Art + History: The Third of May 1808 (1814) by Francisco Goya

Paul Glenshaw is one of the premier storytellers at the Smithsonian Institution; his Art + History series serving as proof of that assertion. I have previously reported on his skills in recounting his description of The Gross Clinic and I evidenced them again in his recent presentation on The Third of May 1808, Francisco Goya's iconic 1814 painting. 

The Third of May, 1814
Francisco Goya

The subject work was created in Madrid in 1814, went into storage in the Prado in 1834, and had its first known public display therein in 1872. The painting depicts the execution of individuals who participated in a May 2nd (1808) uprising against Napoleon. In this post I provide Glenshaw's context (supplemented with some secondary research) for the painting and its components.

Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya was born on March 30, 1746 in Fuendetodas (his mother's village) to a lower middle class family. His father being a gilder, he was born into a world of creativity. He spent the majority of his childhood in Zaragossa where he began his artistic studies -- at the age of 14 -- under the painter José Lugán. Those studies were completed after 4 years after which Francisco went to Madrid to study under Anton Raphael Mengs, a German who was Court Painter to the Spanish Royal Family.

According to franciscogoya.com, Goya clashed with his Master and his examination was unsatisfactory. He submitted entries for the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1763 and 1766 but failed on both occasions.

Portrait of Goya, Vicente Lopéz Portana, c.1826

Francisco studied in Rome and travelled all over Europe. One of his early works from this period was Sacrifice to Pan (1771)

Sacrifice to Pan, 1771

Francisco Goya

His painting The Victorious Hannibal came in second in a painting competition organized by the City of Parma.

Hannibal the Conqueror, Viewing Italy for the first time from the Alps, 1770 - 1771
Francisco Goya

He returned to Zaragoza in 1771 and painted parts of the cupola of the Basilica of the Pillar (including Adoration of the Name of God).

Adoration of the Name of God, 1772

Francisco Goya 

In Zaragoza Goya studied with Francisco Bayeu and eventually married the latter's sister Josefa with whom he had eight children. This relationship (Bayeu was a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art) helped Goya to secure work as a painter of designs to be woven by the Royal Tapestry Factory. His work on the patterns brought him to the attention of the Royal Court (franciscogoya.com):

• Appointment as a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art
• In 1783, the Count of Floridabianca commissioned Goya to paint his portrait
• He spent two summers painting portraits of the Crown Prince Don Luis and his family
• He painted portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, the King, and other notables during the 1780s
• In 1786 he was given a salaried position as painter to Charles III
• In 1789 he was made Court Painter to Charles IV
• In 1799 he was appointed First Court Painter
• In addition to the Royal Family, Goya received commissions from many members of the Spanish nobility.

In 1792 Goya left Madrid for Cadiz where he was struck down by a mysterious illness which manifested as dizziness, hallucinations, and, eventually, a loss of hearing.

The Political Environment

The French Revolution was launched around this time with Napoleon eventually taking the reins of the country. As it relates to geopolitics, England was allied with Portugal while Spain was weak. This state of affairs concerned Napoleon as he feared that Spain would fall to England and France.

In 1808, Fernando, son of King Charles IV, staged a coup and forced his father to abdicate. Napoleon had Charles and Fernando meet with him to discuss the political crisis and forced them to abdicate in favor of Napoleon's brother Joseph. Both Fernando and Charles were sent into exile. Napoleon then sent in French troops to solidify the takeover.

On May 2nd, the local population exploded in fury at the state of affairs and proceeded to attack the French troops. The Spanish troops handed out weapons to the upstarts so that they could battle the French on a more equal footing. 

On the 3rd of May additional French troops were deployed to bring the uprising under control. Recalcitrants were rounded up and shot.

Goya's Rendition of Events

Years later Goya was given a commission to commemorate the event. He began with the events of the 2nd of May, showing the uprising in the center of the city with Spanish citizens battling the Mamelukes and French officers. The scene is chaotic, with dead bodies on the ground juxtaposed against the action of battle and the solidity of the background architecture.

The Second of May 1808, 1814
Francisco Goya

The painting Third of May shows the events of the following day. 

Third of May 1808, 1814
Francisco Goya

There is a hill and a building in the background and people are coming into the foreground from that space. The foreground is dominated by a firing squad on the right side of the painting, a lantern in the center, and targets/victims on the left.

