Mysterious Art Century

The Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais’s parents’ house on Gower Street, London in 1848. At the first meeting, the painters John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt were present. Hunt and Millais were students at the Royal Academy of Arts and had met in another loose association, the Cyclographic Club, a sketching society. At his own request Rossetti became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown in 1848. At that date, Rossetti and Hunt shared lodgings in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, Central London.

As an aspiring poet, Rossetti wished to develop the links between Romantic poetry and art. By autumn, four more members, painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, Rossetti’s brother, poet and critic William Michael Rossetti, and sculptor Thomas Woolner, had joined to form a seven-member-strong brotherhood.

Ideology

The brotherhood’s early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations:
– to have genuine ideas to express;
– to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
– to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;
– to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

The principles were deliberately non-dogmatic, since the brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced by Romanticism, the members thought freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles of realism which stress the independent observation of nature. In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and moved in two directions. The realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalists were led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and Impressionism.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was greatly influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp-focus techniques on a white canvas. In attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found in Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground in the hope that the colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity. Their emphasis on brilliance of colour was a reaction to the excessive use of bitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds, David Wilkie and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of muddy darkness, an effect the Pre-Raphaelites despised.

In 1848, Rossetti and Hunt made a list of “Immortals”, artistic heroes whom they admired, especially from literature, some of whose work would form subjects for PRB paintings, notably including Keats and Tennyson.

First Exhibition

The first exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite work occurred in 1849. Both Millais’s Isabella (1848-1849) and Holman Hunt’s Rienzi (1848-1849) were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Rossetti’s Girlhood of Mary Virgin was shown at a Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner. As agreed, all members of the brotherhood signed their work with their name and the initials “PRB”.

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Between January and April 1850, the group published a literary magazine, The Germ edited by William Rossetti which published poetry by the Rossettis, Woolner, and Collinson and essays on art and literature by associates of the brotherhood, such as Coventry Patmore. As the short run-time implies, the magazine did not manage to achieve sustained momentum.

Controversy

In 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood became the subject of controversy after the exhibition of Millais’ painting Christ in the House of His Parents was considered to be blasphemous by many reviewers, notably Charles Dickens. Dickens considered Millais’ Mary to be ugly. Millais had used his sister-in-law, Mary Hodgkinson, as the model for Mary in his painting. The brotherhood’s medievalism was attacked as backward-looking and its extreme devotion to detail was condemned as ugly and jarring to the eye. According to Dickens, Millais made the Holy Family look like alcoholics and slum-dwellers, adopting contorted and absurd “medieval” poses.

After the controversy, Collinson left the brotherhood and the remaining members met to discuss whether he should be replaced by Charles Allston Collins or Walter Howell Deverell, but were unable to make a decision. From that point the group disbanded, though its influence continued. Artists who had worked in the style initially continued but no longer signed works “PRB”.

Effie Gray

John Ruskin wrote the fantasy novel The King of the Golden River for Gray in 1841, when she was 12 and he was 21. Gray’s family knew Ruskin’s father and encouraged a match between the two when she had matured. She ended up marrying Ruskin, after an initially unsteady courtship, when she was 20 years old on 10 April 1848.

During their honeymoon, they travelled to Venice, where Ruskin was doing research for his book The Stones of Venice. While in Perth, Scotland, they lived at Bowerswell, the Gray family home, and site of their wedding. It had, coincidentally, previously been the home of Ruskin’s paternal grandparents. In 1817, Ruskin’s mother, Margaret, during her engagement to Ruskin’s father, had stayed at Bowerswell and was witness to three tragic deaths within its walls in quick succession (Ruskin’s grandmother, grandfather and newborn cousin). This caused her to develop a severe phobia of the place, keeping her from attending her son’s wedding to Effie.

Effie and Ruskin’s different personalities were thrown into sharp relief by their contrasting priorities. For Effie, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise while Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. In particular, he made a point of drawing the Ca’ d’Oro and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), because he feared they would soon be destroyed by the occupying Austrian troops. One of the troops, Lieutenant Charles Paulizza, made friends with Effie, apparently with no objection from Ruskin. Her brother, among others, later claimed that Ruskin was deliberately encouraging the friendship in order to compromise her, as an excuse to separate.

When she met John Everett Millais five years later, she was still a virgin. Ruskin had persistently put off consummating the marriage. Gray and Ruskin had agreed upon abstaining from sex for five years to allow Ruskin to focus on his studies. Another reason involved his apparent disgust with some aspect of her body.

