The Beautiful Necessity

Watts and Vader

2012-01-12T21:54:00.002-05:00

Thanks to this year's Spectrum book (18) (I do so love that compilation of the year's best fantastical art), I was introduced to this gorgeous image from the Star Wars universe, entitled "Vader's Dream" by Kirk Reinert. It shows Vader / Anakin with his beloved Padme, and the Dark Side battling for him. Beautiful! But of course I also immediately admired the artist's classic Victorian art inspiration....

..."Hope" by Watts.

I still definitely think of this as a case of an artist taking a Victorian romantic image and making it their own in an admirable way. Even a non-Star Wars fan like me can get behind an image so lovely and symbolic.

More Effie Dakota

2012-01-04T22:47:00.004-05:00

More shots of Dakota Fanning as Effie!

This one thanks to Phillip on Facebook, via this website. I LOVE this image, what with the Millais artworks right behind her.

These are freeze frames from some videos of photos posted on YouTube. No moving images, sadly, just photos, but I definitely think the costuming in this movie could be gorgeous too.

Effie Continuing Coverage

2012-01-04T00:17:00.002-05:00

I for one am quite excited about the potential of another new film about a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. And yes, I definitely count Effie Millais as a member of that group. Above is a new (to me) promotional shot of Dakota Fanning as Effie. Beautifully Pre-Raphaelite looking, isn't she?

I'll be keeping a close eye on this one!

New image is from an interesting new article about the movie and its conflicts, here.

William Morris, le Carnet Rouge

2011-12-27T18:53:00.004-05:00

So here it is..this was the second Pre-Raphaelite surprise to come my way this Christmas day. Via Raine on Facebook, I found out about this phenomenal-looking new book about William Morris' life and daydreams as a young child. Illustrated by Agata Kawa, the book is entirely in French (and I don't read a single word of it) and the images are just phenomenally beautiful.

Morris' floral patterns are rendered in organic and dream-like soft colors on each page.

I love this emblem, inspired by Morris' Dragon and Peacock design.

Recognize the Millais that inspired this?

The book is available on Amazon.co.uk

Doctor Who Christmas Special

2011-12-26T23:44:00.003-05:00

Christmas Day yielded not one but two delightful Pre-Raphaelite surprises for all of us. First, there was the Christmas special episode of Doctor Who..

Yes, Doctor Who. I assume you're a fan, if you're already discriminating enough of taste to love the Brotherhood.

Yes, that IS William Morris "Compton" pattern, in the gorgeous manor house from the Doctor Who special.

More than that, I shall not say for those of you who haven't seen the episode yet. But it was indeed a special treat.

The second special discovery of Christmas, brought to my attention by Raine, to come tomorrow....

Pre-Raphaelite Artist Salon

2011-12-19T16:09:00.003-05:00

As if I need another reason to make it to the Dickens Fair someday. Blog reader Sheila let me know about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Artists Salon held at the event every year. Could that be more fun??

The group "presents a whole Adventurer Club 'hour' (actually 45 minutes) of PRB delights. The audience will see members drawing and painting models, they will also be given paper and pencil to join in (especially children), instruction if requested, with soft music or inspiring poetry being performed."

From my perusal of their Facebook page, it appears every weekend they feature a new combination of models, poses, and continue the story line of the Brotherhood in a gossipy way. For instance, here's a sample "article" detailing the events of one of the Salons:

Those defiant Pre-Raphaelites

(By William Stillman, an American Journalist in London)

Effie defiantly says she will prove it. E. Ruskin’s petition to have her marriage to J. Ruskin annulled, has been challenged by Ruskin who now insists that Effie prove her contention that the marriage was never consummated.

William Morris is now planning to travel to Iceland. His daughter, May, was overheard requesting him to bring her an Icelandic pony on his return.

“Top”, the wombat owned by the D.G. Rossetti has discovered the delights of tobacco, and has eaten the Adventurers Club special reserve of South American cigars.

A growing circle of Pre-Raphaelites will meet again this weekend at the Adventurers Club at 3:30 PM to sketch and read poetry. Miss Lizzie Siddal will pose as Ophelia for a second time. Her bathing mishap, while posing for J. Millais will not be repeated."

Whoever created this salon is my new personal hero. Three cheers for their brilliance!!!

Raine's Latest...the Trio -- Ruskin, Effie, Millais

2011-12-13T22:42:00.001-05:00

If This is What an Eccentric Spinster Looks Like...

2011-12-13T16:14:00.006-05:00

...then sign me up!

A new article on the Daily Mail website features Victorian-era fan Julia Wood, who dresses and lives in a style to celebrate the era "from the 1890s to the first World War." She is also called an "eccentric spinster" in the article...outdated terminology, to be sure.

Clearly she has stunning taste in wallpaper, for one thing (Morris & Co of course)

And her furniture and aesthetic style are wonderful.

Love her little knick-knacks around:

And I wholeheartedly approve of her collection of blue and white china, and her tucked in photo of Oscar Wilde:

I am utterly inspired by Ms. Julia and her pursuit of beauty. She is truly a modern Aesthete!

Click the link to the article for more info, photos, and video. (Found from Mags Phelan, also shared by Art Magick on Facebook)

I Hate Everything

2011-12-13T15:42:00.001-05:00

So far as I can tell, this blog, found by Edie, has nothing to directly do with the Brotherhood, but the title made me laugh out loud, and I had to share it.

Dakota as Effie

2011-12-10T08:29:00.004-05:00

Many of you have probably already heard that Dakota Fanning is going to be starring as Effie Ruskin-Millais in a new biopic next year. I for one am quite excited to see how Ruskin, Effie and Millais are portrayed...the romance between the latter two is one of my favorite tales of the original core Brotherhood. And I hope, unlike Desperate Romantics, they don't shy away from a discussion of Ruskin's peculiarities toward young women and his reason for not consummating their relationship (as Kirsty Walker puts it... "just lie back and think of cathedrals")

And of course I hope there are cameos by other Brotherhood members.

Anyway, many thanks to Tess of Midnight Muse for the link to this preview from the production.

Effie. Although I can think of other actresses I would have chosen first, I think Dakota will do a grand job.

Ruskin in a down jacket.

Oxford Union Christmas

2011-12-08T09:20:00.001-05:00

My friend Verity posted another gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite Christmas image....a tree on display in the library at the Oxford Union, right under the famous Pre-Raphaelite murals. I love how wonderfully the Brotherhood and Christmas meld.

A Hair Biting Euphoric Vision

2011-12-07T22:37:00.005-05:00

This gorgeous image from Vlada Roslyakova by Pierluigi Maco for Vogue China, January 2007 reminds me a little of Beata Beatrix. Gorgeous. It also continues the longstanding Pre-Raphaelite tradition of hair-biting.

Edited to add...I KNEW this photo reminded me of a specific work, but I didn't come across it in Googling. Thank you, dear Stephanie, for identifying it!!! Rossetti's sketch of Lizzie as Delia:

A Red House Christmas

2011-12-04T22:18:00.004-05:00

Oh, those of you who aren't friends with Red House on Facebook, all the amazing pictures you're missing!!! They shared images of William Morris' beautiful home...pretty much the Camelot of the Pre-Raphaelites' golden years...decorated ever so festively for the holidays.

This tree could not be more amazing. Not only is it entirely period-appropriate with its natural garlands of popcorn, orange slices, and paper cutouts, but it's Pre-Raphaelite theme! How perfect is that??

A Christmas tree in front of the famous zig-zag patterned front door of Red House. It does my heart good.

The gingerbread Brotherhood (or in the case of this picture, Sisterhood) just tickles me to death. Each one has the initials of an obvious counterpart to all of us in the know.

And who better to make the angelic tree-topper than Edward Burne-Jones?

The breathtakingly gorgeous staircase at Red House all bedecked with natural gorgeousness, including a kissing ball.

A volunteer helps decorate the window sills. For some reason, every time I see these windows in pictures, it feels especially giddy to me. I can truly imagine Lizzie or Ned staring out of them at the surrounding nature.

Another shot of the gorgeous tree:

And the amazing staircase:

Brooke Shaden's Pre-Raphaelite Fashion Shoot

2011-11-30T23:31:00.004-05:00

The Brotherhood just keeps popping up in unexpected fashion-y places lately! I was exploring the Flickr account of a favorite photographer, Brooke Shaden, and found a link to this blog post of hers about a recent shoot she did for Bullett Magazine. She and the editors agreed that the shoot should be inspired by "the famous Pre-Raphaelite painters". Actually, only the first artwork was painted by a Brotherhood member (Millais' Somnambulist, thank you Robert Parry for the identification), but the second and third are by Victorian Romantics (Waterhouse and Bouguereau) inspired by the Brotherhood. The inspirational artworks are fun to see, and the resulting images are gorgeous.

Apparently the images she shared are not the ones appearing in the magazine, so I'm curious to see what does appear, especially since she mentions renting a boat and filling it with flowers. Sounds gorgeous!

Rossetti on a Jet Plane

2011-11-30T08:18:00.002-05:00

My husband Tom actually found this link and shared it with me. Too awesome.

Classical art inspirations for airline safety manuals, including Rossetti.

The best airline-safety-card artists know how to amplify these details without creating too much noise. They are, after all, artists. They work within and bend the conventions of their form by playing with allusions to earlier work. Take, for example, a current US Airways safety card that portrays the conventional water flotation scene. We see a beautiful woman, with lush red hair, floating effortlessly, gazing ahead in an attitude of easeful melancholy. The airline artist has recruited Dante Rossetti’s 1877 Mary Magdalene, with perhaps an ironic nod to Botticelli’s Venus, as the heroine of our worst-case scenario. Thus the “fallen woman” motif is reimagined in the most urgent terms: this airline Magdalene is a woman who has quite literally fallen. And this is where we find her, floating in limbo, clutching a lily-white life preserver to her breast (instead of a vase, as in the 1877 portrait). Like Rossetti’s romantic Pre-Raphaelite Magdalene, this woman’s lowly state serves only to magnify her elemental beauty. Here she is, Our Lady of the Plane Crash. “I will make you fishers of men,” says the Christ. “We will rescue you in any corner of the globe,” says a Pan Am safety card. The fallen woman will not remain cast away forever—and, if we follow her lead, the artist assures us, neither will we. It is a pretty vision of earthly salvation.

Vogue Cult of Beauty with Saoirse Ronan

2011-11-21T20:47:00.003-05:00

The Cult of Beauty exhibit is coming to the United States...San Francisco to be specific...and in celebration, the December issue of Vogue on newsstands tomorrow did a photo spread of the even-more-stunning-every time I see her Saoirse Ronan, in Pre-Raphaelite style.

The caption on the above image reads "The actress, in the flame colored locks that recurred throughout Pre-Raphaelite paintings, makes a compelling case for reviving neoclassical style."

The above is my favorite image of the bunch, but supposedly it's a ten page spread, so I am eager to see if there is more we haven't seen yet.

The above image, clearly inspired by Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, has a caption that reads "In response to industrialization, mid-nineteenth century artists in Britain ushered in an era of handcrafts and bohemian beauty."

If you're reading this blog, I should hope you recognize the inspiration for the above image. Hint: It rhymes with Mophelia...

"Antithetical to the highly embellished and corseted mood of the period, many Pre-Raphaelites adopted gently flowing frocks evocative of the Middle Ages."

Stunning. Just stunning. Mark my words: Saorise Ronan is the younger generation's Cate Blanchett.

