengthen Rossetti's reputation. There was nothing feeble or immature about the poetical ideas expressed in it, and one may even be surprised that such an original piece of work as the "Blessed Damozel" did not attract greater attention. Both it and "Hand and Soul" have frequently been reprinted. The latter is interesting for the light it throws upon Rossetti's mediaeval and mystical mind. To some extent it is an autobiographical record, a memory of mental perturbations and experiences which beset the young painter, striving to preserve and foster the spiritual side of his nature at the expense of more than commonly strong bodily inclinations. From an abstraction like this story of the mythical young painter Chiaro dell' Erma we may feel we get one truer glimpse of the real Rossetti than any number of life-histories, overlaid with trivial incidents which obscure rather than reveal his personality, can give us.