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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-89515-6 - The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites Edited by Elizabeth Prettejohn Frontmatter More information

Th e Cam bridge Com panion to th e Pre- Raphaelites The group of young painters and writers who coalesced into the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the middle years of the nineteenth century became hugely influential in the development not only of literature and painting, but also more generally of art and design. Though their reputation has fluctuated over the years, their achievements are now recognized and their style enjoyed and studied widely. This volume explores the lives and works of the central figures in the group: among others, the Rossettis, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Ford Madox Brown, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. This is the first book to provide a general introduction to the Pre-Raphaelite movement that integrates its literary and visual art forms. The Companion explains what made the Pre-Raphaelite style unique in painting, poetry, drawing and prose. El i zabe t h Pret te jo hn is Professor of History of Art at the University of York. A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book.

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T HE CA MBRID GE C O MPA N IO N TO

the Pre - Raphael ites

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T he C ambridge C ompanion to

the P re - R aphae l ite s E dited by

Eli zabeth P rettejohn

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 cam brid ge unive rs it y p r e ss Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521719315 © Cambridge University Press 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data The Cambridge companion to the Pre-Raphaelites / [edited by] Elizabeth Prettejohn. p.  cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-89515-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-521-71931-5 (paperback) 1.  Pre-Raphaelitism – England.  2.  Arts, English – 19th century.  I.  Prettejohn, Elizabeth. NX454.5.P7C36 2012 700.942′09034–dc23 2012006885 ISBN 978-0-521-89515-6 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-71931-5 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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C ONT E NT S

List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Chronology L o u i s e H u g h es

Introduction E l i zabe t h P re tt ejoh n

page ix xi xv xvii xix

1

Pa rt On e . P r e-R a p ha e litis m 1

The Pre-Raphaelites and literature I s o be l Arm s t ron g

15

2

Artistic inspirations Je n n y G rah a m

32

3

Pre-Raphaelite drawing Co l i n Cru i s e

47

4

The religious and intellectual background M i ch ae l a G i e b el hau s e n

62

5

The Germ An d re w M . S tau ff er

76

P a rt T wo. P r e-R a p ha e lites 6

The poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) Je ro m e M cG a n n

89 vii

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C on t en t s 7 The painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti E l i zabe t h Pr e tt ejoh n

103

8 William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) Caro l Jacob i

116

9 John Everett Millais (1829–1896) P au l Barl ow

133

10 Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) T i m Barri ng e r

148

11 Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) L o rrai n e J a n z en K o oi st r a

164

12 Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (1829–1862) D e bo rah C he r ry

183

13 The writings of William Morris (1834–1896) Je f f re y S kob l ow

196

14 The designs of William Morris I m o g e n H a rt

211

15 Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) Caro l i n e Ars c o tt

223

16 Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) Cat h e ri n e Ma x wel l

236

17 William Michael Rossetti (1829–1919) An g e l a T h ir lwe ll

250

18 Envoi E l i zabe t h Pr e tt ejoh n

265

Appendix 1. The contents of The Germ Appendix 2. The Pre-Raphaelite ‘list of Immortals’ Guide to further reading and looking Index

273 277 279 291

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I LLUS T RAT I ONS

1 William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott, 1886–1905, oil on canvas, 185 × 143.7 cm, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund. 1961.470©2011. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY/Scala, Florence page 43 2 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante Drawing an Angel on the First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice, 1849, pen and black ink (inscriptions outside drawn frame in brown ink), 39.4 × 32.6 cm, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery 52 3 Simeon Solomon, Babylon Hath Been a Golden Cup, 1859, pen and black and brown ink over traces of pencil on paper, 26.6 × 28.3 cm, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery 59 4 John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents, 1849–50, oil on canvas, 86.4 × 139.7 cm, Tate, London. © Tate, London, 2011 65 5 William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World, 1851–3, retouched 1858, 1886, oil on canvas over panel, 125.5 × 59.8 cm (arched), Warden and Fellows of Keble College, Oxford 68 6 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 1848–9, oil on canvas, 83.2 × 65.4 cm, Tate, London. © Tate, London, 2011 97 7 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1873–7, oil on canvas, 116.8 × 55.9 cm, private collection, photo © Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library 112 8 William Holman Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd, 1851–2, oil on canvas, 76.4 × 109.5 cm, City of Manchester Art Galleries 121 9 William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death, 1869–73, oil on canvas, 214.2 × 168.2 cm, City of Manchester Art Galleries 126 ix