Recent Facebook Images

2011-11-20T23:34:00.004-05:00

Facebook has become a wonderful place to share and discuss the Pre-Raphaelites, as I've already mentioned. Here are a few recent images shared there, none of which I had previously seen:

Ohmygosh...Raine found this Ned Burne-Jones cartoon of himself and Topsy in a sauna! Pre-Raphaelite softcore!

The front display window of Morris & Co:

Morris kids:

William Morris, a deathbed portrait:

Jane Morris' Kelmscott stationary, designed by Rossetti:

Edward Burne-Jones, along with George Howard and his wife:

A great Neddy cartoon, found by Raine, which inspired her "Ned's Angels" cartoon:

A startling and amazing portrait of Janey facing the camera, and with a hint of a Mona Lisa smile!

William Morris' horse drawn cart for his casket at his funeral. I had heard this described, but had never seen it:

And finally, a new wonderful cartoon from Raine, featuring my favorite member of the Sisterhood, Jane Morris!

Catching Up with Raine

2011-10-24T22:41:00.002-04:00

I've been remiss in my blogging lately. An arthritic health scare, followed by an upper respiratory infection have laid me low and put me behind in everything. But Raine's amazing cartoons are always worth sharing.

First, young Topsy and Ned:

And the first two installments of "Ned's Angels":

Two Announcements

2011-10-05T22:35:00.002-04:00

Stephanie from Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood has announced October's Pre-Raphaelite Reading Club selection...Mortal Love! I've read this book before and adored it, and look forward to reading it again!

So read this excellent book and then join the discussion over at Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood!

Also, thanks to an anonymous tip on an old post, I can tell you that several objects from Kelmscott are on tour in America! "Items from Kelmscott - two examples from the 'Legend of Goode Wimmen' tile series, the 'Acanthus and Vine' tapestry, St Catherine embroidered wall hanging, and Jane Morris’s jewel casket - will be displayed alongside items connected to William Morris from the Society’s collections at Burlington House, including his certificate of election to the Society in 1894." If you live near Boston or Yale, stop by to see these priceless items!!!

Ned & Topsy Arrived

2011-10-01T11:04:00.001-04:00

And speaking of Raine, look what arrived for me last weekend! My Cafepress Ned & Topsy shirt! When I visit jolly England in 2013, this shirt is definitely going with me to be worn at Kelmscott, Red House, and Wightwick. :D

Put a Goat in It

2011-10-01T11:02:00.003-04:00

...may be my new favorite way of telling someone to shut it. By the ever amazing Raine...

Delicious Stunners, Male and Female

2011-09-24T21:26:00.000-04:00

by the ever amazing Raine!

Ned and Topsy Silhouettes

2011-09-22T09:59:00.003-04:00

I've been enthusiastically making pop culture silhouettes to sell on Etsy, and to put on the walls of our new home. Well, thanks in large part to Raine's amazing cartoons, I decided that Ned and Topsy definitely have distinctive enough profiles to make them silhouettes. I put this together yesterday:

The background of the profiles is two pages of the Kelmscott Chaucer. I thought...what better way to show the cooperative and brilliantly artistic relationship between these two men than with pages of one of the masterpieces they created together?

Introducing Top

2011-09-21T18:45:00.003-04:00

...the Wombat.

Ned and Topsy Merch from Raine

2011-09-19T23:01:00.004-04:00

So...when I saw the insanely awesome cartoon portrait of Ned and Topsy drawn by the amazing Raine Szramski I flipped. And then she said she would clean up the image and put it on t-shirts. She followed through on her promise and created the most awesome merchandise line Cafepress has ever seen. The only thing left for me is deciding what sort of shirt to purchase (and bag, and mug, etc etc)

Raine has also done a few more cartoons I'll be posting next.

Fainting Ned

2011-09-01T07:00:00.001-04:00

Okay, I lied. I didn't mean to, but then I went on Facebook and there it was...a new cartoon from Raine. LOVE!

The Last Cartoon

2011-08-31T07:00:00.000-04:00

The last of the awesomely wonderful Raine cartoons...for now at least!

This one's my personal favorite because...well...because it's Ned and Topsy, acting totally how I imagine them.

Power to the Sisterhood

2011-08-30T07:32:00.000-04:00

Part #2 of the amazingly awesome cartoons of Raine Szramski's. I suspect Stephanie Pina of the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood will especially love this one.

This Will Make Your Day

2011-08-29T14:37:00.003-04:00

A couple of days ago, I got a friend request from a gal on Facebook by the name of Raine Szramski. When I saw we had numerous interests in common, I friended her and started looking through her galleries, as I saw she had been an art student. Then...I came across a folder that absolutely made my day, and continues to, every time I look at these images.

These, my dear readers, are Raine's cartoons of the Brotherhood. And they are wonderful.

There are more of them, and I will post more in a separate posting. These are just too wonderful to share all at once, and must be savored.

Personally, I kind of want a t-shirt with Ned and Topsy's portraits on it.

Happy Birthday, Ned!

2011-08-28T20:06:00.008-04:00

Edward Burne-Jones, or Ned as he was known by his friends, is my favorite Pre-Raphaelite. Not only do I appreciate the dreamlike quality to his artwork, but I am also (and frankly even more so than his art itself) fascinated by the man. He seemed so enigmatic and mysterious, soft spoken and shy, and yet he had such a deep and fantastical inner landscape upon which he drew for his ethereal canvases.

I'll admit to a bit of a bias about Ned's life. My fascination with his character helps me excuse some faults that should perhaps not be excused; namely his affair with Maria Zambaco, and his chivalric love-filled letters to various young stunners during his older years. I explained the adoration he felt toward these women in the context of his love of Arthurian knights and romance. His feelings toward them were simple chivalry, I told myself. The truth of the matter is probably a bit of my belief and a bit more complex. It is hard to deny, for instance, the inherent sexuality of this sketch Ned drew for one of his adored young ladies. It shows her luxuriating in a bathtub:

Less risque but also intimate are these sketches of the same stunner relaxing in bed doing embroidery.

And then there is this astonishing sketch Ned did of himself and best friend William Morris in a steam bath, shared by the wonderful Pre-Raphaelite Passions on Facebook. I had no idea Ned had ever done a naked sketch of himself!!!

There is a new biography that has been the talk of the Pre-Raphaelite-obsessed community. Fiona MacCarthy has written what appears to be a very well researched biography of Edward Burne-Jones. We are all dying to read the new book, which is set to be released on September 1st in England (sadly, no release date known yet for the U.S.). From a few articles I've read in which MacCarthy talks about Ned, it sounds like she will not shy away from discussion of his intriguing and enigmatic sexual and romantic escapades.

Edward Burne-Jones...a fascinating man, whose life I think I could study for the rest of mine and still not tire of it. Today is his 178th birthday. Today we celebrate the man of such imagination, dream, talent, and desire.

A sketch of young Ned done by Rossetti. Also shared by Pre-Raphaelite Passions.

Geek Your Library

2011-08-18T20:44:00.003-04:00

So, I work at a library, and I am a huge, huge fan of my job. I am also a huge fan of libraries in general...I practically lived at them during my growing up years, I read so often.

There is a great new campaign from the OCLC called Geek the Library. It's a fun promotional campaign to show the public that no matter what the thing is that you are most passionate about in life, the library can help you in pursuing your enthusiasm. Toward that end, library employees were encouraged to create their own posters sharing what they personally "geek."

Well...are you ready to see mine?

Please try to contain your shock. I know it's an entirely unexpected choice.

Topsy's Purple Trousers

2011-08-17T23:28:00.002-04:00

One thing I love about my love for the Brotherhood is how many throwaway lines in biographies give me a tickle that keeps me in a good mood for days.

In this case, I am reading a biography of Edward Burne-Jones, and I found out in a tossed out line that when he and William Morris started a magazine in college, Topsy bought himself a pair of purple trousers.

Now I can't help but imagine that the pants in this photograph are actually a gorgeous shade of my favorite color.

Enticement to Facebook

2011-08-15T09:29:00.003-04:00

From my recent silence on this blog, you would not be to blame for suspecting I had abandoned our beloved Brotherhood entirely. This is, however, not at all the case! As has become the norm for so many things, much discussion has instead been moved...to Facebook. The Beautiful Necessity does not yet have a public fan page on there (though perhaps I should make one?), but here is a short list of public pages I highly recommend you peruse and "Like" for a plethora of Pre-Raphaelite Pretties.

Pre-Raphaelite Passions is impressively steady in their stream of stunning and fascinating images and discussions.

Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood is the fan page for the phenomenal blog, and of course is a must-Like page. She has also started a brilliant Pre-Raphaelite book club. The current book is Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur

William Morris is a fan page that also posts an impressive array of gorgeousness.

William Morris Gallery has a fan page as well...great stuff.

Red House 's fan page is extremely exciting, seeing all the things they are uncovering and changing at the famous home of William Morris.

John William Waterhouse Monument Restoration Appeal is a great cause, and a good place for people with the common enthusiasm for Waterhouse to gather.

That is just a small sampling of the Pre-Raphaelite beauty available on Facebook for your every day admiration. So go! Explore! And please, if you know of more pages you highly recommend, share them here.

Oscar Wilde, Vampire Hunter

2011-07-14T12:13:00.001-04:00

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This is a real book cover.

(And yes, I will read it in case one of the Brotherhood shows up)

Reneissance Act

2011-07-07T22:03:00.004-04:00

I found this amazing set of images by following a link from a Tumblr I enjoy. How beautiful!!

Photographer Aleksandra88

2011-07-06T23:32:00.005-04:00

Well...I've got 3 new Pre-Raphaelite inspired photography posts to do, and all three are so stunning it would be unfair to post them all together.

First I wanted to share the work of DeviantArt photographer Aleksandra88. I think I just found this artist by a photo that caught my attention on the main page of DA.

Her work is just jaw-droppingly stunning, and very very dreamlike. She seems to have an uncanny way of capturing the beauty of the female form.

FYI...this means a lot of her port has nudity, so NSFW. Fair warning.

Love the colors in this one:

An interesting take on the traditional Ophelia...with the image upside down:

Something about this model's face reminds me a little of Jane Morris:

Another Ophelia:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

2011-07-02T10:48:00.004-04:00

The poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats is...well, honestly, a bit of a personal obsession of mine. And I've wanted for a while to do some pictures inspired by it. But it would be hard to ever do anything half as glorious as these four images Viona Art just posted on her portfolio. I love how the first and fourth images are clearly inspired by Waterhouse, but the Lady using her scarf instead of her hair to pull him downward is a creative twist on the traditional image.

Beautiful images for a rainy Saturday morning!

The Only Thing Harder Than Being a Victorian Female Artist...

2011-06-15T22:08:00.008-04:00

...was apparently being a talented female artist with a very very famous artist father.

Or so I discovered while reading the excellent book, Artistic Circles: Design and Decoration in the Aesthetic Movement. I was reading along, and came across an absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous watercolor on a full page.

Apologies for the bad quality image...it's a photo of the book page. But you can see the jewel colors, the insane detail on the inlaid furniture, and the stunning reproduction of the Rossetti chalk sketch framed above the doorway. The light, the colors, the detail...this image is just jaw-droppingly amazing. In the days before color photography, I can think of no other interior decor painting I have been more impressed with.

Click the image to see more details, do. It's a photo of a page of a book, but you will still be impressed by all the little intricacies included.