The detail below focuses on the members of the firing squad. In this detail we see humans as killing machines: no faces; similar clothing; and almost merged guns. The knapsacks are different so they are individuals. No feelings are exhibited here. The ground around their feet are illuminated by the lantern  but only two partial shadows are cast.

Detail of Francisco Goya's Third of May 1808

In the detail below we see the square lantern lighting up the victims, showing what has already been done; and what is to come. The ground in front of the victims is splattered with the blood of the dead and wounded while those still standing are in various stages of acceptance of their fates. The central figure is clothed in white and gold and stands, eyes bulging and hands upraised. The light from the lantern emphasizes this individual.

Detail of Francisco Goya's Third of May 1808

Goya never exhibited any political inclinations during his life but apparently thought that those May events should be memorialized. According to artincontext.org, it was Goya who presented the idea of the paintings to the Spanish government and they commissioned the works.

According to artincontext.org, this painting "... is widely acclaimed by many art sources as being one of the 'first' modern art paintings" in that "the subject matter and artistic technique depart from what was expected at the time from history paintings ..." and influenced a number of artists ( Edouard Manet, The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1868 to 1869); Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1987); Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea (1951); and Robert Ballagh, The Third of May after Goya (1970)) to produce "paintings related to execution from war."

©EverythingElse238

Stonehenge: An example of prehistoric art today, a solar calendar then?

 I have previously provided an overview and timeline of prehistoric art and provided deep dives into two examples: The Venus of Willendorf (Willendorf, Austria, 28,000 - 25,000 BCE) and The Lion Man of Hollenstein-Stadel (Hollenstein-Stadel, Germany; 30,000 - 28,000 BCE). Both of these items originate in the Paleolithic era and are relatively small in size.

In the Neolithic period, humans had acquired the skill to work with large pieces of stone and created works which are referred to as megaliths (or megalithic art). “Megalithic art embraces any artistic entity involving the use of large stones, notably carving, relief sculptures and … megalithic architecture.” Stonehenge, located on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, falls into this class and is the subject of the current post.

Stonehenge: Location and Construct

According to Wikipedia,

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical Sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilothons, two bulkier vertical Sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument  … is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds).

Stonehenge (londonforfree.net)

Geographic positioning of Stonehenge

Source: brian.mountainman.blogspot.com

Timelines for the construction can be found in writings from Stonehenge Tour Guide, English Heritage, and Britannica.

Bluestones

These are the oldest of the stone structures at Stonehenge. According to stonehenge.co.uk, a total of 82 stones from the Preseli Hills eventually made their way into the monument that is Stonehenge. The stones are a mix of igneous and volcanic rocks; weigh, on average, between 1 and 2 tons; and were originally sourced from two ancient quarries located in the Preseli Hills of west Wales. 

These stones did not make their way directly from the Preseli Hills quarries to Stonehenge, however. Radiocarbon dating showed activity at the quarries 300 to 500 years "before the earliest installation of bluestones at Stonehenge."

Archaeological studies have shown that some of these stones were initially associated with Waun Mawn, an arc of four standing stones located on Waun Mawn Hill, a site located three miles from the Preseli quarry. Waun Mawn is approximately 5000 years old and is located 124 miles northeast of Stonehenge. Excavations have shown that the site was originally home to a complete circle of stones. The stones missing from the circle were removed and transported to the Salisbury Plain sometime around 3000 BCE.

According to Brittanica, a bluestone circle measuring 30 feet in diameter was built along the banks of the Avon River, approximately 1 mile distant from Stonehenge. This site, known as Bluestonehenge, was discovered in 2009 by the Stonehenge Riverside Project and it is postulated that its 25 stones were incorporated into Stonehenge during one of its building stages.

Th total of 82 bluestones posited by Stonehenge.co.uk exceeds the number of stones scavenged from Waum Maun and Bluestonehenge combined, so it is likely that some of the Bluestones emplaced at Stonehenge, while also originating from the Preseli Hills, utilized another route to get there.

According to Stonhenge.co.uk, the bluestones were installed as an incomplete double circle during the second phase of Stonehenge construction and then rearranged into the circle (60 stones) and horseshoe that we see today sometime around 1500 BC.

Sarsen Stones

These represent the bulk of the building material at Stonehenge. This silicified sandstone is generally found as scattered blocks on the chalk of southern England. Standing at 7 meters tall, and weighing 20 tons on average, this stone type represents all the stones found in Stonehenge's central horseshoe, the uprights and lintels of the outer circle, and outlying stones.

