Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at Tate Britain

Writing about Tate’s Pre-Raphaelite exhibition (Victorian Avant-Garde) has proven frustratingly difficult for me- ironically, rather like the exhibition itself.

So, just to be perverse, I’m going to look at a painting not in the exhibition itself, but in the Tate- Millais’ The Knight Errant (on the Tate’s website here: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-the-knight-errant-n01508).

So this is tagged as a pre-raphaelite, and by a member of the PRB- so why isn’t it in this exhibition? This question (to which I don’t know the answer) highlights the difficulty of this new exhibition. It shows work by the PRB members (except when it doesn’t), and the art on show is pre-raphaelite in style (except when it’s not). It’s a slice of the PRB by lofty Victorian themes rather than a story of the brothers.

And, it mostly works. The themes are pretty loose, but it does let the art play off each other and the info is kept to a compact minimum. The art comes off as surprisingly shocking- a garish blast of colour (Holman Hunt), size (Burne-Jones), gilded frames and poetry (Rossetti), along with the sentimental, the slightly amateurish and the highly personal. The style is always going to excite joy or revulsion- personally, I like it with my Marmite on toast.

I felt the exhibition really comes alive in the last couple of rooms- I find Morris’ work constantly interesting, and the massive carpet and May Morris’ bed embroidery were highlights. I also can’t get enough of the massive later works of Burne-Jones, and it’s fantastic to see King Cophetua in the same room as Perseus.

On the down side, I’m not sure the exhibition shows us what pre-raphaelitism actually is, compared to other 19th century paintings. If you come with no PRB knowledge, you’ll probably go away with a good idea of what their work looks like, but not necessarily how or why. Likewise, if you already know the stories well, this will only illustrate and not add to them. If you know a bit about the brotherhood and associates though, then this exhibition will give you a lot. Also, the exhibition book’s fine essays do fill in the scholarly holes missing from the exhibition itself, particularly about the techniques.

I think the premise, that the PRB were avant-garde (at least early on) is a sound one. What is good to see is a thematic, questioning approach to the choice of display- it is a slice of the 19th century visual arts rather than a beginning to end survey of the PRB.

Is this a defining exhibition of the pre-raphaelites for this generation? Probably not, but the questions, juxtapositions and frustrations exposed may well be.