More illustrations in the book impressed me, and I saw they were all done by the same artist.

The name on these artworks were A. Alma-Taldema....Anna Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence's daughter. And these watercolors were done when she was a teenager.

But the sad thing is...I photographed these images from the book as a note to myself to look up more about Anna Alma-Tadema and her stunning talent online. Yet when I went on the internet to actually search her out, I found...nothing. Less than nothing...every link was either a portrait of her done by her father, or a brief mention in a biography of her father.

Or, even worse, when I searched images for more of her interior artworks, or even better quality images than my poor photos, I actually found numerous websites that attributed her beautiful work to her father.

The few references to her ability that I found online were alarmingly dismissive. Her work is described as that of a "precocious teenager," of moderate talent. The unspoken yet clear undertone of references to her work are that they were just a whimsical past time, and nothing of any note, unlike her father's epic work. Yet it wasn't her kinship to Sir Lawrence that drew me to these interior images (truth be told Alma-Tadema was never my favorite artist anyway), but her own impressive skill.

The book from which I took these pictures gives only a brief discussion to them.

"As children, Alma-Tadema's daughters wore variations on every kind of artistic fancy dress, from quaint, quasi-medieval to Kate Greenaway dresses, which must have made their friends mock. The date, 1885, of Anna's exquisite [YES!] small paintings is a clue to their purpose, as souvenirs. In that year the Alma-Tademas left the house on which they had lavished such loving attention -- the house was fitted up, according to the Art Journal, 'to make it appear as much like a Roman villa as was consistent with the peculiarities of the English climate and the comforts of an English home' -- to settle in a more imposing residence nearby, the detached villa at 17 Grove End Road recently vacated by Tissot."

That's it...that's all we get about Anna Alma-Tadema. Yet I am fascinated by her. This "precocious teen" went on to paint a few more works I was able to locate on the internet, but not many at all.

The same book I was reading also reminded me of the fact that Georgiana Burne-Jones, before marrying her famous husband, studied art at the National Art Training School, and was supported in her talent by Ruskin before she gave it up to focus on being Ned's wife. The book says:

The first 'female' government school of design was established in 1843; the Society of Female Artists was founded in 1856. Despite these gestures towards professional standing, women were less well paid for their efforts, and many a promising start foundered on the logistics of combining art with marriage. Edward Burne-Jones remarked: 'A painter ought not to be married, children and pictures are too important to be produced by one man.' Georgiana Burne-Jones studied at the National Art Training School in South Kensington, and was encouraged by no less a supporter than John Ruskin; but on her marriage in 1860 she said 'I stopped, as so many women do, well on this side of tolerable skill, daunted by the path which has to be followed absolutely alone if the end is to be reached.' A poignant memory of her exclusion after the birth of her first child stayed with her for the rest of her life.

'The difference in our life made by the presence of a child was very great, for I had been used to be much with Edward -- reading aloud to him while he worked, and in many ways sharing the life of the studio -- and I remember the feeling of exile with which I now heard through its closed door the well-known voices of friends together with Edward's familiar laugh, while I sat with my little son on my knee and dropped selfish tears upon him as 'the separator of companions and the terminator of delights.'

Poor Georgiana! And poor Anna Alma-Tadema. I could readily find even less information about her than Georgiana Burne-Jones, but at least some of Anna's artworks are remembered. As far as I know, none of Georgiana's are still around. How difficult it must have been to be a woman of artistic talent in Victorian times. It makes me respect Lizzie Siddal all the more for the determination she had to stick with her passion for art. Not to mention other famous female Victorian artists...artists like Evelyn De Morgan especially, who did not let the talents of her husband keep her from following the talents of her own.

Boosting the Signal: Stephanie Piña

2011-06-07T23:13:00.002-04:00

Although this information has been shared in several places already, I have to do my part to boost the signal of support for a woman who is an amazing cornerstone of the modern Pre-Raphaelite community, Stephanie Piña, creator of LizzieSiddal.com and Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood.com. Stephanie's husband was recently in a terrible accident, and unfortunately is self-employed with no insurance.

Funds to help support Stephanie and her family can be sent to her Paypal address:
stephaniepina@lizziesiddal.com

Also, for the next few weeks, 50% of the proceeds toward purchase of the DVD from the amazing WAG Screen production of The Lady of Shalott will go toward helping Stephanie's family.

The Kissed Mouth: A Blog to Watch

2011-05-19T23:20:00.002-04:00

Actually, calling it a "blog to watch" is an utter understatement.

Some of you have probably read the wonderful book, Stunner: The Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth by my dear and wonderful friend Kirsty Walker. (If you haven't, hie thee to Amazon to purchase)

Kirsty has an amazing talent for writing that is both informative and extremely fun, and she has just started her own blog, The Kissed Mouth. Every single entry there so far is both riveting and wonderful, and I just cannot say enough about how dang GOOD it is. So yes. Please. Go admire her brilliance, enjoy her thoughts, and follow her blog!!!

A Maid in Bedlam

2011-05-12T13:09:00.000-04:00

Pandora radio just played me a nice Celtic-style song, and when I looked at the album cover, I was tickled to see how lovely it was.

I really like the border of Morris flowers in addition to the Rossetti artwork.

Happy Birthday, Mr. D.G. Rossetti! Go here for a wonderful post about it.

Millais' Arch

2011-05-11T23:30:00.000-04:00

Thanks to a will-be-unnamed-but-totally-rocks source of mine in England, I have been able to watch the absolutely riveting documentary that was just on ITV1 in England a week or so ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber: A Passion for the Pre-Raphaelites. I haven't even finished the series yet, and I'm utterly engrossed.

But tonight as I was watching part of it, I was blown away. Just. Look.

This was Millais' design for a Gothic Arch, made of entwined angels in passionate embrace. I think my heart skipped a beat when I saw this piece. I had never seen it before, and in fact when I immediately paused the video and Googled it, the only images I could find were blurry black and whites. I am utterly smitten.

I've always been, I must confess, a little more in love with Millais' sketches than with his finished art. Don't get me wrong, his art is incredible. But there's something in the freedom of his sketches that just fixates me. This is especially true of his sketches with romantic themes. Something about this design for the gothic arch just feels like the same romantic passion as I've loved in his sketch work.

The story is...apparently this arch design was never actually realized in the 19th century. But a few years ago, according the the narrator Webber, he said that he "thought he'd have some fun" and commission the actual arch to be made. The results....

Gorgeous. Not quite the same as Millais' graceful figures, but still so beautiful. When will Design Toscano offer a reproduction of this piece in resin for my wall?

:)

Pre-Raphaelites in Narnia

2011-04-22T23:58:00.002-04:00

My husband and I watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader the other day. What a visually stunning film! It is based on my very favorite Narnia book, so I had to ignore the changes to enjoy the film, but I still found it greatly enjoyable.

Ms. Stephanie, of Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, I've found another P.R.B. film sighting for your list! In the scene where Lucy has to read through a magical spellbook, the spell for snow has a very familiar painting on the upper left of the page: Rossetti's Proserpine.

Ellen Terry's Beetle Wing Dress

2011-03-31T10:07:00.003-04:00

It's only moderately related to the Pre-Raphaelites, but I have to share a link to this incredible article (pointed out to me by a friend, Traci) about the restoration of actress Ellen Terry's gown for Macbeth, made out of thousands of beetle wings. It is the gown that features in Sargent's famous portrait of Terry, above.

Wordplay in Arts & Crafts

2011-03-30T22:52:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to direct you to a post over on my blog for my new house, on the use of text in Arts and Crafts decorating.

Sarah as Persephone

2011-03-11T22:24:00.003-05:00

Okay, as a HUGE fan of the movie Labyrinth, I have to share this piece of brilliance.

DeviantArt member Janey-Jane created this great image of Rossetti's Persephone, as Sarah from Labyrinth. I think she did an outstanding job of both making it a likeness of Jennifer Connelly, and also making it quite Rossetti.

I also love how she reinterpreted the pomegranate as a peach, changed the objects in the corner to an owl feather and crystal ball. And apparently the text at the top is the story Sarah starts to tell Toby before he's taken. ("Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl whose stepmother always made her stay home with the baby...what no one knew was the King of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl...")

Rock on, Janey-Jane.

Return of the Native

2011-03-06T23:37:00.003-05:00

I just finished re-watching the 1994 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Return of the Native, starring a younger and breathtakingly beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones. I first saw this movie when I was 14 years old, and Catherine was one of my first experiences with being absolutely ensorcelled by the beauty of a woman. She is a true Faerie Queen in the film. I remember when I first taped it on VHS and paused the tape to sketch a drawing of her with her hood raised. I still have the artwork.

At one point in the film, there's a lovely vision of Eustacia (CZJ) walking by a riverside with flowers in her hand. The combination of blue gown, bridge, flowers, and river immediately struck me as familiar.

Coincidence? Probably. However, considering the similar fate the character of Eustacia experiences to that of Ophelia, I also would not be shocked to find out that it was an intentional homage or foreshadowing.

At any rate, it's a beautiful film full of romantic visuals that any lover of the Pre-Raphaelites would likely enjoy.

Wear a Waterhouse

2011-02-20T10:37:00.003-05:00

A couple of new resources for wearing fashionable clothing inspired by Waterhouse.

First, this seller on ebay often has tank dresses featuring full-screens of Waterhouse artwork. There are none for sale right now, but he does have this very neat tank top featuring my favorite Waterhouse.

And here's a new shirt on Etsy I really love. Sadly, not available in my size. :(

How to Spend It

2011-02-18T13:31:00.002-05:00

As an homage to the Brotherhood, and a preview to the upcoming V&A exhibit "The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement", actress Bonnie Wright from Harry Potter fame took a series of *stunning* images one can browse on the "How to Spend It" feature website. The website also includes a behind the scenes video.

Google Art Project

2011-02-04T08:13:00.004-05:00

Now that Google has conquered the view of city streets, they're moving their street view technology to art museums, including the Tate! Soon, we could have views available of Pre-Raphaelite artworks almost as if we were walking through the museum itself!

Sadly, the Tate doesn't seem to be on the list of available museums yet, but the above linked article says that it should eventually be.

I still eagerly await the day when I can visit England and the Pre-Raphaelite art itself, but in the mean time, this is a pretty brilliant thing.

ETA: Thanks to Hermes for pointing out his post on this topic from two days ago, while I was without internet! Whoops! And the Tate IS on the list.

Olivia Grant

2011-01-17T20:47:00.003-05:00

I always delight when I find new-to-me actresses whose looks strike me as particularly Pre-Raphaelite. I just recently finished watching series 1 of the BBC show Lark Rise to Candleford (an excellent series), and the actress Olivia Grant ensorcelled me with her luminous pale skin and enormous pale eyes. If she was truly from the Victorian era, I think she would have been a stunner for certain.

Particularly, she looks like she could have been the model for this artwork, Hope by Burne-Jones (thanks Jen for the ID!)

Closing on our first house continues, packing is fast and furious. Apologies for the quiet around this blog, but there's good reason!

What is a Phlumbudge?

2011-01-09T22:58:00.002-05:00

Searching through Christies' records of past lots sold, I came across a listing for a Burne-Jones set of cartoons and drawings. I am a sucker for his caricature work, and I was captivated by the descriptions of what was included in the lot. I especially loved this part:

The album also contains some of the whimsical drawings that Burne-Jones was always making. Connoisseurs will recognise such familiar themes as the amorous love-birds and the 'wallypug', one of a series of amiable mythical beasts (the 'phlumbudge', a fat little bird, was another) with which he entertained his children - children, that is, of all ages, including, as his wife put it, 'the child that was always in himself' (Memorials II, p. 66).