The main circle consists of 30 large stones, many of which are tipped over. There are 10 additional stones within the circle and four stones outside.

The 52 stones visible today are thought to be the remnants of 85 stones originally installed in 2620 - 2480 BCE. Fifty of these stones have been traced to West Woods, a site 25 km north of Stonehenge. Stones 26 and 60 do not match up (composition-wise) to the other stones, to each other, or to any proximate quarry site.

Stonehenge Landscape Prior to Monument Construction

According to a study conducted by the University of Southampton: "Four thousand years before Stonehenge was constructed, land within the World Heritage Site was covered by open woodland, with meadow-like clearings, inhabited by grazing animals and hunter-gatherers ..." Animals resident on the landscape during this period included aurochs, red deer, elk, and wild boar, a bounteous offering for the co-resident humans.

Research from the University of Birmingham and Ghent University indicate that the area was a hunting hotspot for a lengthy period. The research has "uncovered hundreds of what appear to be large prehistoric pits dug to trap large prehistoric game ..." The earliest of the excavated pits dates from 8200 - 7800 BCE, with a 7000 year span between that and the youngest, indicating utilization of this hunting method from the early Holocene to "later Bronze Age inhabitants of farm and field."

Who Built Stonehenge?

Stonehenge was not built by the hunter-gatherers who had roamed the island for millenia before its construction. Rather, DNA analysis shows that this native population had been supplanted by migrant farmers descended from a group which had originated in Anatolia (Turkey), settled temporarily in modern-day Iberia, and then made its way to Britain. Let us take a more detailed look at the origin of these farmers.

Sedentary farming communities are thought to have emerged independently -- in the 10th millenium and early 9th millenium (BCE) -- in parts of the Fertile Crescent and in Central Anatolia. "The spread of farming and Neolithic migration is evidenced by the abandonment of Neolithic settlements across the region in the 7th millenium. This abandonment drove migration to NW Anatolia, western Anatolia, and SW Europe." By the period covering 7000 - 5000 BC, the migration had reached SE Europe.

Prior to the expansion of these agriculturists, Europe had been populated by hunter-gatherers but they were overwhelmed by migration waves using either the Danube or Mediterranean routes. The migrants who used the Danube route brought agriculture to central and western Europe. Some of the migrants using the Mediterranean route made their way to Iberia where they settled temporarily before continuing on to Britain. By 4000 BC they had made landfall in Cornwall and Wales. 

"The majority of the population in Britain at the time of the construction of Stonehenge ... were descended from those who settled in Iberia." These migrants brought farming techniques, pottery, and new religious cultures and beliefs.

Stonehenge: Reason for Being

A number of reasons have been advanced over the years as to the purpose of Stonehenge: burial site, celestial observatory, religious site, proof of alien visitation to Earth, etc. None of the foregoing have been widely accepted. We do know that between 150 and 240 men, women, and children were interred at the site during the first phase of its construction -- and between the first and second phases -- but, given the paucity of burials in subsequent phases, that could not have been its sole purpose.

Professor Timothy Darvil of Bournemouth University in England has recently advanced the theory that the monument functioned as a solar calendar. The calendar is, according to Dr. Darvil, built around the Sarsen stones which, in addition to having been installed at the same time (around 2500 BC), have retained formational integrity throughout time (unlike the bluestones, which were rearranged around 1500 BC). According to Darvil, the monument "served as a physical representation of the year ... and helped the ancient inhabitants of Wilshire keep track of the days, weeks and months."

The schema for the proposed calendar is as follows:

• Each of the 30 stones in the Sarsen circle represented a day in a month
• The months were divided into 3 weeks of 10 days each
• Distinctive stones in the circle marked the beginning of each week
• An intercalary month of 5 days and a leap day every 4 years mapped the system to the solar year
• The intercalary month was represented by the five Trilothons at the center of the site
• The four station stones outside the circle provide markers to count off to the leap day
• The winter and summer solstices were framed by the same two stones every year

According to the professor, such a solar calendar was developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the centuries after 3000 BC, was adopted in Egypt as the Civil Calendar around 2700 BC, and was widely used at the start of the Old Kingdom around 2600 BC.

