Inspired by artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s passion for wombats, every Friday is Wombat Friday at Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. “The Wombat is a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness!” – Dante Gabriel Rossetti Thaddeus Fern Diogones Wombat is a willing assistant here at Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. Sure, he can be easily distracted and he has a tendency…
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Did you know Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais wrote song lyrics? To Psyche “O Psyche, what a chance thou lost When Cupid was thy swain! Thou mightst have cut his tiny wongs Too close to grow again, And cast his quiver far away, His crimson roses shorn Of cruel barbs, and left…
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Sir John Everett Millais’ painting The Woodman’s Daughter is based on a poem by Coventry Patmore. When first exhibited in 1851, this excerpt of the poem accompanied the work: She went merely to think she help’d; And, whilst he hack’d and saw’d, The rich Squire’s son, a young boy then, Whole mornings, as if awed,…
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Happy Birthday to William Shakespeare, born on this day in 1564. Today is also the anniversary of the Bard’s death. Dare I say it? Dying on your birthday is a dramatically Shakespearean thing to do. When a young group of artists founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 they drew up a list of ‘Immortals’, made…
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In Modern Painters, John Ruskin urged artists to “go to nature in all singleness of heart… rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth.” The Pre-Raphaelites and their followers took this advice to heart. In Millais’ Ophelia, for example, we can see…
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‘The Grey Lady’ (1883) is an interesting work by Millais in which we see the ghost of a murdered woman. The staircase was taken from St. Mary’s Tower, Birnam, a building that has since been demolished but you can see photographs of it here taken in 1963. The artist’s son described the work in The…
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I think Sir John Everett Millais’ painting Speak! Speak! is a perfect Pre-Raphaelite image to share on Halloween. The ghost of a bride appears to her love. He reaches out to her, urging her to speak. It’s a haunting image and the concept had been on the artist’s mind for forty years before he…
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I am honored and excited to be in the current issue of Shakespeare Magazine. Huge thank you to editor Pat Reid for publishing my article on Elizabeth Siddal and Ophelia. It’s a gorgeous issue! Read it free online You can follow Shakespeare Magazine on Facebook and Twitter. Visit ShakespeareMagazine.com
If you’re interested in studying the Victorian era seriously, then diaries and letters are important. At times I feel like a 21st-century snoop, devouring personal journals and private correspondence whenever I get the chance. Through contemporary accounts, the past may not always come alive but it shines through the mist more clearly. The diaries of…
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An important hallmark of Pre-Raphaelite art is truth to nature. Of course, there are many reasons why the art of the Pre-Raphaelites is so visually striking. Their subject matter often illustrates a compelling narrative, the vibrant hues they used results in a visually arresting effect that commands attention, and who can resist the beauty of…
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Truth to nature was one of the main tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and an excellent example of this can be seen in the Death’s Head moth in William Holman Hunt’s painting The Hireling Shepherd (above). I’ve blogged about it many times before; it’s part of my Shakespeare post that I share yearly on the…
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Last week I posted Evelyn De Morgan’s Hope in a Prison of Despair (seen above) on the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Facebook page. A happy byproduct of sharing things on the Pre-Raph Sisterhood Facebook page is that when people comment, like, or share the post, it pops up in my own feed again. I noticed that the…
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Many people hear about Elizabeth Siddal through dramatic anecdotes of her life, such as the serious illness she suffered as a result of posing in a bathtub for Sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (above). In 1860 she married artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and died a mere two years later of a laudanum overdose. The fact…
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I have added a few new screenshots to the Pre-Raphaelite Sightings page from the 1964 movie Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Seen above is the opening scene which features William Morris ‘Willow Bough’ patterned wallpaper in the background. This wallpaper was designed by Morris in 1887. Seance on a Wet Afternoon is a rather dark…
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Sir William Richmond, R.A. had this to say about Millais’ painting The Eve of St. Agnes and the innovative nature of Millais’ work: “Millais’ literary sympathies were with Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, and lastly, Louis Stevenson. He loved anecdote and story as well as the literary embodiment of character; but I question if philosophical problem had much…
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“I do not know exactly where to place a class of drawings for which Edward was famous in our closest circle. We called them “Bogey drawings”, and they dealt fearlessly with the fearful subject. We shuddered and laughed as we saw the old fears of our childhood embodied in the march of a Bogey up…
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In a post a few years ago, I said that my love of Pre-Raphaelite art probably stems from my lifelong love of stories. Much of the Pre-Raphaelites’ work presents a narrative often inspired by literature and myth. I have noticed recently that a number of Victorian artworks are not just the telling of a story,…
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I’m particularly happy to welcome Autumn this year, with its crisp breezes and the promise of adventure. Autumn Leaves, painted by Sir John Everett Millais, is a wonderful example of the beauty I find in the season. It is an impressive example of a Pre-Raphaelite twilight and Millais has captured an unmistakable Autumn glow. His…
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Upon the death of Charles Dickens in 1870, the artist John Everett Millais traveled to Gad’s Hill Place to make a sketch of the novelist in state. In The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, the artist’s son states that while he only intended to make a slight outline drawing, he was overcome…
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The sum total of our greatest fears is the death of the self or someone we love. Since the beginning of time, humans have had the need to not only understand concepts of life, death, and love, but to personify them artistically. When we depict life and death in such a way, it is an…
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On the eighth of June in 1829, Sir John Everett Millais was born. His artistic talent was obvious from a young age and he was the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools at age eleven. Millais was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and his early Pre-Raphaelite works are shining examples of…
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Above is Sir John Everett Millais’ painting Mariana, which I’ve blogged about before in this post. Her dress is bluer than blue, the stained glass is exquisite, but let us have a moment of silence for the little mouse who died for Millais to include him in the work. “But where was the mouse to…
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These pre-shrunk Gildan brand shirts feature an image of Elizabeth Siddal at an easel, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Buy yours today! Thank you for supporting PreRaphaeliteSisterhood.com. You can also follow on Twitter and Facebook.