There is no image of a wallypug or a phlumbudge. What do you think they look like?

A Red House Christmas

2010-12-23T10:35:00.004-05:00

Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate it. Happy Holidays to everyone! As a Christmas treat, I wanted to share a link to another blog (William Morris Fan Club) that has featured an incredible tour of William Morris' Red House, including many details I had not seen.

Part 1: Pilgrimage to Red House

Part 2: Red House Hallways: Welcome

Part 3: Red House: The Main Rooms

Part 4: Red House Ceilings

My husband and I are working on closing on our own first house together. Please wish us luck as we create our own small piece of the Pre-Raphaelite dream...a Home.

The Muse Inspects Her Portrait

2010-12-17T23:07:00.002-05:00

Image Source Unknown, found on Tumblr.

Nenúfar Blanco

2010-12-10T22:33:00.003-05:00

I love doing random searches on Etsy and Ebay under Pre-Raphaelite keywords. Sometimes, I come across the most amazing artists that way.

The newest discovery: The artist Rosa, or Nenúfar Blanco, whose one-of-a-kind sculptured dolls just take my breath away. All of her work is captivating, but I was especially entranced by this:

She calls the doll "Daydreaming." It came across my Etsy search as she uses the word "Pre-Raphaelite in the description, and I can definitely see the influence. I love how her hair looks very Jane Morris-like, but her expression is utterly Beata Beatrix. The flushed cheeks, slightly parted lips...it's all utterly P.R.B.-esque romantic, and I absolutely love it.

Click the images below for a much larger look:

Home Alone Double-Take

2010-12-06T21:29:00.003-05:00

Is it a sign that you're obsessed with the Brotherhood when you're watching Home Alone for Christmas, and you realize that Old Man Marley looks uncannily like Edward Burne-Jones? Like...to the point where for the rest of the film, you keep thinking of him as "Ned"?

I know I've been remiss on the blog lately. November was frantically filled with writing a 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month. (Of course the Pre-Raphaelites were mentioned...must you ask?) and now it's crunch time for Christmas. But I haven't forgotten you! I hope to post more very soon.

A Brief Blog

2010-11-13T19:33:00.002-05:00

According to the Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Georgie says his three favorite flowers were roses, lilies, and sunflowers.

Why yes, I do really love Burne-Jones, why do you ask?

William Morris Letterpress

2010-11-10T00:07:00.003-05:00

Letterpress: what a perfect medium for celebrating William Morris! Both of these were found on Etsy. The second has sold since I found it, but the artist may put up another.

Morris 1:

Morris 2:

Pre-Raphaelite Drawing Club

2010-11-09T09:32:00.004-05:00

While searching on Google for something entirely different, I came across this wonderful website for a Drawing Club in California who apparently had a model who came and posed in a Pre-Raphaelite style. It's fun to see the different resulting images that were created.

A further search on their site revealed another night of the drawing club where the theme was Pre-Raphaelite. Gorgeous images, all!!

Limericks on Lizzie

2010-11-07T19:25:00.001-05:00

Dear Lizzie Rossetti laughed to find that she and Swinburne had such shocks of the same coloured hair, and one night when we went in our thousands to see "Colleen Bawn," she declared that as she sat at one end of the row we filled and he at the other, a boy who was selling books of the play looked at Swinburne and took fright, and then, when he came round to where she was, started again with terror, muttering to himself "There's another of 'em!"

Gabriel commemorated one view of her appearance in his rhyme beginning "There is a poor creature named Lizzie, Whose aspect is meagre and frizzy," and there, so far as I remember, his muse halted; but she completed another verse on her to her great satisfaction, thus:
There is a poor creature named Lizzie
Whose pictures are dear at a tizzy;
And of this great proof
Is that all stand aloof.
From paying that sum unto Lizzie.

--From the Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones

Steampunk and the Pre-Raphaelites

2010-10-17T13:17:00.004-04:00

(I've actually had this post written in notes and jotted concepts form for over a year now, but I just never got around to posting it!)

Over a year ago, there was a query on a Steampunk costuming group I belong to on Live Journal. The person wanted to know if there was any way she could wear a Pre-Raphaelite / Aesthetic style gown to a Steampunk event without seeming to be headed to a Renaissance Faire. The question prompted a discussion of the Pre-Raphaelites and Steampunk, and I was shocked by the vehement reaction the whole idea stirred in me. Any time I find myself responding to something so passionately and angrily, I like to investigate it further. You see, I've always maintained that although I have a great admiration for the technical and costume side of Steampunk (hence why I'm on the LJ list), it just isn't for me. I love the Victorian era, but I personally prefer my Victorians with fairies, myths, and Romance, rather than with cogs, steam, and technology. My response to the question of melding the two stirred in me a sort of psychological "turf war"...."Stay away from my Brotherhood with your goggles and cogs!!"

So what do the Pre-Raphaelites and Steampunk have in common? The straightforward and initial answer I thought was "absolutely nothing: They are anathema to each other." The Pre-Raphaelite code of life was for art to reflect nature. Nature is romanticized. In the Steampunk code of life, technology is transformed into art. Technology is romanticized. It doesn't get a lot more dualistic than nature vs. technology.

However, upon further contemplation, and after I talked with a friend about my knee-jerk reaction and she commented that "Steampunk is the Arts and Crafts Movement of today", I had to admit that the issue wasn't as black and white as it appeared. The two philosophies do have some similar ground, especially in the Arts & Crafts movement founded by the Brotherhood's second-generation member, William Morris. I still may wholeheartedly object to the idea someone mentioned on Live Journal of William Morris being a father of Steampunk. To me, that would be like saying Ann Coulter is the mother of Democrats. But I must admit, the two movements...William Morris' Arts & Crafts and modern-day Steampunk...do have more in common than one may at first think. This is, of course, highly ironic, since Steampunk is all about technology, and technology and industry were what Morris most hated. But still, both genres feature....

-A Nostalgic look back at the past. Both philosophies despair at certain aspects of what was for them "modern" life, and instead look back at what was for them "simpler" times, attempting to blend that romantic era with modern existence. For William Morris, this was the medieval times, but the fashions of that era were still reinterpreted for the modern Victorian man and woman (Aesthetic Movement clothing). Similarly, the tools, furniture, and handiwork of the medieval times were created by Morris using some technology not found in medieval times, and with an end result that often reflected the Victorian aesthetic as well as the medieval. For Steampunk aficionados, the Victorian era of William Morris is the simpler time that is romanticized. Modern technology is re-conceived in the context of a time when people still wrote each other letters with ink and paper, there was still a code of etiquette followed by almost all of society.

-A respect for the handmade. This is, in my opinion, the area in which the two philosophies most successfully converge. The Arts & Crafts movement was founded on the concept of distain for the mass-produced, shoddily made items that were a hallmark of the Industrial Revolution. And Steampunk (when it's more than just buying a Nerf gun and spray painting it copper) is all about creating something by hand, with a nostalgic and old look. As Bruce Sterling says in his guide to Steampunk, "The heaviest guys in the Steampunk scene are not really all that into 'steam'. Instead, they are into punk. Specifically, punk's do-it-yourself aspects, and its determination to take the means of production away from big-mind-deadening companies who want to package and sell shrink-wrapped cultural product."

Ironically, William Morris created a style so successful in his times, that there were many a mass-produced, shoddily made copy of his work. Similarly, Steampunk has reached such heights of success, it is easy to obtain an entire Steampunk-style ensemble made from industrial hands. But the soul and heart of both philosophies emphasize the craft of hand-made items.

-Recycling. William Morris was the father of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He felt that many things became more beautiful through the wear and tear of the ages. Steampunk is also about taking bits and pieces of old items...old clothes, old watches, old bits and pieces once discarded, and transforming them into something new, so that we can see their beauty again.

-A movement across multiple disciplines that began in the arts. For Arts & Crafts, it began with Pre-Raphaelite art. It then progressed to concepts of anti-industrialization and homemade goods, as well as dress reform and romanticized philosophies. With Steampunk, it began in literature (the works of authors like H.G. Wells etc), and progressed across philosophy and both event costuming and daily wear, home interiors, etc.

-A fear or concern for what modern society has become. This similarity is by far the most ironic, as I briefly mentioned above. William Morris expressed his concern for modern society by a deep-rooted distain for modern industrialization and modernization. On a Steampunk message board online, someone wrote, "I'm holidaying in Edinburgh for a few days and large parts of it are incredibly steamy. However, if I chose one [Steampunk landmark], it would have to be the Forth Bridge. Opened in 1890, it is said that William Morris described it as 'the supremest specimen of all ugliness', confirming for me its Steampunk credentials!" Many Victorian landmarks specifically despised by William Morris now, to us, seem simple and romantic. These locations that are hold-outs from Victorian industrial technology make perfect backdrops for Steampunk photo shoots...and ironically are simultaneously the areas that would have made Morris violently ill to see.

So the irony is, as I've mentioned, Steampunk is responding to modern technological society by returning to an earlier era when technology was newer and more romantic, while Morris responded in his era to the technology Steampunkers adore by...returning to an earlier era of handmade production in medieval times that he deemed more romantic. Steampunk and William Morris both dealt with the same question. Their answers to that question just varied as widely as nature and technology can. Again, Bruce Sterling's article put it succinctly and accurately: "The Industrial Revolution has grown old. So machines that Romantics considered Satanic now look romantic." "Successful steampunks are not anti-industrial as Ruskin was. They are digital natives and therefore post-industrial."

This brings me to a quote from a novel I read last year and reviewed here at TBN. "She hadn't fully appreciated this aspect of history before now. The further back the story went, the more possible it was to give it a romantic glow that blurred the edges and made the awful more palatable. Though she had been through all the documents, read the letters and poems, examined the paintings, somehow that was different than the cold, stark, black-and-white typeface with an accompanying photo on page A2." There is a comfort in the patina of time...a comfort that takes away both the dirt and disease of the medieval times for Morris, and the grime and disease of the Victorian era for us today.

So I have to look again and re-analyze my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of Steampunk and the Brotherhood coexisting. Steampunk does still seem rather trendy to me. I still maintain that for some people who dress in Steampunk gear, they are simply following the newest costuming and cultural trend. But to assume that the majority of casual trend-jumpers within the trend represent the whole, or the underlying philosophy, is unfair, and to be blunt, rather prejudiced. After all, every cultural hobby or interest has its own degrees of passion and hangers-on, just as many people who say they love the Pre-Raphaelites may only see it as pretty pictures of fantasy women to put on their wall. Many people have no knowledge at all of underlying Pre-Raphaelite philosophies or stories.

The idea of the Lady of Shalott sewing cogs into her tapestry and floating down the river in a steamboat may still make me violently dizzy with its paradox, but I am willing to admit that the two movements both arose as a response to fear and/or concern for what (for each era) was modern society. In the end, the two movements are not the same, but are more like sister philosophies with similar origins, but opposite personalities, born a century apart.

Addendum: The images in this post were Photoshopped by me, with stomach churning the whole time. ;)

The Truth is in the Dirt

2010-10-17T00:58:00.004-04:00

The new music video from the stunning red haired model-now-musician Karen Elson has a very Pre-Raphaelitesque feel to it. And it's quite a lovely tune too.

