Brett’s Portraits

The Barber Institute at the University of Birmingham currently have an exhibition, Objects of Affection, of John Brett’s “Pre-Raphaelite” portraits. Brett, usually only really thought of as a landscape artist, produced a wide range of portraits, many of which seem to be of people he was emotionally engaged with – family and friends, or women with whom he was infatuated. In many ways he is an impressive portraitist: his clarity of conception combined minute attention to detail and texture (familiar from his landscapes) make him a sensitive painter of portraits.

The pencil sketches included in this exhibition are particularly fine – especially as he seems to use his drawing techniques to demonstrate his romantic attachments, concentrating on the eyes and facial expressions of his sitters as well as his Pre-Raphaelite attention to the fall and sheen of fabrics, to patterns and to symbolic backgrounds. For Brett, there’s no doubt that portraiture is an intimate mode, offering a side of him not seen in his landscapes – although, as Waldemar Januszczak suggests in today’s Sunday Times, he is certainly more consistent as a landscape painter.

Of course, for me the focus of the exhibition had to be his unfinished 1857 portrait of Christina Rossetti (right) (currently on posters all over Birmingham advertising the exhibition, which pleases me!) There is much speculation about Brett’s potential courtship of Rossetti, and Jan Marsh has suggested that the 1858 poem “No, Thank you, John”, is Rossetti’s rejection of his suit. This might explain why the portrait was never finished; but it remains one of the most beautiful portraits of Rossetti, I think; her deep seriousness and glossy hair may give her the face of a medieval angel, but there is a determination around the set mouth which demonstrates a strong character, and the eyes, appropriately, seem focussed on a heavenly horizon. The exhibition notes suggest that the feather which appears in the background may refer either to her recent poem “My heart is like a singing bird”, or represent a quill as a reference to her poetry. Whatever the relationship between Brett and Rossetti (and whatever his feelings, it is extremely unlikely that she seriously considered him as a potential husband), nonetheless the portrait speaks of affection and trust between the artist and the sitter.

Twenty years of the Pre-Raphaelite Society

The Pre-Raphaelite Society is celebrating 20 years since it began in Birmingham. Since it began, the PRS has followed its aims of “the celebration of the mood and style of art which Ruskin recognised and preserved by his writings, and to the observation of its wide-ranging influence. In co-operation with societies of similar aims world-wide, it seeks to commemorate Pre-Raphaelite ideals by means of meetings, conferences, discussions, publications and correspondence, and to draw attention to significant scholastic work in this field. First and foremost, however, it is a society in which individuals can come together to enjoy the images and explore the personalities of the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers through the medium of fine art, the appreciation of good design and the excellence of the traditional arts.”

We have celebrated our 20th anniversary with a conference, “Eminent Pre-Raphaelites”, in Birmingham this summer, with a cake at the AGM, dinners and teas, and finally with a celebratory issue of the Review, consisting of contributions from well-known names such as Jan Marsh, Paul Barlow, Angela Thirlwell, Anne Anderson, Benedict Read and Paul Goldman, featuring the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Ancient Landscapes, Pastoral Visions

This exhibition, at Falmouth Art Gallery, was curated by Anne Anderson, whose work on the Brotherhood of Ruralists has recently caught my attention. This exhibition features Samuel Palmer, who in the 1820s turned his back on London and the urban scene to consider the countryside instead, surrounded by ‘The Ancients’, likeminded painters with a “back to nature” ethic. As the exhibition blurb points out, in the 1920s the painter Graham Sutherland did something similar, and in 1975 the Brotherhood of Ruralists (a name with a self-conscious echo of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) did something similar, retiring to Bodmin to paint, as did the PRB, “truth to nature”.
This exhibition combines the work of all of these painters, together with some wonderful Blake etchings. Indeed, Sutherland’s “Pastoral” (1930) is an etching which is remarkably resonant of Blake, in which the trees appear as if they could at any moment reincarnate themselves as monsters – the Gothic menace of nature is all around in this exhibition, whether more obviously, such as in Sutherland’s “Green Tree Form” (1940), left, where the tree seems to have an animal life, or hidden in the pastel fantasy of Graham Ovenden’s “Spring Morning, Wiltshire” (1984).
I was particularly taken with Robin Tanner’s “Christmas 1929″, a wintry village scene which manages to be both homely, familiar and comforting, and sinister, as though menace lurks in the rural hamlet. Indeed, there is a fairytale aspect to many of these paintings and drawings – perhaps when people concentrate on nature to such an extent, it becomes something quite other than what we first think it is. And the idea that nature is pastoral, calm, and even our right to appreciate, is one of town-dwellers, I suspect – “Nature red in tooth and claw” is much more the real thing.
Sir Peter Blake, acolyte of the Ruralists, only features once, with a print entitled “Faery”, which is simply a long-haired, naked girl in a field, but again there is something unsettling about this child apparently at one with nature – something in her eyes or stance, perhaps.
The common thread here is the engagement with the rural landscape, but it is a very mixed collection: many of the exhibits are very much of their time, displaying contemporary influences, and while some have a photographic precision (such as most of Graham Ovenden’s works), others seem largely representative (Paul Nash’s “Druid Landscape”, for example), and others more impressionistic. But there is much here to admire, and much to think about.