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Li st of il lu s t r at io ns

10 John Everett Millais, Isabella, 1848–9, oil on canvas, 102.9 × 142.9 cm, © Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool/The Bridgeman Art Library 11 John Everett Millais, A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew’s Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge, 1851–2, oil on canvas, 92.7 × 62.2 cm (arched), © The Makins Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library 12 Ford Madox Brown, Geoffrey Chaucer Reading the ‘Legend of Custance’ to Edward III and His Court, at the Palace of Sheen, on the Anniversary of the Black Prince’s Forty-Fifth Birthday, 1845–51, oil on canvas, 372 × 296 cm (arched), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney/The Bridgeman Art Library 13 Ford Madox Brown, An English Autumn Afternoon, 1852–4, oil on canvas, 71.8 × 134.6 cm (oval), © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library 14 Double-page spread from The Germ, no. 1, showing Christina Rossetti’s ‘Dream Land’ opposite Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘My Sister’s Sleep’. Courtesy of Toronto Public Library 15 Elizabeth Siddall, Clerk Saunders, 1857, watercolour, bodycolour and coloured chalks on paper, 28.4 × 18.1 cm, The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge/The Bridgeman Art Library 16 Elizabeth Siddall, Self-portrait, c. 1853–4, oil on canvas, 20.3 cm (diameter), whereabouts unknown 17 Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Jasmine wallpaper, designed by William Morris and printed by Jeffrey & Co. from 1872. Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 18 Edward Burne-Jones, The Beguiling of Merlin, 1873–4, oil on canvas, 186 × 111 cm, © Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool/The Bridgeman Art Library 19 Edward Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1880–4, oil on canvas, 290 × 136 cm, Tate, London. © Tate, London, 2011 20 Julia Margaret Cameron, William Michael Rossetti, 1865, albumen photographic print from wet collodion negative, 25.5 × 20 cm, private collection. Inscribed on verso by William Michael Rossetti: ‘The hand with umbrella is Browning’s’

134

140

152

157

172

184 193

215

228

232

257

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NOT E S ON C ONT RI B UTORS

ISOBE L ARM S T RO NG FB A is Emeritus Professor of English at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written widely on the poetry and culture of the long nineteenth century and on feminism and aesthetics. Her books include Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics (1993), The Oxford Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Poetry (1996), The Radical Aesthetic (2000) and Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination (2008). CARO L I N E ARS CO T T is Professor of Nineteenth-Century British Art and Head of Research at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She is the author of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings (2008), co-editor of Manifestations of Venus: Essays on Art and Sexuality (2000), and has published widely on BurneJones, Morris, Luke Fildes, William Powell Frith, George Scharf, James McNeill Whistler and the Victorian representation of childhood and the city. She was a member of the Editorial Board of the Oxford Art Journal from 1998 to 2008 and is an editor for the RIHA Journal. PA U L BARL O W is Senior Lecturer in Art and Design History at Northumbria University. He is the author of Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais (2005) and has written widely on Victorian art and artists, including Frederic Leighton, George Frederic Watts and Thomas Woolner. He is co-editor of Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque (1999) and Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London (2000) and a member of the Editorial Board of Visual Culture in Britain. TIM BARRI N G E R is Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. His books include Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (1998), Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (2005) and co-edited collections including Colonialism and the Object (1998), Frederic Leighton (1999, with Elizabeth Prettejohn), Art and the British Empire (2007) and Writing the Pre-Raphaelites: Text, Context, Subtext (2009, with Michaela Giebelhausen). His exhibitions include American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820–1880 (2002), Art and Emancipation in Jamaica (2007), Opulence and Anxiety (2007) and Before and After Modernism: Byam Shaw, Rex Vicat Cole, Yinka Shonibare, MBE (2010). xi