National Gallery of Art Exhibit

2010-10-16T17:06:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Maggie for giving me the heads-up on another exhibit of interest to us! The National Gallery of Art will have an exhibit starting on October 31st. The title is The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting 1848-1875. Of course it will feature work of Julia Margaret Cameron and the photographic portraits of Janey among other things.

And speaking of which, Under the Ivy's Tumblr just recently featured this lovely altered artwork based on one of those photographs of Jane Morris, by Jo Ellen Van Ouwerkerk.

Blackwell Exhibits

2010-10-10T12:31:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to Bryony Whistlecraft for sending along this link. Anyone lucky enough to be in England, there's an amazing exhibit going on right now (for another week only!) at Blackwell: The Arts & Crafts House. I hadn't heard of this location before Bryony called it to my attention, and now of course I have another P.R.B.-related stop to make on my "someday dream" tour of England.

The William Morris: A Sense of Place exhibit is going on through October 17th. The exhibit includes "designs, textiles, books, samples, and personal artifacts" of Morris'.

Their next exhibit, Aspects of the Arts & Crafts Movement, will run October 25 - January 3 2011, and features the work of cabinet-maker Arthur Simpson.

My favorite exhibit, however, was the recently-created LawnPaper environmental installation outside the Blackwell estate to coincide with the William Morris exhibit. Environmental artist Steve Messam created patterns in the lawn at Blackwell to mimic William Morris wallpaper patterns. Absolutely beautiful, and a brilliant idea!

These things of the soul that are real...

2010-10-08T10:58:00.004-04:00

(Detail from The Wizard, click to see larger)

But it was a later paragraph that struck May particularly, and she marked it lovingly. As so often in Burne-Jones's letters, it conjures up images from his paintings, but particularly a painting he worked on throughout his last years, The Wizard, which portrayed an aging man, recognizably Burne-Jones himself, showing a young girl a magic mirror, in which you can see ships on a stormy sea. The paragraph my great-grandmother marked seems to me to offer the most perfect promise of love, shelter, and protection for May as she looked back on her past sadness and joy, and prepared herself for what now lay ahead.

...you see May, it is these things of the soul that are real, and the only real things in the universe---and the little hidden chamber in my heart where you only can come is more real than your little bedroom---if you can believe it---I will furnish it for you---such a couch for your tired soul to lie on, and music there shall be always, soft and low, and little talks when you are refreshed---news of the outer world---when you are rested and can sit up and stand I'll open a little magic window and you shall choose what land you will see and what time in the world---you shall see Babylon being built if you like---or the Greeks coming into Greece---or the North Sea tossing and full of ships, or the piety of ancient France, plaintive notes of ancient Ireland, kings of Samarcand, Nibelungen terrors---all I have raked with greedy hands into my treasure house since I was a mean wretched looking object of ten till now---into that room with the magical window none has entrance but you.

From May and Amy, last page

Mermaids on Etsy (Waterhouse)

2010-10-01T22:53:00.005-04:00

My husband and I are planning a little vacation to Key West, so warm oceans and mermaids have been on my mind. A recent search of Etsy brought forth these treasures from the deep.

The above two stunning creations are both from Etsy vendor Beadedbear, and are hand-beaded works of art. Absolutely mind-blowing!

Also lovely, these earrings from Etsy vendor Poppenkraal.

And of course, the incomparable Etsy vendor Baba Studio.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...and the Brotherhood

2010-09-24T15:22:00.003-04:00

Just a quick update today, but I had to share this amazing find, discovered by my friend Maudelynn. Yes, someone actually did a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon that includes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Please click the image to check it out! My favorite part is how Rossetti is at the center of almost everything.

Two William Morris-Inspired Projects

2010-09-15T10:18:00.004-04:00

Today I'm sharing two projects by modern artists inspired by the work of William Morris.

First of all, thanks to Mezzky for sharing this Kickstarter artst's project, creating a found-art installation based on Strawberry Thief. All of the individual pieces of this artwork will be jewelry, and be able to be worn individually.

Second, artist David Mabb created this self-portrait based on a famous photograph of Rodchenko taken by Mikhail Kaufman. In Mabb's version, the production suit worn in the original artwork is covered with William Morris wallpaper patterns.

Original photograph inspiration:

I don't know what Morris would have thought of these projects, but it is still interesting to see his work inspiring modern artists in two very different mediums today.

Useful and Beautiful Gallery Show

2010-08-31T09:19:00.004-04:00

It seems like half of my posts lately are apologizing for how absent I've been. Lately, my excuse has been preparations for Dragon*Con...the massive sci-fi/fandom convention in Atlanta next weekend. I have a back-log of entry ideas both original and given to me by others, and I hope to start working on those soon after this weekend.

In the mean time, I have to share with you an exciting event! At Big Hat Books in Indianapolis, there is going to be a Pre-Raphaelite-themed gallery exhibit. Artists of all sorts of mediums are coming together to share works inspired by the Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Contributing artists include Michelle Merle Pace, Ivy Long, Heather Sleigtholm, and Delila Jemaiel, among many others. Artworks celebrate the Pre-Raphaelite's art directly, and also the concepts for which they stood.

Local artist Justin Cooper contributed this beautiful painting, entitled "Jane Burden."

Artist Julia Jeffrey contributed these two amazing artworks done specifically for the show.

The Invocation

Juliet

Merle Pace's photographic interpretation of Ophelia. Beautiful!
Merle is also contributing three-dimensional works to the exhibit, including her one-of-a-kind lovely dolls.

So, if you happen to be in the Indianapolis area, stop by and visit this wonderful event!

If I Die Young

2010-07-27T09:03:00.004-04:00

An anonymous poster pointed out to me that the video for the country music group The Band Perry's "If I Die Young" features imagery from Tennyson's Lady of Shalott. I wouldn't have caught the reference, but the poster pointed out the book of Tennyson she is holding while floating on the water.

Normally I am not at all a modern country music fan, but I do like Appalachian/bluegrass, so I enjoy the song itself as well.

Burne-Jones and Synesthesia

2010-07-23T21:45:00.002-04:00

Two years ago, I did a post on a comment Edward Burne-Jones had made about how he saw the days of the week as different colors, except for Sunday which was "wet, ever since I was tiny, though I don't know why." At the time, an anonymous poster mentioned that there was a term for this condition, Synesthesia, but I didn't do much follow up on the idea, I'm sorry now to admit. Then, the other day, while perusing a totally unrelated blog that was talking about animating inanimate objects as another symptom of synesthesia, the subject came to my attention again, and I read the Wikipedia article about the condition.

According to the article, Synesthesia is "a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." Burne-Jones' admission that the days of the week represent different colors is probably an example of grapheme ---> color synesthesia, in which "letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored."

Also according to the article, "Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was largely abandoned by scientific research in the mid-20th century, and has only recently been rediscovered by modern research." If the condition was discussed in the late 1800s, it makes me wonder if Burne-Jones was aware of it. I would love to find out how people with synesthesia were regarded in the late Victorian era. Was it considered just a quirk, or was it a symptom of a more serious mental condition to them?

Quite a few synesthetes end up in artistic careers. "Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia." Or, as another wonderful article on the topic states, "There are elements of synethesia in almost any creative endeavor. It is no wonder that so many artists were self-proclaimed synesthetes. The ability to create metaphors, tying together seemingly unrelated things has been responsible for some of the most beautiful poetry and prose created by human kind. It is this connection between senses, this cross-linkage that allows us to easily comprehend such abstract concepts as "the bitter wind" or such descriptions as "Juliet is the sun."

Not everyone with synesthesia, even the same type, see the world the same. "Some grapheme ? color synesthetes report that the colors seem to be "projected" out into the world (called "projectors"), while most report that the colors are experienced in their "mind's eye" (called "associators")." This calls to mind for me the frequent references in Burne-Jones' writings to wanting to "go on always in that strange land that is more true than real" or that he "lived inside the pictures and from the inside of them looked out upon a world less real than they." Perhaps if Burne-Jones had synesthesia of the "minds eye" variety, the conflict between his inner and outer reality would have been even more deep and pronounced, explaining in part his desire for the inner landscape.

In the Wikipedia article section on famous people with synesthesia, it says "Determining synesthesia from the historical record is fraught with error unless (auto)biographical sources explicitly give convincing details." Because of this, we can't guarantee that Burne-Jones had synesthesia, although I would love to now re-read The Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones by his widow, Georgiana, with this idea in mind. The particular example that sparked this exploration, the colors of the weekdays, is especially fascinating to me, because six out of the seven days are marked by a color, but the seventh day is marked by a different sense, feeling "wet." Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Synesthesia could tell us what this might mean.

In the conclusion to a fascinating article on the evolutionary function of Synesthesia, Alexandra Mnuskin writes "The extraordinary experience of synesthesia has opened the door to some of the most complicated and as yet uncharted functions of the brain. We all experience a certain amount of cross wiring, and it is this which defines us as human beings. Researchers have shown cases where color-blind synesthetes were actually able to perceive colors in numbers without ever having seen those colors before [2]. To me, this discovery is really the culmination of everything I have been learning about the brain. All on its own, the human mind can create something we have never experienced such as an abstract concept of color. It can produce a subtle and poetic language to tell stories about things we have never seen with our eyes. This one mass of cells can encompass our entire reality." If Burne-Jones had Synesthesia, perhaps the image in his mind's eye wasn't so much an escape from reality, but another way of perceiving things that truly are, on some level, real. This was part of his genius, and why his art still seems to carry us away into another "strange land."

Useful & Beautiful Conference

2010-07-21T12:47:00.004-04:00

I'm not going to be able to make it to this, but it looks amazing! If someone does, please give a report.

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
WINTERTHUR MUSEUM & COUNTRY ESTATE
DELAWARE ART MUSEUM

7-9 October 2010

"Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites" will be the subject of a conference and related exhibitions to be held 7-9 October 2010 at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE) and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate (Wilmington, DE). Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society in the United States, "Useful & Beautiful" will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware's rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur's important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum's superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside Britain). All events will focus on the multitude of transatlantic exchanges that involved Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth century.

In addition to sessions featuring internationally-known scholars and experts, there will be a keynote lecture by noted biographer, Fred Kaplan; demonstrations by leading practitioners who make and design Arts and Crafts objects; special exhibitions; and a performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest by the University of Delaware's critically acclaimed Resident Ensemble Players.

Registration fee: $150, $75 for students. No charge for University of Delaware faculty, students, and staff, but we ask them to register.

For more information and a registration form go to www.udel.edu/conferences/uandb
or contact Mark Samuels Lasner, Senior Research Fellow, University of Delaware Library, http://us.mc1135.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=marksl@udel.edu, (302) 831-3250.

"Useful & Beautiful" is supported by Delaware Art Museum; Winterthur Museum & Country Estate; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts; William Morris Society in the United States; William Morris Society (UK); University of Delaware Library Associates; Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events; the following University of Delaware units, departments and programs: College of Arts and Sciences, University of Delaware, University of Delaware Library, Art, Art Conservation, Art History, English, History, Institute for Global Studies, Frank and Yetta Chailken Center for Jewish Studies, Center for Material Culture Studies, Office of Equity and Inclusion, Resident Ensemble Players/Professional Theatre Training Program, University Museums, and Women’s Studies; Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Illustration: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Water Willow, 1871. Oil on canvas, glued to wood. Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.