While married to Ruskin, she modelled for Millais’ painting The Order of Release, in which she was depicted as the loyal wife of a Scottish rebel who has secured his release from prison. She then became close to Millais when he accompanied the couple on a trip to Scotland in order to paint Ruskin’s portrait according to the critic’s artistic principles. During this time, spent in Brig o’ Turk in the Trossachs, they fell in love. While working on the portrait of her husband, Millais made many drawings and sketches of her.

After their return to London, she left Ruskin, nominally to visit her family. She sent back her wedding ring with a note announcing her intention to file for an annulment. With the support of her family and a number of influential friends, she pursued the case, causing a public scandal and their marriage was annulled on the grounds of ‘incurable impotency’ in 1854. In 1855, she married Millais.

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Millais began to move away from the Pre-Raphaelite style after his marriage, and Ruskin ultimately attacked his later works. Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti and provided funds to encourage the art of Elizabeth Siddall, Rossetti’s wife. By 1853 the original PRB had virtually dissolved but the term “Pre-Raphaelite” stuck.

Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddall developed a love of poetry at a young age, after discovering a poem by Tennyson, which served as inspiration to start writing her own poems.
Siddall showed her own drawings to Walter Deverell’s father in 1849, while she was working at a dressmakers and millinery shop in Cranbourne Alley, London. Deverell’s father suggested that she should model for Walter. She was employed as a model by Deverell and through him was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelites.
Though she was later touted for her beauty, Siddall was originally chosen as a model because of her plainness. At the time, Deverell was working on a large oil painting depicting a scene from Twelfth Night, showing Orsino, Feste, and Viola as Cesario. This was the first painting for which Siddall sat.

in 1852, Elizabeth Siddal was only 19 years old when she modelled for Ophelia. Millais produced the painting in two separate stages: He first painted the landscape, and secondly the figure of Ophelia.
For the figure, Millais had Siddal lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street in London. As it was now winter, he placed oil lamps under the tub to warm the water. On one occasion the lamps went out and the water became icy cold. Millais, absorbed by his painting, did not notice and Siddall did not complain. After this she became very ill with a severe cold or pneumonia. Her father held Millais responsible and, under the threat of legal action, Millais paid her doctor’s bills.

Elizabeth Siddall was the primary model and muse for Dante Gabriel Rossetti throughout most of his youth. Rossetti met her in 1849, when she was modelling for Deverell. By 1851, she was sitting for Rossetti and he began to paint her to the exclusion of almost all other models. Rossetti also stopped her from modelling for the other Pre-Raphaelites.

Siddall and Rossetti were married on Wednesday, 23 May 1860 at St. Clement’s Church in the seaside town of Hastings. There were no family or friends present, just a couple of witnesses whom they had asked in Hastings. As Siddall came from a working-class family, Rossetti feared introducing her to his parents. Siddall was the victim of harsh criticism from his sisters. Knowledge that his family would not approve the marriage contributed to Rossetti putting it off. Siddall appears to have believed, with some justification, that Rossetti was always seeking to replace her with a younger muse, which contributed to her later depressive periods and illness.

At the time of her wedding, she was so frail and ill that she had to be carried to the church, despite it being a five-minute walk from where she was staying. It was thought that she suffered from tuberculosis, but some historians believe an intestinal disorder was more likely. Others have suggested she might have been anorexic while others attribute her poor health to an addiction to laudanum or a combination of ailments. She became severely depressed and her long illness gave her access to laudanum to which she became addicted. In 1861, Siddall became pregnant, which ended with the birth of a stillborn daughter. The death of her child left Siddall with a post-partum depression. She became pregnant for a second time in late 1861.

Siddall overdosed on laudanum in February 1862. Rossetti discovered her unconscious and lying in bed after having had dinner with her and his friend Algernon Charles Swinburne. After having taken Siddall home, Rossetti attended his usual teaching job at the Working Men’s College. Once Rossetti returned home from teaching, he found Siddall unconscious and was unable to revive her. The first doctor Rossetti called claimed to be unable to save her, upon which Rossetti sent for another three doctors. A stomach pump was used, but to no avail. She died at 7.20 a.m. on 11 February 1862 at their home at 14 Chatham Place, now demolished and covered by Blackfriars Station. Although her death was ruled accidental by the coroner, there are suggestions that Rossetti found a suicide note, with the words “Please look after Harry” (her invalid brother, who may have had a slight intellectual disability), supposedly “pinned … on the breast of her night-shirt.” Consumed with grief and guilt Rossetti went to see Ford Madox Brown who is supposed to have instructed him to burn the note, since suicide was illegal, immoral, would have brought scandal on the family and barred Siddall from a Christian burial.