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N OT ES O N C ON T R IB UTO RS DE BO RAH CH E R R Y is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Amsterdam, where she is completing The Afterlives of Monuments, a special edition of South Asian Studies. Her work on Elizabeth Siddall initiated the study of the women artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She is the author of Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists (1993) and Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain 1850–1900 (2000). CO L I N CRU I S E teaches at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University. He has published widely on nineteenth-century art, writing on Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Pater and Wilde. He curated two major exhibitions: Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites (2005) and The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphaelite Designs, Studies and Watercolours (2011), both for Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. His book Pre-Raphaelite Drawing was published in 2011. M I CH AE L A G I E BE LH A U SE N is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Theory and co-director of the Centre for Curatorial Studies at the University of Essex. She is a corresponding member of the Centre André Chastel, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). She is the author of Painting the Bible: Representation and Belief in Mid-Victorian Britain (2006), editor of The Architecture of the Museum: Symbolic Structures, Urban Contexts (2003), and co-editor (with Tim Barringer) of Writing the Pre-Raphaelites: Text, Context, Subtext (2009). Her recent research focuses on the nineteenth-century destruction and transformation of Paris as manifested in photography and popular prints. JE N N Y G RAH AM is an Associate Professor in Art History at the University of Plymouth, specializing in the reception of the Renaissance during the modern period. She is the author of Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age (2007) and is now working on a study of the later reception of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, entitled Afterlives: Giorgio Vasari and the Rise of Art History in the Nineteenth Century. IMO G E N H ART is Assistant Curator in the Department of Exhibitions and Publications at the Yale Center for British Art, where she was co-curator of the exhibition Paintings from the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London (2009). She is the author of Arts and Crafts Objects (2010) and co-editor of Rethinking the Interior, c.1867–1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (2010). Other publications include an essay on William Morris’s patterns in William Morris and the Art of Everyday Life (2010) and a chapter on Arts and Crafts magazines in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines (2009). L O U I S E H U G H E S completed her Ph.D. in 2010 at the University of Bristol and specializes in European Modernism, the painter Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) and the reception of medieval sources in French Modernism of the interwar period. xii

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N o te s o n C on t r ib u to rs Forthcoming publications include a monograph on Soutine and a study of the use of fiction in academic art history. She is also interested in public engagement with art history and has lectured for diverse audiences at the University of Oxford, the Royal West of England Academy and Tate Britain. CARO L JACO BI teaches at Birkbeck College and the Courtauld Institute, specializing in revisionist approaches to modern British art. She is the author of William Holman Hunt: Painter, Painting, Paint (2006), and co-curated the international exhibition Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision (2008–9). Her monograph Isabel Rawsthorne: Out of the Cage is forthcoming. LORRAI N E JAN ZE N K OO IS T R A is Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. She is author of Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture 1855–1875 (2011), Christina Rossetti and Illustration: A Publishing History (2002) and The Artist as Critic: Bitextuality and Fin-de-Siècle Illustrated Books (1995). She is co-editor of The Culture of Christina Rossetti: Female Poetics and Victorian Contexts (1999) and The Yellow Nineties Online (www.1890s.ca). JER O M E M CG AN N is John Stewart Bryan University Professor at the University of Virginia. He is founder and co-director (2003–8) of NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) and general editor of The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Archive, a pioneering online research archive. Among his more than thirty books are Swinburne: An Experiment in Criticism (1972), Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism (1993) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Game That Must be Lost (2000). CAT H E RI N E M AXWE LL is Professor of Victorian Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne: Bearing Blindness (2001), Swinburne in the British Council series Writers and Their Work (2006) and Second Sight: The Visionary Imagination in Late Victorian Literature (2008). She has edited a collection of Swinburne’s poetry (1997), and co-edited Vernon Lee’s Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales (2006) and a collection of essays, Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics, Aesthetics (2006). She is guest editor of a special issue of Victorian Review on ‘Victorian Literature and Classical Myth’ (2008), and of a double issue of the Yearbook of English Studies on ‘The Arts in Victorian Literature’ (2010). She is currently co-editing a collection of essays on Swinburne. ELIZ ABE T H P RE T T EJ O HN is Professor of History of Art at the University of York. Her books include The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (2000), Beauty and Art 1750– 2000 (2005) and Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting (2007). She co-curated the exhibitions Imagining Rome (1996), Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema xiii

