Delaware Art Museum: The Pre-Raphaelites (Highlights)

 I share something from every visit, and so this time I'm keeping it brief and only identifying 4 works.  Also, I'm reaching out beyond works on canvas to show off some of the other forms of art that are part of this expansive collection.

But first, a super quick tutorial on the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.  It began to formalize itself at the end of 1848 when a group of friends and acquaintances who were artists and poets and writers formally rejected the carefully developed rules and expectations of their contemporary canon as maintained by the Royal Academy of Art, among other national institutions.  The original group of seven men christened themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  In rejecting the status quo, they adopted what they believed to be a freer style where nature and the natural world rose in value and idealistic themes of valor and romance entwined with stories from the Bible, Arthurian Legends, Myths and even Shakespearean settings.  The movement was not long lived, but the ideals behind it continued to expand and evolve into all sorts of directions and media.

What began as a brotherhood, soon found itself with a wide range of sisters who took up the ideals.  What was a works on paper sort of movement (painting and writing) quickly diversified to include all manner of ornamental and utilitarian creations from Wallpaper and Fabric designs to Glassware and Jewelry, from furniture to pottery to stained-glass, to arguably even architecture.  The desire to be original, to discover something pure, worthy of admiration is not new.  However, I wonder when such a motivation has influenced so many others (whether we even realize it or not) in the history of modern art?  Just the start of a conversation...some day.

"The Waterfall," 1853

- John Everette Millais (1829 - 1896)

I must confess that I just LOVE this painting.  Millais was a founding member of the Brotherhood.  On this day, early into its existence, he and his wife have traveled north to Scotland to spend time with the writer and philosopher, John Ruskin and his wife.  Ruskin was quite taken with the ideals of the Pre-Raphaelites to the tune of actually bankrolling some of the projects.  In this painting by Millais with see Effie (Ephemia) Ruskin sitting among the rocks at a little waterfall's edge.  What is not initially apparent is the manner in which Millais paints the rocks.  Not with a harsh rigidity that seeks to copy carefully every bump and crack.  No.  His rocks are much more organic.  They seem to also glow.  AND they feel like additional characters in a conversation with Ruskin's wife.  It is an intentional melding of nature with humanity...a tenet of the movement's "raison d'etre."  

"Vase with Horses," c. 1902
- Florence C. Roberts (c. 1879 - 1930)

I look at this vase and I am immediately drawn to Art Deco and the works of legendary North American Pottery mills like Rookwood in Cincinnati or Van Bruggle in Colorado.  You just can't get to "B" without "A".

"The Octopus (Death of a Mermaid)," 1929

- Ernestine Evens Mills (1871 - 1959)

"Noah," 1874 (1st manufactured in 1909)
- Edward Burne Jones (1833 - 1898)

A total testament to the enduring love of the creativity of the Pre-Raphaelites that even 11 years after his death, a design by Edward Burne Jones would be resurrected and finally created.