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Annie Miller

As a result, Hunt finally broke off the engagement in 1859. Thereafter Boyce and Rossetti competed for sittings with her with Rossetti usually winning, though this caused Rossetti’s wife Elizabeth Siddal on one occasion to throw his drawings of Annie out of the window.
After Hunt broke off the engagement, Annie sought help from Ranelagh, who suggested to her that she should sue Hunt for breach of promise, but eventually Ranelagh’s first cousin, Captain Thomas Thomson, fell in love with her. They married on 23 July 1863

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Fanny Cornforth

Cornforth met Rossetti in 1856, and became his model and mistress in the absence of Elizabeth Siddall whom Rossetti married in 1860. Many biographers presumed Siddall disliked Cornforth, but there is no proof that she even knew of her existence. Cornforth’s first role was as to model the head of the principal figure in the painting Found, which she later described, saying he “put my head against the wall and drew it for the head of the calf picture”.

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Three months after Rossetti’s wedding Cornforth married mechanic Timothy Hughes, but the relationship was short-lived. The couple separated. It is not known for certain when she adopted the name “Fanny Cornforth”, but Cornforth was the name of her first husband’s stepfather.

After Siddall’s death in 1862, Cornforth moved into the widowed Rossetti’s home as his housekeeper. The affair between them lasted until Rossetti’s death. For much of the time Rossetti was engaged in an off-and-on relationship with Jane Morris who was married to his colleague, William Morris. Their relationship was not made public but his relationship with Cornforth was.

Cornforth came from the lower/rural working class of English society. Her coarse accent and lack of education shocked Rossetti’s friends and family. Rossetti’s brother William Michael Rossetti praised her beauty, but said “she had no charm of breeding, education, or intellect”. Many never accepted her and pressured Rossetti to end the affair. Over the course of their relationship, Cornforth gained weight. Much has been made of this by biographers, but the growing girths of both Rossetti and Cornforth was a mutual joke. His pet name for her was “My Dear Elephant” and she called him “Rhino”. When they were apart, he drew cartoons of elephants and sent them to her, often signing himself “Old Rhinocerous”.

After Rossetti’s health started to decline seriously, his family became more directly involved in his life. Cornforth was forced to leave Rossetti’s house in 1877. Rossetti paid for a house for her nearby, writing to her “You are the only person whom it is my duty to provide for, and you may be sure I should do my utmost as long as there was a breath in my body or a penny in my purse.” He gave her several of his paintings, ensuring that her legal ownership was documented.

Cornforth’s estranged husband died in 1872. While separated from Rossetti, she became involved with John Schott, a publican from a family of actors. Schott divorced his first wife, who was already living in a bigamous marriage with another man, to marry her. He married Fanny almost immediately after the divorce, in November 1879. The couple ran the Rose tavern in Jermyn Street, Westminster, London. Cornforth nevertheless repeatedly returned to Rossetti to nurse him, accompanying him to Cumbria in 1881. After Rossetti’s death, she and her husband opened a Rossetti gallery in 1883 to sell some of the works she owned. Her husband John died in 1891, after which she lived with her stepson Frederick. During this period she was visited by Rossetti collector Samuel Bancroft, who was able to buy paintings and other memorabilia from her. Her correspondence with Bancroft is held as part of the collection at the Delaware Art Museum.

After the death of her stepson in 1898, she moved back to Sussex to stay with her husband’s family. By 1905 she was apparently suffering from dementia, and was being cared for by her sister-in-law, the actress Rosa Villiers, who put her in the Workhouse in West Sussex against her will. On 30 March 1907 she was admitted to the West Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, the records of which state that she was suffering from “senile mania, confusion, weak-mindedness and an inability to sustain a rational conversation, a poor memory and sleeplessness.” She remained at the asylum for the rest of her life. After a fall that broke her arm in September 1907 she began to decline and contracted bronchitis in September 1908. On 24 February 1909 she died of pneumonia aged 74.

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Jane Morris

In October 1857, Burden and her sister Elizabeth, known as Bessie, attended a performance of the Drury Lane Theatre Company in Oxford. Jane Burden was noticed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones who were members of a group of artists painting the Oxford Union murals, based on Arthurian tales. Struck by her beauty, they asked her to model for them. Burden sat mostly for Rossetti as a model for Queen Guinevere and afterwards for William Morris, who was working on an easel painting, La Belle Iseult, now in the Tate Gallery. During this period, Morris fell in love with Burden and they became engaged, though by her own admission she was not in love with Morris.