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N OT ES O N C ON T R IB UTO RS (1996–7), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (2003–4) and John William Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite (2008–10). J E F F RE Y S KO BL O W is Professor of English Language and Literature at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is the author of Paradise Dislocated: Morris, Politics, Art (1993) and Dooble Tongue: Scots, Burns, Contradiction (2001), along with numerous articles on writers including Morris, Burns and more contemporary Scottish writers. AN D RE W M . S T A U FF ER is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he also directs the NINES digital initiative (www.nines.org). He is the author of Anger, Revolution, and Romanticism (2005) and the editor of works by Robert Browning and H. Rider Haggard. He has published widely on Romantic and Victorian subjects and is currently working on a project related to the troubled archive of nineteenth-century literature. AN G E L A T H I RL WE LL read English at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and lectured for the Faculty of Continuing Education at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis (2003), Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown (2010) and ‘The Game of Life’, a ­character study of Ford Madox Brown for the exhibition on the artist at Manchester and Ghent (2011–12). She edited the Folio Anthology of Autobiography (1994) and The Pre-Raphaelites and Their World (1995).

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AC KNOW L E DGE ME NTS

I owe special thanks to Jerome McGann, who gave valuable advice in the planning stages of this volume, and to Charles Martindale whose support was untiring throughout. Louise Hughes joined me at a crucial moment to help with the minutiae of editing, and I am grateful for her good humour and resourcefulness. I would like to thank all those at Cambridge University Press who have helped with the volume, in particular Linda Bree and Maartje Scheltens for their great patience as well as their skill and expertise. Thanks to Jamie Carstairs, Juliet Edwards, Karin Kyburz, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Faculty of Arts Research Fund at the University of Bristol for help with the illustrations, and to Richard Shone for advice and permission to quote from The Burlington Magazine. Many others have given generous advice and support of various kinds, including Jason Rosenfeld, Rachel Sloan, Sam Smiles, Alison Smith, Julian Treuherz and numerous ­colleagues at museums and galleries with Pre-Raphaelite holdings.

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A B B R E VI AT IONS

DGR Correspondence

Germ

Hunt

PRB The Rossetti Archive

Ruskin

The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. William E. Fredeman and others, 9 vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002–10). The first two digits of the ­letter number (given in parentheses) indicate the year of writing (for example, letter 48.7 is the seventh extant letter from 1848). The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art: Being a Facsimile Reprint of the Literary Organ of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Published in 1850 (London: Elliot Stock, 1901). Page numbers are to the facsimile text of the magazine except where the (separately paginated) ‘Introduction by William Michael Rossetti’ is specified. William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 vols. (London and New York: Macmillan, 1905–6). ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ or ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brother’. The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Archive, ed. Jerome J. McGann, www.rossettiarchive.org/. The Works of John Ruskin (Library Edition), ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–12).

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lo u is e hu g h es

Chronology

1819

Birth of John Ruskin

1821

Birth of Ford Madox Brown

1825

Births of James Collinson (PRB), Thomas Woolner (PRB)

1827

Births of William Holman Hunt (PRB), Maria Francesca Rossetti

1828

Births of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (PRB), Frederic George Stephens (PRB)

1829

Births of John Everett Millais (PRB), William Michael Rossetti (PRB), Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall

1830

Birth of Christina Georgina Rossetti

1833

Birth of Edward Burne-Jones

1834

Destruction of the Palace of Westminster by fire; birth of William Morris

1837

Accession of Queen Victoria; birth of Algernon Charles Swinburne

1839

Birth of Jane Burden (later Morris)

1840

Birth of Simeon Solomon

1842

National Gallery (London) acquires Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife (1434)

1843

Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. I; Wordsworth becomes Poet Laureate; competitions begin for decorative art at the new Palace of Westminster (–1847) xix

