%2C%20Dante%20Gabriel%20Rossetti%20(1868)-min.jpg)
The Rossettis Reframed at Tate Britain
Tate's latest exhibition takes a new approach to the family of artists
May 15, 2023
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
%2C%20Dante%20Gabriel%20Rossetti%20(1868).jpg)
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
.jpg)
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
.jpg)
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
We love to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By refocussing on relationships - both romantic and platonic – Tate Britain’s new exhibition promises to rethink the family at its centre. But the Rossettis didn’t radically challenge our stereotypes about Victorian society, so much as embody its contradictions – and our contemporary ideas about them.
The Rossettis more subtly suggests how previous curation and approaches to art history have misrepresented Christina, Dante Gabriel, and Elizabeth (Siddal) as individuals; almost all art forms, and artists, feature in every room, curated in conversation and referred to by first name for a real sense of how they worked in collaboration.
Dante Gabriel, thus understood through an individual, ‘great man’ narrative, comes off as wronged by history. Here, we read how he encouraged Christina to be part of the pre-Raphaelite literary movement. How, more than a muse, Elizabeth Siddal actively influenced his practice. After her death, he collected her early works, an effort to prevent her from falling into the same posthumous obscurity that erases so many women artists from history.
So much of the exhibition is on paper; a pleasant surprise, which takes us before and behind the Pre-Raphaelites as we know them. It speaks to the importance of creativity; we imagine these artists furiously scribbling and writing. Over time, they would see such studies and non-finitos as works in and of themselves.
The Rossettis also pays attention to these artists as young people – a period often underrepresented. Writing letters to his favourite authors, we see the great Dante Gabriel as the privileged, bookish, dweeb, the influence of his Italian father, a translator of Dante, gets a mention; his mother, the sister of Lord Byron’s doctor and writer of The Vampire, doesn’t get a look in.
The curators do tackle the idealisation of women; here, locks of both Dante Gabriel and Elizabeth’s hair are for the first time shown together – a non-negotiable for curator Carol Jacobi. Portraits of self-determined women and femme fatales, from Lucrezia Borgia to Lady Lilith. Archive images of Dante Gabriel’s last love, Jane Burden (Jane Morris), peppered atop William Morris’ wallpaper, are yet another surprise addition. Yes, perhaps she really did look as he depicted.
Christina Rossetti is the most compellingly curated. The most famous of the three, some of her 900 poems open the space; ascribed on the walls, and whispered through overhead speakers. Here, they’re read as ‘allegories of feminist salvation’, odes to fallen women, sex workers, and prostitutes. (‘After Death’ (1849), written from the perspective of a dead woman, shares the same detached, out-of-body perspective as her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.)
But Tate greatly exaggerate how progressive or political these artists were. We could call it historical revisionism – or ignoring the founding principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ - but really, it is inconsistent curation - which focuses on lived experience at some points, and not others.
Whilst connected to ‘New Women’ like Barbara Bodichon and Anna Howitt, Christina would never call herself as such. Her religion and conservatism is underplayed; but these ‘contradictions’ in her character are what make her human, and highlight the plural experiences of womanhood in Victorian England.
Contemporary eyes have misdiagnosed her with childhood mental illnesses; but she was pleased to be designated as ‘invalid’, for it let her stay home, in the privacy of solitude, and write. The apparent ideological contradictions continue here, her writings both strongly opposed women’s suffrage, and suggested mothers would make the best MPs.
The exhibition also boldly proclaims the Pre-Raphaelites as Britain’s first avant-garde art movement, giving birth to aestheticism and decadent art. And in the later rooms, it seeks to place the movement within wider networks of orientalism, exoticism, and colonialism.
Curator Carol Jacobi details Dante Gabriel’s search for ‘global beauty’ as a kind of imperialism. It closes with contemporary artists appropriating Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent imagery, to comment on the continued legacy of anti-gay legislation across the British Empire. Here, it could be more ambitious or creative – what was the family’s experience as migrants from Italy? – but it is still an improvement on exhibitions past.
The Rossettis have been worked hard; their works, lives, and bodies have been sites onto which we have projected our contemporary ideas about history, and art history. As such, they’ll continue to cause division, as they reflect our attitudes back onto us. So long as Millais’ Ophelia remains Tate’s most purchased postcard, they’ll always have more to say about their viewers today.
The Rossettis is on view at Tate Britain until 24 September 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