Burden’s education was limited, and she probably was destined to go into domestic service like her mother. After her engagement, she was privately educated to become a gentleman’s wife. Her keen intelligence allowed her to recreate herself. She was a voracious reader who became proficient in French and Italian, and she became an accomplished pianist with a strong background in classical music. Her manners and speech became refined to an extent that contemporaries referred to her as “queenly.” She also became a skilled needlewoman, self-taught in ancient embroidery techniques, and later became renowned for her own embroideries.

Jane married William Morris at St Michael at the Northgate in Oxford on 26 April 1859. After the marriage, the Morrises moved to the quasi-medieval Red House in Bexleyheath, Kent. While living there, they had two daughters, Jane Alice “Jenny,” born January 17th, 1861, and Mary “May” born March 25th, 1862, who later edited her father’s works.
They moved to 26 Queen Square in London, which they shared with the design firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., and later bought Kelmscott House in Hammersmith as their main residence. Although Jane, her daughters Jenny and May, and her sister Bessie all supervised and embroidered for Morris & Co., credit for the designs were given to William Morris himself “in the interests of commercial success.” The three embroidered panels depicting the illustrious women of Chaucer and Tennyson’s writing now at Castle Howard were produced by Jane and Bessie in the 1880s.

In 1871, William Morris and Rossetti took out a joint tenancy on Kelmscott Manor on the Gloucestershire–Oxfordshire–Wiltshire borders. William Morris went to Iceland, leaving his wife and Rossetti to furnish the house and spend the summer there. Jane Morris had become closely attached to Rossetti and became a favorite muse of his. Their romantic relationship is reputed to have started in 1865 and lasted, on differing levels, until his death in 1882. They shared a deep emotional connection, and she inspired Rossetti to write poetry and create some of his best paintings. Her discovery of his dependence on the drug, chloral hydrate, which was taken for insomnia, eventually led her to distance herself from him, although they stayed in touch until he died in 1882.

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Alexa Wilding

By the time of her association with Rossetti, she was living with an aunt and working as a dressmaker with ambitions of becoming an actress.

Wilding was first seen by Rossetti in 1865, when she was walking one evening along the Strand. He was immediately impressed by her beauty. She agreed to sit for him the following day for a proposed painting of Aspecta Medusa, but failed to arrive as planned; it is possible that she was put off by the morally dubious reputation of models at that time. Weeks went by, and Rossetti had given up the idea of the painting he had in mind, so important did he consider the look of this specific model to it, when he spotted her again in the street. He jumped from the cab he was in and persuaded her to be led straight back to his studio. He paid her a weekly fee to sit for him exclusively, afraid that other artists might also employ her. The two shared a lasting bond; after Rossetti’s death in 1882, Wilding, though not particularly financially well off, was said to have travelled to place a wreath on his grave in Birchington-on-Sea.

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Maria Zambaco

Familiar within the circles of the Pre-Raphaelites for her dark red hair and pale skin, her most notable modelling was for artist Edward Burne-Jones. She also sat as a model for James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In 1860, she frightened off her first admirer, George du Maurier, who called her ‘rude and unapproachable but of great talent and a really wonderful beauty’. Instead she married Dr Zambaco in 1860, initially living with him in France. She had a son and a daughter by him. The marriage was not a success and she moved back to live with her mother in London in 1866.

Burne-Jones first met her in 1866, when her mother commissioned him to paint her as Cupid and Psyche, and they had an affair which lasted until at least January 1869 and they stayed in contact after. In Georgiana Burne-Jones’s The Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, the affair is not mentioned but the years 1868-1871 are described as ‘Heart, thou and I here, sad and alone’ (from John Keats’s poem: Why Did I Laugh Tonight?). In 1869, Edward Burne-Jones attempted to leave his wife for her, which caused a great scandal. Maria entreated him to commit suicide with her by laudanum overdose by the canal in Little Venice and the police had to be called.

After they broke up, Maria continued to appear in Burne-Jones’ paintings as a sorceress or a temptress, such as in his last major work of her, The Beguiling of Merlin (1872–1877), and the controversial Phyllis and Demophoön (1870), which was removed from display at the Royal Watercolour Society.

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Read also:
Best Pre-Raphaelites Paintings
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
The Lady of Shalott

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