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The early stages of Stonehenge was built by Neolithic farmers who, in supplanting the hunter-gatherers, brought farming techniques, pottery, and new religious and cultural beliefs to the island. With the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, the monument is surrounded by the burial mounds of the elite: "farmers, traders and warriors who were deeply intertwined with Continental Europe."

And it is to that Bronze Age we next turn in this survey of art history.

©Everythingelse238

Prehistoric Art: The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel

Investigators regularly conduct scientific research on Prehistoric Art items in a quest to understand the composition of the artifacts, their origins, their ages, construction techniques, and utility. In this series I am reporting on a subset of these artifacts, continuing herein with the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel.

The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel

The British Museum blog describes the Lion Man figurine thusly:

The Lion Man is a masterpiece. Sculpted with great originality, virtuosity and technical skill from mammoth ivory, this 40,000-year-old image is 31 centimeters tall. It has the head of a cave lion with a partly human body. He stands upright, perhaps on tiptoes, legs apart and arms to the sides of a slender, cat-like body with strong shoulders like the hips and thighs of a lion. His gaze, like his stance, is powerful and directed at the viewer. The details of his face show he is attentive, he is watching and he is listening. He is powerful, mysterious and from a world beyond ordinary nature. He is the oldest know representation of a being that does not exist in physical form but symbolizes ideas about the supernatural.

Recovery and Reconstruction

The fragments of the Lion Man figurine were extracted from the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in a series of excavations which begun in 1939 and ran on and off through 2013.

Hohlenstein is a large, rocky massif located in Germany's Swabian Jura whose limestone structure has been hollowed out in some areas to form caves, three of which - Stadel, der kleine Scheuer, and Bärenhöhle -- are of archaeological and paleontological significance. The location of the Stadel Cave is indicated on the map below.

The red dot indicates the location of the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave

As shown in the timeline below, the first Lion Man fragments were found in the 1939 field season excavations of Robert Wetzel but it was not until the Hahn inventory in 1969 that the significance of the earlier finds was recognized; and not until 2013 that the fullest accounting of the figure was manifested.

Who built the Lion Man

Radiometric tests of Lion-Man-adjacent debris dates the figure to the late Aurignacian, "... a tool culture named after the type site of the Haute-Garonne area in France and noted for its 'mode 4' flint tools characterized by blades from prepared cores, rather than flint blades of earlier man. It was one of the more productive Paleolithic areas in terms of petroglyphs and pictographs produced" (British Museum).

Production of the Lion Man was a very expensive affair for its ownership group. Experiments conducted using the same types of tools employed in his production revealed that 400 hours were required to complete the figure, a significant allocation of time to activity not directly related to physical survival in the harsh environment of the time. This brings two thoughts to the fore:

1. To prehistoric man, there were things that were just as important as physical survival
2. The craftsmanship and belief system associated with the Lion Man did not spring up out of whole cloth at the time of the creation of the figurine.

Use of the Lion Man Figurine

According to the British Museum blog, the Lion Man fragments were found in a small chamber at the back of the cave, somewhat removed from the habitable area at the cave's entrance.The figurine was carefully put away in the dark in the company of a few perforated arctic fox teeth with a cache of reindeer antlers and unmodified cave bear bones proximate.

As regards the cave, it did no set up well for human habitation:

• The cave faces north and does not get much sun. This lack of warmth would limit its attractiveness as a habitable abode.
• The density of human-habitation debris was markedly less than was the case at other nearby sites/

These facts suggest that the cave was a place where people gathered only occasionally. As described by the British Museum, "... Stadel Cave was only used occasionally as a place where people would come together around a fire to share a particular understanding of the world articulated through beliefs, symbolized in sculpture and acted out in rituals." 

Lion Man, then, is the "oldest proof of a numinous belief system among the first anatomically modern humans in Europe."

Research into the origin of the Venus of Willendorf

Investigators regularly conduct scientific research on Prehistoric Art items in a quest to understand the composition of the artifacts, their origins, their ages, construction techniques, and utility. In this series I will report on recently published research on a subset of these artifacts beginning herein with the Venus of Willendorf.

The Venus figurine was discovered in 1908 during the course of archaeological excavations on the left bank of the Danube in Willendorf, Lower Austria. The map below shows the location of the village in which the Venus was first located as well as the city (Vienna) in which it is now housed.