Me Without You

2010-07-08T16:16:00.004-04:00

Last night, my husband and I watched the British film Me Without You, starring Michelle Williams and a pre-Pushing Daisies Anna Friel. I was delighted to see a copy of Arthur Hughes' Ophelia in the bedroom of Michelle Williams' character at the beginning of the movie. Little did I know that this would begin a 1 1/2 hour search through every scene where her rooms were featured to find picture after picture of the Pre-Raphaelites. Seriously...they were plastered everywhere in the backgrounds! Rossetti, Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, Hughes...and more!

(and btw...I have this nagging feeling someone has told me about this movie before, so I apologize for no credit if someone did)

There's also a gorgeous scene where her character imagines her beloved lying with her in bed, with her coverered in wet flowers and river weeds, which taken in context of the Ophelia imagery everywhere else in her life, is clearly a nod to Ophelia.

You can see the Burne-Jones in the background of this screencap:

Thanks to Robert H for identifying the left painting as William Blake's Newton.

Hughes' Ophelia, and many many more images. It was a delight to play "Where's Waldo" throughout the movie. Especially once her character has an apartment of her own in post-college years. Her kitchen cabinets are plastered with images, and I just sat there and went "that's a photo of one of the Brotherhood! I can't quite tell who...there's Jane again! There's a Burne-Jones!!"

Poppy French Photography

2010-06-21T18:22:00.004-04:00

Thanks to photographer Poppy French for directing me to her recent project. The images are an homage to Rossetti, and they turned out beautifully!

Be sure to visit her website for more amazing images, all very surreal and lovely. This is what Vogue spreads should look like!

Robert H on Roger Scruton on Beauty

2010-06-16T22:46:00.002-04:00

A little while ago, I did a post about Roger Scruton's amazing documentary about the philosophy of beauty. Well, one of the comments by Robert H was just so thought-provoking, I felt it deserved its own attention in a post of its own.

A link to the original discussion in case you've forgotten. My favorite portion of Robert H's commentary is in bold. :)

Don't worry over much about Scruton's apparent conflation of the Pre-Raphaelites with kitsch. Note he also includes Millet. Two possibilities arise, as both the PRB and Millet were roughly contemporary.

1) He is using them as a chronological marker without considering the works themselves to be kitsch. I'm being charitable with Scruton in including this because I don't believe it was his intent.

2) He does indeed believe the PRB and Millet were kitschy, at which time he lays himself open for serious scrutiny and eventual harsh judgment. Focusing on Millet, Millet oeuvre is best noted for for images of peasants working themselves to exhaustion to provide the meager amount of food that allows themselves to stay barely alive (while undoubtedly making some member of the bourgeoisie wealthy). He is painting the sordid truth of the French peasantry in the midst of their bone-breaking labors. It is not beautiful, nor is it meant to be. It is not kitsch; in fact, it is the antithesis of kitsch. These peasants are not some wide-eyed waifs sitting on rooftops painted by the Keanes, nor are they the garden gnomes that haunt our present consciousness; those images ARE kitsch, and the world be done with them.

Scruton has some personal, smug, elitist agenda that seems either ill thought out or is cynically contemptuous of his audience. In the BBC program, which I manfully sat through, I sense a man totally enamored with his oh so highly refined sensibilities. Recall the number of times it is he who appears to be the center of the program. Be that as it may, on the far side of the man's obvious narcissism in places he blatantly errs in his focus, which ties back to the Millet. In the midst of discussing beauty v. contemporary art he shows an image of Goya's, if I recall one of the Horrors of War, and then shows a modern adaptation of the same image, of which he obviously is simultaneously contemptuous and disgusted. I'll allow him that: I don't much care for a majority of contemporary art. HOWEVER... Goya's image is not beautiful. To claim it so is to cozy up to the perpetrators of atrocity, to condone the massacre of innocents. The image is everything Scruton condemns in the contemporary thrust of art to portray the ugly. And yet he appears to use it as an icon of beauty. Millet and Goya are focusing on the same desperate, horrid aspects of life, looking at it in such a way as the viewer will have a visceral response. They are painting or etching unvarnished truth.

If Scruton wants to live in a fairy land where bad things do not happen he has the right, twit-like though that may be. Goya and Millet were aware that the upper 10% of the population lived comfortably through the exploitation of the rest (and no, I'm not a Marxist). Peasants worked 14 hour days 6 days a week, and then were required to go to church on Sunday. Half the children born in the middle of the 19th century were dead before the age of 18. Pastel putti floating above beautiful gardens while maidens lolled about was not the world of the vast majority, who had no access to the world of beauty Scruton clamors for.

Briefly, because I already am overlong, much of what Scruton appreciates led directly to that which he reviles, not as a rejection of his avowed principle but as a direct and logical consequence of their central thesis: art for art's sake. He repeatedly quotes Wilde. Wilde was in the vanguard of bringing about the collapse of what he, Wilde, most loved. The irony and short-sightedness, to say nothing of the total ignorance of the evolution of the contemporary ethos, is astounding.

As for the PRB... I could write reams about the sheer folly of considering them kitsch. I am baffled as to why Scruton appears to hold them as exemplars of such abased sentiment, though I sense in the end insidious proclivities might arise were one to delve into the matter. Be that as it may, it was the PRB, leading to William Morris, the Arts and Crafts movement, and eventually Art Nouveau, which provided this tired world with its last taste of the endeavors of men and women who were devoted to the concept of beauty while considering the state of their fellow man. In the end, Scruton attempts to chop down the tree on which he is perched. Accept the value that he presents, but be skeptical of the man.

Pre-Raphaelites in Vogue

2010-06-03T08:56:00.005-04:00

Sorry for the quality of the image, as it's a photo of a blown-up scan of a page of a book. :) Please do click to see what details there are.

I was perusing the thick tome of a coffee table book, In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine, recently, when I was stopped in my tracks by the image of a Burne-Jones. The caption of this set of images said:

"In doing research for the photo shoot, one ofthe art books consulted by set designer Mary Howard and photographer Steven Klein was Christopher Wood's The Pre-Raphaelites (right), in which they found inspiration for the models' poses and hand movements realized in the finished take (left). Sixteen outfits, eight of them designed for Vogue, were selected for the shoot."

I was eager to find out the issue in which this feature ran, so I went on to read the text of the chapter. (some text cut for succinctness)

"Anyone leafing through the eighteen pages of the Chekhovian-Victorian romantic story titled "A Grand Affair" in the September 2005 issue of Vogue, photographed by Steven Klein with Grace Coddington as the fashion editor, could hardly imagine the degree of research and hard work behind the scenes, the level of creativity, the on-the-spot trouble-shooting, and the highly complicated logistics that took place before it reached the reader.

The objective was to take double-spread photographs in three days to fill a total of sixteen pages, at the rate of two setups a day. Smith and Coddington had chosen some sixteen outfits, eight of them designed in part for Vogue: a pink one by Dior, a red one by Alexander McQueen, others in gray by Carolina Herrera and Peter Som, white dresses by Tuleh, prints by Prada, and a white fur by Vera Wang.

Howard's team, which consisted of ten people, had created a charming winter forest with a lake.

A book brought by Howard, Christopher Wood's The Pre-Raphaelites, circulated on the set and was repeatedly consulted. Howard, trained in art history, is renowned among photographers for her high-quality research. "It was a great source of inspiration to see the poses, the body and hand movements of the women in the paintings, so that our models could imitate or reinvent them," says Klein.

Each finished take was printed and hung from a corkboard, so that the entire technical and creative teams could appreciate the results of the day's session and follow the direction of the story. Back at Vogue, however, Anna Wintour found the photographs too static, too formal, and lacking the energy she looks for in a portfolio. Result: Everything was to be done over, using only a part of the approved wardrobe, and only one model, the Russian Natalia Vodianova. This time it was to be done outdoors, with a smaller production team..."

The finished spread featured the below pictures among others:

So apparently the original Pre-Raphaelite inspired shoot, filled with two-page spreads of five models sumptuously larking about in a forest, will never be seen, other than the small grainy teaser photo I found on page 361 and blew up as large as I could.

I don't know about you, but I would have MUCH rather seen more of the "static" Pre-Raphaelite images. These ones are fine, but they aren't the sort of thing that stops me in my tracks like I'm betting the forest images would have.

Having watched The September Issue, I know this isn't the first time Anna Wintour has rejected a photo from a Grace Coddington shoot that I thought was incredibly beautiful. As part of that documentary (which I recommend to anyone who enjoys fashion or photography), Grace Coddington does a fashion spread with a 1920s Jazz-Age theme, which includes a beautiful two page spread image with multiple models. Anna rejects that image as well, Grace is furious, but acquiesces. Here also, the only teaser we'll apparently ever see of this image is a grainy blur on the DVD:

Beautiful, isn't it? Alas for all the beauty in the world that we will never see.

More Pre-Raphaelite Fiction

2010-05-28T12:17:00.003-04:00

So, I've been horribly remiss in posting here. Part of that is a great reason...I've been distracted by offline enjoyments, like running my first 5k race. But I do hope to start posting here more often again. I'm getting a little bit of a backlog of post ideas I want to share!

First, I wanted to share with you three new fiction titles with links to the Pre-Raphaelites.

First, of course, there's A.S. Byatt's new book, The Children's Book. I've read about half of this so far, and I'm greatly enjoying all the references to William Morris (on every other page it seems, since several protagonists of this book are Victorian decorative artists). It's a fascinating look into the philosophies, alternate lifestyles, and artistic expressions of the Victorian era. Really, really good, but also really dense. Don't expect to read it in a night.

There was one scene of this book that was especially poignant to me, in which one character reflects on her love for her husband, and how she understands his dalliances with other women as being simply because he loves women and beauty so much, he can't help but celebrate it. (I'm probably getting that paraphrase horribly wrong) My immediate thought was of Georgiana Burne-Jones and her husband Ned. Despite his philandering ways, I still somehow think of him with more fondness than Rossetti and his wandering eye, because Ned always just seemed to appreciate things that were lovely.

The second book is Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman. Set in an artist's college in upper state New York that was founded in the early 1900s to give female artists a place to practice their crafts without worry of financial strain or criticism, this book takes place in the modern day. The setting is absolutely wonderful, with beautiful old manor-like buildings filled with dark woodwork, thick curtains, and beautiful art. William Morris is mentioned a few times, and of course the whole artistic colony began in an era inspired by the Brotherhood. The book has a few farfetched plot points, but is still a great guilty-pleasure read.

The third book is The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier. I immediately recognized the William Morris wallpaper design on the front cover, and when I read that the book was about the renovation of a ramshackle Victorian house, I gave it a read. The book itself is rather light on the plot, with not the best character development, but the description of the house transforming into a new beautiful home is delightful. William Morris is mentioned a few times when discussing wallpaper patterns chosen for the new home.

Parrish Relics Auction

2010-05-11T23:38:00.003-04:00

In the category of a TRIPLE header example of artists and creative minds I love and admire coming together, Jen Parrish and Aurora of Aurora V Photography got together to take some stunning pictures of Jen's new jewelry set. And the set is being auctioned on ebay to help support the amazing independent film effort of my friend Lisa Stock. (Mentioned here a little while ago)

So please, go bid! It supports everything I stand for.