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C HR O N OL OG Y

1845

The Great Famine, Ireland (–1852); D. G. Rossetti begins translating Dante and early Italian poets

1846

Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. II

1848

Year of European revolutions; Chartist demonstrations and petition; formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Hunt and D. G. Rossetti compile the list of Immortals (see Appendix 2); Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party

1849

First PRB paintings appear at exhibition: D. G. Rossetti’s The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (Figure 6) at Free Exhibition, Hunt’s Rienzi Vowing to Obtain Justice for the Death of His Young Brother, Millais’s Isabella (Figure 10) and Collinson’s Italian Image-Makers at Royal Academy (all signed with ‘P. R. B.’ initials); W. M. Rossetti begins to keep the P. R. B. Journal; D. G. Rossetti and Hunt tour France and Belgium

1850

The Germ published January–May; second PRB exhibition season: Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini! at National Institution, Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents (Figure 4) and Hunt’s A Converted British Family at Royal Academy; Hunt, Rossetti and Stephens paint outdoors in Kent; W. M. Rossetti begins career as art critic for The Critic, then The Spectator; Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate

1851

Great Exhibition at the new Crystal Palace in Hyde Park; Brown’s Geoffrey Chaucer (Figure 12) at Royal Academy; Ruskin writes to The Times in defence of the PRB; Hunt and Millais paint outdoors at Ewell, Surrey

1852

Opening of the new Palace of Westminster; Brown begins important modern-life paintings: Work (–1865), The Last of England (–1855), An English Autumn Afternoon (–1854, Figure 13); Hunt’s The Hireling Shepherd (Figure 8), Millais’s Ophelia and A Huguenot (Figure 11) at Royal Academy; Woolner emigrates to Australia to prospect for gold

1853

Crimean War begins (–1856); Burne-Jones and Morris become friends as undergraduates at the University of

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C hro n ol og y

Oxford; Millais paints Ruskin’s portrait at Glenfinlas in Scotland, and is elected Associate of the Royal Academy 1854

Hunt tours the Middle East (–1856) and shows The Awakening Conscience and The Light of the World at the Royal Academy; Working Men’s College founded (teachers will include Ruskin, Rossetti, Brown and Burne-Jones)

1855

Exposition Universelle, Paris, includes important works by Brown, Hunt and Millais; Burne-Jones and Morris travel to France in the Long Vacation and decide to become artists; W. M. Rossetti writes art criticism for new American periodical, The Crayon (succeeded by F. G. Stephens in 1856)

1856

The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine publishes twelve issues

1857

Matrimonial Causes Act conditionally allows women to divorce; Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition, Russell Place, with seventy-one works by PRBs and associates including Siddall; W. M. Rossetti helps to organize an Exhibition of British Art which introduces Pre-Raphaelite art to the United States; Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing; publisher Edward Moxon’s edition of Tennyson’s Poems includes illustrations by Hunt, Millais and D. G. Rossetti; project to decorate the Oxford Union (under D. G. Rossetti’s leadership, with paintings by Burne-Jones, Morris and others) brings Algernon Charles Swinburne into Rossetti’s circle

1858

Founding of the Hogarth Club (–1861); William Morris, The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems (dedicated to D. G. Rossetti)

1859

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species; D. G. Rossetti paints Bocca Baciata; marriage of Jane Burden and William Morris

1860

Publication of Essays and Reviews, which controversially presents a view of the Bible based on scientific, linguistic and historical investigation; Hunt shows The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple in a special exhibition at the xxi

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C HR O N OL OG Y

German Gallery; marriages of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Georgiana Macdonald and Edward Burne-Jones; Stephens becomes regular art critic for The Athenaeum (–1900); Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. V (the last); Swinburne, The Queen-Mother and Rosamond (dedicated to D. G. Rossetti) 1861

American Civil War (–1865); death of Prince Albert; abolition of serfdom in Russia; independent kingdom of Italy established; founding of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (‘the Firm’); D. G. Rossetti, The Early Italian Poets (dedicated to Elizabeth Siddall, now Rossetti)

