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At the same time, Hunt exhibited
Rienzi swearing Revenge over his Brothers Corpse . A fight had just taken place between several nobles over the division of Rome. We see the young Rienzi dead, stretched out on a shield, and his eldest brother is raising his fist to the sky. It is again Dante Rossetti who posed for this figure. As for the landscape, it was painted after nature, which almost never happened at the time for the backgrounds of historic paintings. The third P.R.B., Rossetti, exhibited a painting depicting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, not at the Academy, but at the Chinese Gallery in Hyde Park where his master, Madox Brown, had also sent his famous painting of Cordelias Portion, a scene taken from King Lear. Thus, in the spring of 1849 the three P.R.B. and the man who inspired them made their first collective attempt at a new art.
Edward Burne-Jones,
Laus Veneris, 1878.
Oil on canvas, 122.5 x 183.3 cm.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
John Melhuish Strudwick,
The Gentle Music of a Bygone Day , 1890.
Oil on canvas, 79 x 61 cm.
The Pre-Raphaelite Trust.
John Melhuish Strudwick,
Isabelle and the Pot of Basil.
The De Morgan Centre, London.
Edward Burne-Jones,
The Beguiling of Merlin, 1873-1874.
Oil on canvas, 186 x 111 cm.
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
At first, everything went very well. The paintings by Hunt and Millais were hung in prominent places, and the painters were congratulated by many of the people in attendance on the morning of the private view. Their realism did not shock the audience at all, The Times was benevolent, and the professors of the Royal Academy were moderate in their criticism. No one had noticed the mysterious letters P.R.B on Isabels chair, a visible sign of the conspiracy. The Pre-Raphaelites even immediately found buyers, which is a sign of predestination in England as it is elsewhere, or perhaps more so than abroad. They prepared for the exhibition of 1850, and after a short trip to France, galvanised by their success, they created a magazine called Germ, in which the Pre-Raphaelite thesis was presented and developed, revealing the meaning of the letters P.R.B. The friends of these innovators gave, in each issue of Germ , published from January to April of 1850, the secret of their preferences, their antipathies and their ambitions. This revelation caused a sudden turn of events. The idea that the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to change something in the aesthetic constitution of their country deeply upset the same people that their works had not shocked at all. English conservativism let out a cry of terror. It seems that Raphael had become, like Nelson or Wellington, something unquestionable, and that declaring oneself to be Pre-Raphaelite was considered a menace to the security of the British homeland. These events coincided with the 1850 Exhibition, where Millais presented his Christ in the House of his Parents, Hunt The Missionary, and Rossetti The Annunciation .[13] The entire press thundered against them. The great Charles Dickens himself entered the arena and wrote a vigorous diatribe against Millais painting, which depicted the baby Jesus in his fathers workshop. Jesus has just hurt himself with some pliers, and the kneeling Virgin is embracing and consoling him; Saint Joseph is holding his hand. A young Saint John the Baptist is bringing water to dress his wound. Saint Anne is removing the pliers, which are still on the table. An apprentice is adjusting a plank, continuing his work uninterrupted. Here was a new and curiously realistic expression of the dreadful prophecy: And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Dickens wrote: As you approach the Holy Family of Millais, you must drive out of your head any religious conception, any elevated thought, any connection with the tender, dramatic, sad, noble, sacred, dear, and beautiful, and prepare to lower yourself to the bottom of all this, horrible, shameful, repulsive, and infuriating.[14] The P.R.B. could not even plead against
this terrible verdict with an article in The Germ, which had been defunct since April for lack of funds.
Edward Burne-Jones,
Psyches Wedding, 1895.
Oil on canvas, 119.5 x 215.5 cm.
Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.
William Rossetti protested in The Spectator, but what use was a single voice against this tempest? The purchases stopped and the purses of art collectors snapped shut in indignation. For an entire year, the struggle continued. The P.R.B. persevered and participated in the Exhibition of 1851, but the slander against them knew no bounds. Millais Mariana was disparaged and Holman Hunts Valentine and Sylvia was especially showered with insults. Some went as far as to ask that the Pre-Raphaelite paintings be removed from the walls of the Academy before the end of the Exhibition, now that it was proved beyond a doubt that they offended the audience. They were scorned in the schools, and the students responded to the names of the P.R.B. with jeers. The young painters families blushed with shame. While working at his business in the City, the elder Hunt even ran into friends who bet him ten pounds that his sons painting would be thrown out of the Exhibition within a fortnight. Some people wondered if he might give in under the pressure of the publics scorn and leave for Australia. Madox Brown, who had not wanted to be an integral part of the Brotherhood but who was interested in it, was filled with desperation at seeing his hopes vanish and his followers ruined. It seemed that Pre-Raphaelitism was lost.