Red blob indicates the village of Willendorf, the
location where the Venus was discovered

The figurine was carved from oolitic limestone ("made up of small spheres called ooiliths that are stuck together by lime mud. They form when calcium carbonate is deposited on the surface of sand grains rolled (by waves) around a shallow sea floor" -- assignmentpoint.com), a formation not local to the Willendorf area. This fact dictates a non-local origin for the Venus. A search for those origins was the basis of the study led by Gerhard Weber and titled "The microstructure and the origin of the Venus of Willendorf."

The first order of study business was determining the structural composition of the Venus. "Because of the unique value of the Venus from Willendorf, one of the most famous signs of early modern human symbolic behaviour, invasive investigations have been impossible since its discovery in 1908. The availability of micro-computed tomography provided the first chance to radiograph the figure in 3D in a resolution close to thin-sections and microscopy, which paved the way to explore the interior of the raw material" Weber, et al. Analysis of the scan data allowed researchers to establish a profile of the material comprising the Venus and to date the oolites as originating in the Mesozoic age (251 - 66 mya)

The second step in the process was to compare this baseline against oolitic limestone samples drawn from France, Ukraine, Crimea, Germany, Sicily, and Sega di Ala, a location in a side valley of Lake Garda. According to the authors, the samples from Sega di Ala were "indistinguishable from samples drawn from the Venus material." The researchers continue: "Even if we cannot  claim with absolute certainty that the raw material of the Venus originates from a particular locality, the match between the Venus and the Sega di Ala samples is almost perfect and suggests a high probability for the raw material to come from south of the Alps."

The authors simulated travel along two prospective paths from Lake Garda to Willendorf: a 730-km path through the Alps and a 930-km path which bypassed the Alps. 

Simulated potential paths for Venus: Red for the northern path through the Alps, black for the southern, non-Alps route

The authors surmise that the shorter path would only have been undertaken under some type of duress and consider the longer path the most likely route along which the Venus (or its material) was carried. Further, such a journey could have taken years, or even generations, but, in the authors' view, the material was handled carefully along the way.

Key findings here are as follows:

• The Venus is not local to Willendorf
• The material from which it was crafted was sourced from an area south of the Alps and relatively proximate to Sega di Ala
• It is not known whether the Venus was manufactured at its point of origin, somewhere along its travel route, or at its final destination. What is known is that great care was taken of the material/artifact during its transit
• It is quite likely that the transit period was lengthy.

©EverythingElse238

Origins, timeline, and examples of Prehistoric Art

The origins of art history can, according to invaluable.com, be traced back to the Paleolithic era, with the earliest artifacts being rock carvings, engravings, pictorial imagery, sculptures, and stone arrangements. "Art from this period relied on the use of natural pigments and stone carvings to create representations of objects, animals, and rituals that governed a civilization's existence."

What were the origins of this art of the Paleolithic period? In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind, Yuval Noah Harari posits four phases in modern human's passage through time and two of those phases are co-incident with major artistic innovations. 

Prior to what Harari refers to as the Cognitive Revolution, biological systems determined mankind's destiny. That is, changes to practices and methods only came about as a result of genetic mutations. The Cognitive Revolution, beginning about 70,000 years ago, resulted in a wave of innovations and new ways of thinking about the world. In this period humankind introduced a number of inventions and, more relevant to the subject at hand, began to spin stories of legends, myths, gods, and religion -- a fictive language, according to Harari. The first artworks may represent mankind's first attempts at  physically manifesting the inhabitants of these stories.

A second major departure for humankind was the transition from hunter-gatherer to more settled communities, afforded by the onset of the Agricultural Revolution. Those settled communities allowed for the creation of surplus as well as the concentration of labor resources, all leading to greater monumentality in the art of the period. These two major shifts, and their impacts, are summarized in the first three panels of the chart below.

 The timeline and types of art that fall into the Prehistoric sphere are depicted in the chart below. Specific examples of this type of art are provided in the second chart following.

©EverythingElse238

Jamali, creator of postmodernism's Mystical Expressionism

I first met Jamali in Orlando in the mid-90s when one of his paintings was on offer at a charity fundraising event. I got to talking with him and was mesmerized.

Untitled, ca. 1995
Jamali

I subsequently spent some time with him, exploring his philosophy, motivation, goals, and artwork. Since those early days, Jamali has grown to become "one of the most prolific artists in history." I recently re-connected with him at his studio in Winter Park and remain enthralled.