Rufus Wainwright as The Sleeping Knight

2010-04-28T00:04:00.003-04:00

Artist Susan Carr recently messaged me and shared with me her above artwork, along with this information:

"I have recently completed a painting inspired by Burne-Jones' Briar Rose series, which was painted for and still hangs in Buscot House, near where I live. It was also inspired by the songs of Rufus Wainwright and I have based the knight on him. He is aware of this and has said he would like to exhibit it on his website. I am taking it to the Mall Galleries in London on Saturday, for the Society of Women Artists Open Exhibition, which I hope it will be selected for."

Rufus Wainwright has made reference to Victorian art before, posing as The Lady of Shalott for the cover of his album, Want Two.

(called to my attention a while back by Jen Parrish)

Susan Carr's artwork impresses me greatly. It's readily identifiable as a portrait, but the fact that the subject is recognized doesn't decrease from its aesthetic appeal.

Desperate Romantics on DVD

2010-04-20T08:40:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to my friend Edie for the heads-up on this one. Although the in/famous BBC miniseries Desperate Romantics has been available in Region 2 for some time, the DVD now has a release date for North American Region 1 format.

Be sure to pick it up on July 20th.

Help Support a Worthy Arts Project

2010-04-09T12:25:00.002-04:00

My friend, the talented film maker Lisa Stock, is working on an incredible production. She is blending the character of Titania with the Armless Maiden fairy tale, and making an amazing mythic film series. However, she needs help, support, and backing! Pledges start at just $5, and you will know that you've helped to make this beautiful project a reality.

Lisa is truly a modern mythmaker, and part of a larger community of talented artists. She supports the work of others (she has featured the amazing Linden Sidhe's antlers in her film Brother and Sister, and the Titania prequel she hopes to shoot next month will feature a wing necklace created by Jen Parrish), and deserves support for her own creative endeavors!

To donate, please go here.

Why Beauty Matters

2010-04-03T22:20:00.003-04:00

A few months ago, I was made aware of a documentary/educational program that aired on BBC called "Why Beauty Matters," an hour-long discussion of the philosophy of art and beauty with philosopher Roger Scruton. I was fascinated, captivated, and wanted quite badly to track down a way to view the show. Well, thankfully, the series is on YouTube, split into 6 ten minute segments.

And what an incredible program it is! Being enthusiastic about Beauty as a philosophy and life passion, I knew I would love this program. And although Scruton sometimes seems more rambling than absolute in his argument, I agree with everything he says in the program. Once I had heard of this program months ago, I started reading up on Scruton. I requested his book (aptly titled Beauty) from the library, and looked for articles by him online. I planned to write a rave review of his work in relation to the Pre-Raphaelites on my blog.

And then I found this article.

In it, Scruton discusses the second enemy of beauty besides ugliness....kitsch. And he says in the article:

"Look back at figurative art in the Western tradition and you will observe that, prior to the 18th century, there was primitive art, naive art, routine and decorative art, but no kitsch. Just when the phenomenon first appeared is disputable: maybe Greuze shows traces of it; maybe it had even been foreshadowed in Murillo. What is certain is that, by the time of Millet and the Pre-Raphaelites, kitsch was in the driving seat."

Wait...what?? My heart plummeted. This same philosopher whose work I so enthusiastically supported thinks of the Pre-Raphaelites as kitsch? So not only is my favorite art movement dismissed by modern art critics as too sentimental, but the philosopher who advocates a return to art for art's sake and beauty being the supreme value ALSO thinks the Pre-Raphaelites aren't worth a dime??

I was quite disappointed.

But please...watch the video. I may disagree with Scruton quite passionately in his judgment of my favorite art movement, but I wholeheartedly agree with his overall message, and the program captivated me, and even brought tears to my eyes in the end.

A few quotes I loved from the program:

"All art is absolutely useless,” wrote Oscar Wilde, who intended his remark as praise. For Wilde, beauty was a value higher than usefulness. People need useless things just as much, even more than, they need things with a use. Just think of it…what is the use of love, or friendship, of worship? None whatsoever. And the same goes for beauty.” “This returns me to Oscar Wilde’s remark that all art is absolutely useless. Put usefulness first, and you lose it. Put beauty first, and what you do will be useful forever. It turns out, nothing is more useful than the useless.”

And my favorite....

“Through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the world as a home, and in doing so, we both amplify our joys, and find consolation for our sorrows. Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us, and find consolation and peace in their presence. This capacity of beauty to redeem our suffering is one reason why beauty can be seen as a substitute for religion. Why give priority to religion? Why not say that religion is a beauty substitute? Or better still, why describe the two as rivals? The sacred and the beautiful stand side by side; two doors that open up into a single space, and in that space, we find our home.”

Awesome Rossetti Tat

2010-04-02T22:05:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Jen Parrish for giving me the heads-up on this gorgeous Rossetti backpiece tattoo.

William Morris: MIA at Target

2010-03-20T18:31:00.004-04:00

Some of you may know about this already, but one week ago tomorrow, Target premiered its new Liberty of London line of products sold exclusively in their stores and online. I got a heads-up from a friend on this new line of products (everything from bicycles to dresses, all in LoL patterns) and was eagerly anticipating the day when I could see all that was available.

I searched the website last Sunday, only to find that not only were all the prints newer style (i.e. cute but quite 60s-2000s-looking) but there was no William Morris to be seen! Liberty of London and Morris to me are synonymous, and I was shocked that they wouldn't use his patterns.

So this afternoon I went with my husband to the stores to try on some of their LoL dresses (all unflattering on me) and see what housewares they had. And in-person, I finally found a William Morris pattern.

Allow me to introduce the "Dunclare" set of canisters, size medium. Of course size small and size large both are completely unrelated black and white non-Morris patterns, and therefore I had no use for a single canister, but at least it's William Morris at Target. ONE single canister with Morris's Sunflower pattern, uncredited, in the entire Liberty of London line.

(PS: I did also find a clipboard in the office section with the Sunflower pattern on it too...to the best of my knowledge, that's it for the entire line)

I'm simultaneously giddy to see Morris at Target, and disappointed that there isn't more.

Art Nouveau

2010-03-19T22:27:00.003-04:00

Art Nouveau, the New Art, was paradoxically backward-looking, flirting with the Ancient of Days, the Sphinx, the Chimera, Venus under the Tannenberg, Persian peacocks, melusines, and Rhine maidens, along with hairy-legged Pan and draped and dangerous oriental priestesses. Some of its newness derived from the deep dream of the lost past which informed both Burne-Jones's palely loitering knights and porcelain-fine maidens, and Morris's sense of saga-scenes and bright embroidered hangings. But it was radically new also, in its use of spinning, coiling, insinuating lines derived from natural forms, its rendering in new metal of tree-shapes newly observed, its abandonment of the solid worth of gold and diamonds for the aesthetic delights of nonprecious metals and semi-precious stones, mother-of-pearl, grained wood, amethyst, coral, moonstone. It was an art at once of frozen stillness, and images of rapid movement. It was an art of shadows and glitter that understood the new force that transfigured both the exhibition and the century to come. Electricity.

--A gorgeous description of Art Nouveau and its influences, from page 273 of the novel The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, a book I'm reading very slowly, but enjoying.

Soul of the Rose Part II

2010-03-03T22:45:00.002-05:00

I apologize for my silence on this blog. Life intrudes sometimes, and distracts me from my always and forever passionate pursuit of all things Pre-Raphaelite. While you are waiting, let me distract you with something lovely.

My friend Christine subscribes to English Home magazine. In their current issue, they feature an article on home-dec fabrics where they feature the fabrics on a stunning redheaded model. This image blew me away, and I had her husband Lee scan it for me. To me, with the blue fabric and the red hair, it looks like the model from The Soul of the Rose by Waterhouse meandered past the gardens on her way back into her manor.

Click to see larger of course.

Baba Studio Strikes Again!

2010-02-22T20:39:00.003-05:00

I've featured Baba Studio before on my blog, but they've struck gold again (and always do!) with their prototype new Evelyn De Morgan wrap, and Burne-Jones corset (left model, picture 2, click picture to see larger).

Sadly, it is my understanding that they haven't successfully found a way to produce the Burne-Jones corset for available sale, but they are working on making a new line of Pre-Raphaelite high quality wraps for sale in their store soon.

Baba Studio has a really great graphic arts eye for knowing what artworks will work in what mediums, and that knowledge really shines through in this corset and wrap.

Pre-Raphaelite Tattoos

2010-02-12T11:47:00.005-05:00

I still have more to say about the Aesthetic Movement, rest assured, but today I thought I'd share a few tattoos inspired by Pre-Raphaelite and associated artists. A friend, who shall remain unnamed until her permission is obtained to share, just got a new tattoo that was apparently inspired by William Morris. The idea appealed to me so much, I wanted to search online for more Brotherhood tattoos. Surprisingly, there aren't very many!

A gorgeous tattoo inspired by William Morris:

This one is based on his Willow pattern. I love how very organic it is.

This one is based on Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market:

The below two are inspired by a William Morris poem.

LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning,

And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,

Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover

The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,

Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,

And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass'd over,

Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;

The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter

These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

by William Morris(1834-1896)

Finally, there's this incredible sleeve of Waterhouse's Ophelia:

Burne-Jones had his own opinion of the famous "tattooed lady" whom he sketched:

But I think the Brotherhood would approve of the above gorgeous tattoos!

The Oscar Wilde / Patience / Aesthetic Teapot

2010-02-03T21:33:00.004-05:00

So, lately I've been reading a lot about the late Victorian philosophical and cultural movement of Aestheticism. The definition of the movement, according to the Philosophy Dictionary is the "doctrine associated with late 19th-century writers and artists, including Walter Pater, James McNeill Whistler, and especially Oscar Wilde. It holds that the appreciation of art and beauty is the highest aim of human life, and especially that the pursuit of such experience is not constrained by ordinary moral considerations. Art itself serves no ulterior moral or political purpose. The ‘Aesthetic Movement’ was a useful reaction against the didactic religious and moral art of the time and helped artists and critics to concentrate upon the formal and internal qualities of works of art."

Although not all of the Pre-Raphaelites were Aesthetes, their art was rather central to the movement. Rossetti's penchant for purchasing blue and white china started a collecting craze, and in Burne-Jones' biography written by his wife, he lamented that sunflowers had become such a "trend" (they were a symbol of Aestheticism) and emphasized that his love for sunflowers predated the movement. The work of William Morris (and the creation of Red House) is often mentioned in articles on Aestheticism as well.

Anyway, Aestheticism and the Pre-Raphaelites were quite closely related, so this week I wanted to do a few posts on Aestheticism.

First I had to feature this famous teapot. The Oscar Wilde / Patience / Aesthetic teapot (can be found using all three search terms, but it's mostly known simply as the Aesthetic teapot) was made as a reaction to the bold and unique fashion and personality of Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetic Movement's "poster child." Any counter-cultural movement will encounter its critics and its parodies, and one form of parody was this teapot, made to resemble an Aesthetic dandy. One major criticism of Aestheticism was that it was demasculinizing, and the statement made with this teapot certainly would be viewed today as more than a little intolerant. But I have to admit, I find the man depicted on it utterly charming.

"Probably the most famous figural teapot is the "Aesthetic" teapot made in 1882. The clever, two-sided pot depicts a man on one side, a woman on the other. It was inspired by the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "Patience."

The teapot, made by the Royal Worcester pottery in England, is difficult to clean. The handle and spout made pouring tea difficult. The head was the removable cover, and the tea was poured from a hole in the figure's hand."