1862 London International Exhibition, with exhibit by ‘the Firm’; death of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (now Rossetti); Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems with two illustrations by D. G. Rossetti; Swinburne reviews Baudelaire in The Spectator; D. G. Rossetti moves to Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, with W. M. Rossetti and Swinburne as lodgers 1863

Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus, a biography of Christ casting doubt on his divine status; Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, ‘Pictor Ignotus’ (completed by the Rossetti brothers and Anne Gilchrist)

1864

Burne-Jones elected Associate of the Old Water-Colour Society

1865

Abolition of slavery in North America; birth of W. B. Yeats; Brown holds solo exhibition of Work and other paintings, for which he writes his own catalogue; Dudley Gallery formed by a committee of artists; Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon

1866

Christina Rossetti, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems with two illustrations by D. G. Rossetti; Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (dedicated to Burne-Jones)

1867

Morris, The Life and Death of Jason; W. M. Rossetti, Fine Art, Chiefly Contemporary (dedicated to Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti)

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C hro n ol og y

1868

Morris, The Earthly Paradise (–1870, 3 vols., dedicated to Jane Morris); Swinburne, William Blake (dedicated to W. M. Rossetti)

1869

Ruskin appointed Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford; Hunt paints The Shadow of Death (–1873, Figure 9); exhumation of poems by D. G. Rossetti from Siddall’s coffin

1870

D. G. Rossetti, Poems (dedicated to W. M. Rossetti); Burne-Jones resigns from Old Water-Colour Society following objections to the male nude in his Phyllis and Demophoon

1871

Paris Commune; Rome becomes capital of a united Italy; Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise (dedicated to Giuseppe Mazzini); Ruskin founds School of Drawing at Oxford

1872

Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song with illustrations by Arthur Hughes

1873 Solomon arrested and tried for sodomy; D. G. Rossetti begins Proserpine (–1877, Figure 7); Morris, ‘Love Is Enough’; Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance 1874

William Michael Rossetti and Lucy Madox Brown marry

1875

‘The Firm’ reformulated as Morris & Co. under Morris’s sole proprietorship; Swinburne, Essays and Studies

1876

Morris, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

1877

First exhibition of Grosvenor Gallery, with important work by Burne-Jones including The Beguiling of Merlin (Figure 18; D. G. Rossetti declines to exhibit); Ruskin, The Laws of Fésole

1878

Exposition Universelle, Paris, including Burne-Jones’s The Beguiling of Merlin (Figure 18); Frederic Leighton elected President of the Royal Academy (–1896); Swinburne, Poems and Ballads: Second Series

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C HR O N OL OG Y

1880

First Anglo-Boer Heptalogia

War

(–1881);

Swinburne,

1881

Death of James Collinson; Christina Rossetti, A Pageant and Other Poems; D. G. Rossetti, Poems: A New Edition and Ballads and Sonnets

1882

Death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; memorial exhibitions in the winter of 1882–3 reveal his paintings to the public; Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art; Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems; birth of Virginia Woolf

The

1883 Swinburne, A Century of Roundels (dedicated to Christina Rossetti) 1886

Hunt paints The Lady of Shalott (–1905, Figure 1)

1888

Morris, Signs of Change and ‘A Dream of John Ball’; first exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society

1889 Swinburne, Poems and Ballads: Third Series (dedicated to William Bell Scott) 1890

Death of Vincent van Gogh; Morris, News from Nowhere

1891

Morris founds the Kelmscott Press

1892

Death of Thomas Woolner

1893

Death of Ford Madox Brown; Christina Rossetti, Verses

1894

Death of Christina Georgina Rossetti; Swinburne, Astrophel and Other Poems (dedicated to Morris)

1895

Radio communication begins; Oscar Wilde imprisoned for homosexual offences

1896

Deaths of John Everett Millais, William Morris; Christina Rossetti, New Poems (collected by W. M. Rossetti); Swinburne, The Tale of Balen

1898

Death of Edward Burne-Jones

1899

(–1902) Second Anglo-Boer War

1900

Death of John Ruskin

1901

Death of Queen Victoria; accession of Edward VII; facsimile edition of The Germ published

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