Jamali at his Winter Park Studio earlier this year

In a recent post, I positioned Jamali's Mystical Expressionism -- the moniker used by noted art critic Donald Kuspit to describe his style -- on my Postmodernism timeline.

The chart shows Jamali launching his career simultaneously with the birth of the Neo-Expressionist movement, but continuing to be productive in his chosen domain for 25+ years after the demise of that school. 

Jamali employs a number of unique painting rituals and styles (painting with his feet, fresca tempera, pigmentation on cork, pigment distortion) and his complex surfaces and mystical imagery have been compared to neo-Expressionists Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz while his gestural techniques bring to mind the works of Jackson Pollock and the New York School.

Untitled, ca. 1995
Jamali

Untitled, ca. 1995
Jamali

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, 2000
Anselm Kiefer

Head and Bottle, 1982
Georg Baselitz

His style is a melding of contemporary consciousness and arts most ancient traditions. In our most recent conversation, Jamali pointed to a long tradition of mysticism in art reaching back to the Egyptian Scribes and, even further back, to the artists responsible for the pre-historic European cave paintings.

Untitled, ca. 1995
Jamali

The material for his work is sourced from his dreams (similar to some of the prominent surrealists) with his paintings "... inhabited by dream figures that appear and then fade away." His persistent themes and mythic imagery define a single artistic vision which he has dubbed Art and Peace.

Untitled, ca. 1995
Jamali

His life's work is unmatched in its scope, as it relates to variety and spiritual depth. But there are also more tangible manifestations of its scope:

• He has produced more paintings than any other artist, including Picasso
• He is one of the most collected artists in the world with his works featured in the collections of personalities such as Elton John, Emeril Lagasse, Jack Welch, Kelsey Grammer, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Oprah Winfrey
• The Jamali Foundation is the largest single-artist foundation in the world.

Jamali is now in the process of raising funds to establish a museum in Orlando to display his held works.

©EverythingElse238

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848 - 1853): A frontal, short-lived attack on British Academic Art

In the mid-19th Century, a group of emerging English artists formed a secret society they called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) whose goals were to (i) counter the ideals popularized during the High Renaissance and (ii) re-invigorate Europe's 19th-Century art scene. 

(Screenshot from https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-pre-raphaelite-brotherhood/)

In this post I detail the environment from which the PRB sprung as well as discuss the movement, its members, its art, and its legacy.

British Mid-19th-Century Art Environment

A number of factors in the British mid-19th-century art environment had direct bearings on, and contributed to, the birth of the PRB. They were The British Royal Academy, the visual appearance of the art of the day, and the writings of the art critic John Ruskin.

The Royal Academy

According to visual-arts-cork.com, 

The French Academy had a virtual monopoly on the teaching, production, and exhibition of visual art in France -- most other academies were in the same position ... Academy schools taught art according to a strict set of conventions and rules ... Until 1863, classes inside the academy were based entirely on the practice of figure drawing -- that is, drawing the works of the Old Masters. Copying such masterpieces was considered to be the only means of absorbing the correct principles of contour, light, and shade.

As it relates specifically to the British Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, its first President, directed students to copy Raphael's drawings as part of their studies in the hope that they would be inspired by "the divine spark" of his genius. Students were expected to learn their craft by rote.

The Academy preferred Victorian subjects and styles and adhered to a definition of beauty drawn from the Italian Renaissance and Classical art. The Academy also had a penchant for genre and portrait paintings.

Darkening Effect on British Paintings

In the early 19th century, the majority of the works produced by British artists were dark in coloration, partly in conformance with the masterpieces of the 17th century and partly due to the use of bitumen as a paint component. Bitumen is a tarry material which creates a darkening effect; that darkening effect is compounded over time. A late 18th century painting exhibiting  this characteristic is Fuseli's The Shepherd's Dream. 

The Shepherd's Dream, 1793
Henry Fuseli

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was one of Britain's most prolific art critics and, according to artuk.org, "a significant literary art figure who symbolizes the Victorian era" in that he was, at once, "a painter, photographer, botanist, early environmentalist, philanthropist, and social reformer ..."

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

In Volume 1 of his Modern Painters (1843), Ruskin launched an assault on the artisitc establishment by questioning the rules that Sir Joshua Reynolds had established at the Royal Academy. In the same tome he "encouraged landscape painters to return to nature rather than merely imitating the painted landscapes of the Old Masters." 