Written on the bottom of the teapot is the words "Fearful consequences through the laws of Natural Selection and Evolution of living up to one's Teapot."

Note the sunflower on the man's side of the teapot, and the lily on the woman's. All sorts of parodies featured the doe-eyed gazing at these flowers on the part of Aesthetes. Also note the gorgeous smocking on the woman's gown, which was often featured on Aesthetic gowns.

When I read that this teapot was not one-of-a-kind, but mass produced, I thought to myself "well perhaps I can save up and someday purchase one of them." Silly me. After some searching, I discovered a listing on Christies for a teapot that sold at auction in 2001. The final hammer price? $11,163. That would buy a lot of tea.

Pre-Raphaelite Cartoons

2010-01-29T22:41:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Art Magick for letting me post these wonderful Victorian cartoons parodying the art of some artists we may know around here.

Scene at a Hot-Whisky-and-Water House. "Now then, altogether, my piping bullfinches!" Chorus---

A caricature of Waterhouse's 'Circe' taken from an 1891 edition of 'Judy'. 'Judy' was a 19th century satirical magazine, a rival to the better known 'Punch'

A lamentation from the satirical magazine Punch upon reviewing an exhibition at London's Grosvenor Gallery.

From "The G.G.G., or Grosvenor Gallery Guide"

"Once more on our "Gee-Gee," and "yet we are not Hobby!" which might be what the kettle in the fender said to the fire-irons. Now for the G.G. (occasionally) Guy'd. We burn - burn-jones - with excitement to see what that eminent Pagan Aesthetic has to show us. We dash at the Catalogue. We rush at the Busy "B.'s" in the Index. Heavens! From "BALL" to "BYWATER" without a BURNE-JONES. Stay! Is he modestly under "J."? No. JACKLING and JOPSON - I beg their pardons, I should have JOPLING and JACKSON exhaust that portion of the alphabet between them. "What, no JONES! So he died, and she very imprudently," &c., &c.

O where, and O where is my little BURNE-JONES?
O where on earth can he be?
With his tinsel and gold and his sage-green tones,
He's not in this Galleree!

From 'Punch', June 25, 1881

Never fear, Punch found Burne-Jones the following year and came up with another pun:

'Take me, Take my trunk". By E. Burne-Jones, or 'Ty-Burn Jones' for the deadly liveliness of the figures.

Punch, May 20, 1882

Raimon Bundo's Gowns

2010-01-23T22:19:00.007-05:00

Thanks to Merle, who sent me info on this amazing designer.

Raimon Bundo is a bridal fashion company, and boy, is their work amazing. Well, most of the work I admire the most seems to be done by the designer, Ivonne Ruiz. According to the website, in slightly awkward English translation:

"They are pioneers in the use of prints on wedding dresses, which they have been doing for several collections, of which we should highlight the one inspired by the Renaissance (Renacer). His designer Ivonne Ruiz insists on illustrating some of her gowns using images of the various pre-Raphaelite painters, thus invoking the spirit of Romeo and Juliet. This group of painters (1848) were great at evoking antiquity by adopting the techniques and styles of the painters who were predecessors of Raphael."

In a recent fashion show, the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites was inarguable. First there is this gown, sent to me by Merle:

It may be hard to see, (click all pictures to enlarge, as always!!) but the bodice features Waterhouse's Windflowers.

But that's not all. The same fashion show featured a gorgeous backdrop of Burne-Jones' Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, seen below:

And the above gown also features what looks to me like a print of Rossetti's The Beloved on the bodice:

And this one looks like Rossetti's A Sea Spell:

The runway also featured gorgeous gowns not screened with images:

And elsewhere on the site, one can see other amazing fabric art gowns featuring Botticelli and other artists:

I also loved the gowns more directly inspired by Art Nouveau jewelry (especially since I just saw the exhibit featured in the last entry). These gowns below look like they could be from a Mucha painting directly:

The grand finale, however, is to view the video that plays on this page. Each gown (and jewelry!) that walks down the runway takes my breath away a little bit more, until I'm positively lightheaded from beauty.

Thank you, Merle, for sharing this dose of incredible gorgeousness with us!!

Imperishable Beauty

2010-01-21T09:51:00.005-05:00

This past Saturday, two friends and I made a return pilgrimage to the Cincinnati Art Museum for the Imperishable Beauty exhibit of Art Nouveau jewelry. I had wanted to visit this exhibit in Boston in 2008 when we were there for my honeymoon, but it didn't work out. Then the MFA Boston brought the exhibit to me! Cincinnati was the only other location for this amazing collection of exquisitely detailed jewelry.

No photographs were allowed at the Cincinnati museum, but I did catch this photo of a pearled dog collar before I realized:

Can you imagine how a dog collar like that survived to be shared today?

I also found these images from the exhibit on Flickr.

The event also featured a few Mucha posters, which my friends and I enjoyed:

(Note: These posters were in an area of items owned by Cincinnati, so photography was allowed)

But the highlight of the exhibit by far to me was my viewing of my first Morris & Co. / William Morris textile. I was giddy to see his handiwork in person for the first time.

I even posed next to my favorite pattern, Peacock and Dragon. I had no idea the pattern was so HUGE on this one! The stand said that it was made for a wall covering. If only....

Salon Romantique

2010-01-20T16:14:00.005-05:00

Recently, I noticed a few of my friends on Facebook joining a group with an intriguing name. This morning, one of the two co-founders of the group sent me a friend request, and I was able to talk to him a little more about the group.

I speak of The Salon Romantique, a group with the manifesto to...

Redefine art today with an apropos of logic
Create a new cultural movement in fine art.
Challenge the rethinking of the romantic period in a cyber realm of thought.
Bring artists together in a harmonious measure enwtined with a new spirituality of grace and form, music and light.

Or, as Francis Willey summarizes, "I am trying to bring back a new romanticism in art-create culture and grace in a cgi realm."

I'm quite enthusiastic not only about the quality of the work presented, but the concept of a new group of artists rebelling against the status quo, as we all know the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood did. The quality in the group is outstanding, featuring gorgeous art.

The group was co-founded by Francis A Willey and Mark Sink. Some of Francis' beautiful photographic work is seen below.

Host of Empyrean

Ode

A Sigh From Rosebud

The below photograph by Mark Sink still blows me away. I know it isn't a period photo, but part of me still cannot believe it.

Textile Blog's May Morris Article

2010-01-19T09:49:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Lady Hawthorne for drawing my attention to this article from the Textile Blog discussing May Morris' contribution to the textile arts.

Coming soon, a post on the Imperishable Beauty exhibit I caught in its next-to-last day at the Cincinnati Art Museum!

A Poem to Burne-Jones

2010-01-10T23:29:00.001-05:00

The Golden Age was with us while he stayed:

For the Seven Angels knew him, and their wings

Were stilled for him to paint; the Wizard Kings

Showed him the Orient treasures, which they laid

At the Infant's feet; the Courts of Love obeyed

His incantations; every Myth which brings

Light out of darkness seemed imaginings

Of God, or things that God himself had made.

O Painter of the Golden Age--return!

Earth is less fair without thee. Our sad eyes

Are wearing of a dreamless day--and night,

Duller than darkness, lit by lamps which burn

Only at earthly shrines--while Paradise,

Lost for the second time, slips out of sight.

Found in Five Great Painters of the Victorian Era, opening the section on Edward Burne-Jones. Authorship unknown.

Victorian Trading Co.

2010-01-08T22:00:00.002-05:00

The Victorian Trading Co. has offered "Pre-Raphaelite gowns" before, but I believe this style is new? Too much for my budget, but a pretty gown nonetheless.

Give Me Liberty of London

2010-01-07T10:00:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Robin for letting me know about this! MAC's new line of cosmetics is called Give Me Liberty of London, named after the famous textile house, and all items in the line feature a charming design...based on William Morris' Strawberry Thief! When the line comes to the U.S., I definitely want to get something...perhaps a makeup bag or a lipstick.

New Year, New You, Old Art

2010-01-06T12:17:00.003-05:00

I have a small handful of post ideas brewing for TBN, but sometimes something jumps up to the top of the pile. One of my unspoken (well, not anymore!) New Years Resolutions is to be more bold in my appearance, be willing to be the 20 year-old again who wasn't afraid of anyone's opinion of what she wore. So when I was cataloging magazines today and came across this article in the current Oprah Magazine, I was inspired.

I had a hard time making myself look like Cheryl Tiegs on the cover of Seventeen magazine: Unlike Tiegs, I had flappy ears, chubby cheeks, tiny lips, and virtually no eyelids or eyebrows—all of which made me look more like the Parisian ladies of the evening in a 1930s Brassaï photograph than a California-blonde cover girl.

The gulf between the reality of my looks and the cultural ideal only widened when I began to work in the fashion industry. Early on, I decided to ignore the industry's dictates—so stifling, unattainable, judgmental—and make my own rules. I had long admired women with strong signature looks—Anna Piaggi, Diana Vreeland, Isabella Blow—for whom the fashion world seemed to make an exception. And I found myself reaching far outside the box for role models: to the women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings (those floaty clothes suited my physique far better than jeans and a T-shirt); to silent-movie heroines (their pale complexions were easy for me to replicate); even to Victorian dolls (whose round faces and rosebud mouths reminded me of me).

Inspired, I started experimenting. The copper henna I threw on my head to give my hair a quirky tint was a miracle—coating my limp bob and making it bouncier than I'd ever dreamed possible. And maybe there was nothing to be done for my abbreviated lids, but I could work wonders with my lips, exaggerating them into a dark Kewpie-doll shape that, unlike eyeshadow, suited me to perfection.

People have asked how I get the courage to walk the streets in, say, a shredded Comme des Garçons coat over a tutu, with metallic orange hair. I owe my confidence at least in part to my parents, who were convinced I was the cutest thing on Earth and told me so every single day. (Recently, seeing my reflection at a party, I could almost hear my mom saying, "Lynnie, you look so pretty!")

Though some of my more extreme choices have provoked laughter or incredulity, I also get more compliments than I could have imagined. This may be because I live in New York City, where a certain level of eccentricity is appreciated. But I like to believe that no matter where I lived, people would come to respect—maybe even like! admire!—the steps I've taken to create my own nutty, undeniably unique, and for me, deeply satisfying, look.

Antoon Van Wely

2010-01-05T09:06:00.003-05:00

A recent post on a Live Journal group for Art Nouveau made me aware of this artist. In the post, brotherinbeauty writes:

"Arts & Crafts, and the Pre-Raphaelites were the breeding ground of Art Nouveau.
The serene and ethereal look of the women painted by the pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Edward Coley Burne-Jones echoed in the expressions of Art Nouveau women in the next decades. A Dutch painter who was very much influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was Antoon van Wely. His qualities were international recognized, exept (typical Dutch) in his own country. Here are some examples of his work."

Bluebeard: A Fairy Tale

2010-01-03T23:21:00.003-05:00

This past Tuesday, my friend Roger (who plays Bluebeard) and photographer Frank Tuttle and I gathered at the Viking-themed carriage house of photographer Eddval. I thought it would be fun to do a few fairy tale - themed photo shoots, and when I dropped by Sur La Lune for inspiration, I thought of Roger as soon as I saw Bluebeard on the list. So we did these pictures.

One major source of inspiration was the fairy tale tile work of Edward Burne-Jones. And of course the Pre-Raphaelites in general!!

Click here to see the entire fairy tale set of images.