In the second and third volumes of his book he leveraged the critical rediscovery of Gothic Middle Age paintings by writing about painters such as Giotto, Fra Angelico, and Benizzo Gozzoli. Ruskin believed that these medieval religious artists could provide "an inspiring model for the art of the 'modern age'."

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The secret society -- inspired by the writings of Ruskin -- was established in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; shortly thereafter they were joined by James Collinson, Fredric George Stephen, William Michael Rossetti (poet and critic), and Thomas Wolner (Sculptor). The aims of the society were to:

• Revive British art, making it as dynamic, powerful, and creative as the late medieval and early Renaissance works created before the time of Raphael
• Find ways of expressing both nature and true emotion in art.

The group's early doctrine was to:

• Have genuine ideas to express
• Study nature attentively so as to know how to express it
• Sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote
• Produce thoroughly good pictures and statutes.

Artuk.org is adamant as to Ruskin as the inspiration for the PRB: "They took Ruskin's call to return to nature very seriously, and like Ruskin, they idealized the medieval era ... seeing it as a romantic, pre-industrial age." For his part, Ruskin formed close friendships with the founding members of PRB, exchanging hundreds of letters with them as they continuously sought out his counsel and advice.

Ruskin was very public in his support of the PRB, writing letters to the Times in 1851 and 1854 defending them against the barbs of critics and again in 1853 when he recommended their works in his Edinburgh Lectures.

PRB Art

The group worked in the shadows for over a year, foregoing lessons at the Academy for meetings at their London homes. Their initial public reveal was in 1849 when they exhibited Isabella (Millais) and Rienzi (Hunt) at the Academy. In addition to the painters' names, the canvasses were also marked with the initials PRB.

Isabella, 1848 - 49
John Everett Millais

The Brotherhood announced itself more formally in a January 1850 publication, named Germ, where they shared their work and views. The publication was subsequently renamed but was cancelled after two issues.

The PRB paintings were initially religious but they also utilized subjects from literature and poetry and explored topics dealing with contemporary social issues. Each artist brought his own style to the table but there were some notable commonalities between the paintings (Kelly Richmond-Abdou):

• A naturalistic and detailed approach to art
• Interest in narrative subject matter
• A preference for women with long red hair
• Sparkling colors
• Wild tangles of countryside painted in microscopic detail.

Each of these characteristics can be found in Millais' Ophelia.

Ophelia, 1849
John Everett Millais

Countering the British painting’s penchant for darkness, PRB efforts are known for their “stunning luminosity.” Stephanie Chatfield details the recipe behind the lightness here.

Writing in The Collector, Rosie Lesso has isolated five PRB paintings which, in her estimation, shocked the contemporary  art world.

The Unravelling of the PRB

John Millais produced some of PRBs most enduring works of art but he was also front and center in the events that eventually led to the society's demise. First, his 1850 painting Christ in the House of his Parents was criticized as being blasphemous because Mary was depicted as "other than an idealized, beautiful woman." The criticism was led by no less a personage than Charles Dickens, a literary heavyweight at that time (and at any time, for that matter).

Christ in the House of his Parents, 1850
John Everett Millais

The second controversy revolved around Millais’ affair, and subsequent marriage, to Effie Gray, the wife of John Ruskin, the PRBs biggest supporter. Ruskin was not happy with this turn of events and was sparing in his praise of the group post that period.

James Collinson was the first to leave the group which eventually dissolved by 1853.

PRB Legacy

Given its brevity, PRB is more akin to a moment than a movement. That being said, it did have a bit of a tail. Founding member Daniel Gabriel Rossetti ushered in the second form of Pre-Raphaelism when he met two of his young followers (Walter Morris and Edward Burns-Jones) at Oxford. They became his apprentices and together they promoted an even more medievalist form of Pre-Raphaelism - Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelism. "Aesthetics lasted well into the 20th century with artists such as John William Waterhouse, Aubrey Beardsley and Gustave Moreau underlining the importance of the Pre-Raphaelite legacy for other art movements such as Symbolism and Aestheticism."

Rosetti would eventually join his mentee William Morris at the latter's design firm, extending the Pre-Raphaelite ideas into the world of commerce with goods such as furniture and jewelry and into the Arts and Craft Movement.

The Pre-Raphaelite movement also had a direct influence upon the Decadence movement of the late 19th century and several famous poets to include Gerard Manley Hopkins and W.B. Yeats.

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