00:00:00
[Music]
00:00:02
the pre- rafalik Brotherhood brought
00:00:04
notoriety to British art in the 19th
00:00:06
century bursting into the spotlight in
00:00:08
the mid-century they shocked their peers
00:00:11
with a new kind of radical
00:00:14
art this program explores the origins of
00:00:17
the Brotherhood their initial
00:00:18
achievements and the centuries of Dogma
00:00:20
their paintings overturned
00:00:28
[Music]
00:00:42
for many the idea of prolite art is
00:00:45
informed by images of luscious
00:00:46
long-haired women or of sentimental
00:00:49
chocolate box
00:00:51
children but the brotherhood's early
00:00:53
work was very different from these later
00:00:55
works associated with
00:00:57
them their first paintings contra
00:01:00
versally applied a bold new realism to
00:01:02
Sacred
00:01:04
subjects and then a decade before the
00:01:07
French Impressionists their brushes
00:01:09
captured insalubrious subjects from
00:01:11
urban
00:01:15
[Music]
00:01:18
life such was the outrage that their
00:01:21
work caused one eminent Victorian
00:01:23
dedicated the front page of his magazine
00:01:25
to the venting of his
00:01:28
disgust you behold hold the interior of
00:01:31
a carpenter's shop in the foreground of
00:01:33
that carpenter shop is a hideous R
00:01:36
necked blubbering redheaded boy in a bed
00:01:39
gown who appears to have received a poke
00:01:41
in the hand from The Stick of another
00:01:43
boy with whom he has been playing in an
00:01:45
adjacent Gutter and to be holding it up
00:01:48
for the contemplation of a kneeling
00:01:49
woman so horrible in her ugliness that
00:01:52
you would stand out from the rest of the
00:01:54
company as a monster in the viest
00:01:56
Cabaret in France or the lowest gin in
00:02:00
England wherever it is possible to
00:02:03
express ugliness of feature Lim or
00:02:05
attitude you have it
00:02:07
[Music]
00:02:09
expressed the year was 1850 the critic
00:02:13
was the darling of the nation Charles
00:02:15
Dickens and the painter in question was
00:02:17
the 21-year-old praly John Everett
00:02:22
mle his picture Christ in the house of
00:02:25
his parents showed Christ in his
00:02:27
father's Workshop it was painted to PR
00:02:29
spoke but it had not
00:02:31
[Music]
00:02:35
failed they were all very young still
00:02:38
only about 20 and they wanted to make
00:02:40
their Mark you know they wanted it all
00:02:42
Fame riches girls whatever they could
00:02:46
get and what they wanted was Revolution
00:02:50
the Brotherhood was founded in 1848 when
00:02:53
revolution of a different kind was
00:02:54
spreading across Europe and KL Marx
00:02:57
published his Communist Manifesto
00:03:00
fired by the political turmoil around
00:03:02
them John Everett mle and two fellow
00:03:05
students at the prestigious Royal
00:03:06
Academy school William Holman hunt then
00:03:09
age
00:03:11
21 and Dante Gabriel Rosetti 20 decided
00:03:15
to overturn British
00:03:17
art they all had a similar aim and they
00:03:19
they were all rather dissatisfied with
00:03:21
the teaching they were receiving at the
00:03:24
the academy and they wanted to work as
00:03:25
part of a group and get inspiration from
00:03:28
their peers
00:03:30
they all agreed that during the early
00:03:32
19th century British art had become lazy
00:03:35
predictable and boring so they
00:03:37
sympathized with the art scholar John
00:03:39
Ruskin when he complained of the Eternal
00:03:42
brown cows in ditches and white sails in
00:03:46
squalls and sliced lemons in
00:03:49
sauces and foolish faces in
00:03:52
simpers it's important to remember that
00:03:55
the prite group was interested in
00:03:58
literature and poetry um as much as
00:04:00
visual art from the very
00:04:03
start so in a move to restore meaning to
00:04:06
Art they decided to paint moral
00:04:09
significant subjects drawn from
00:04:10
literature and the
00:04:12
[Music]
00:04:14
Bible and they reversed the sterile
00:04:16
academic tradition they had all been
00:04:18
encouraged to emulate at the Royal
00:04:19
Academy of form color and composition as
00:04:23
embodied in the work of the 16th century
00:04:25
artist
00:04:26
Raphael but as hunt complained why
00:04:30
should the composition be always apexed
00:04:31
in
00:04:33
pyramids why should the highest light
00:04:35
always be on the principal
00:04:37
figure why make one corner of the
00:04:39
picture always in the
00:04:45
shade mle hunt and Rosetti set up a
00:04:48
group that would offer an alternative to
00:04:50
this Academy dogma and recruited four
00:04:52
other like-minded thinkers including
00:04:54
Rosetti's brother William who wrote we
00:04:57
were really like brothers continuing
00:05:00
together and confiding to one another
00:05:02
all experience bearing on questions of
00:05:04
art and literature and many affecting us
00:05:06
as
00:05:07
individuals well it's uh at one such
00:05:10
meeting hunt brought along a book of
00:05:12
Engravings of the 15th century Fresco in
00:05:14
the Campo DeSanto at Pisa art that
00:05:17
predated Raphael here they saw no
00:05:20
pyramid structure no idealized subjects
00:05:24
but an attempt by an early Italian
00:05:25
artist to capture life as it was as hunt
00:05:29
said
00:05:30
it was probably the finding of this book
00:05:32
which caused the establishment of the
00:05:33
prite Brotherhood mle Rosetti and myself
00:05:37
were all seeking some sure ground some
00:05:39
new starting point for our new art here
00:05:42
at last was no trace of decline no
00:05:45
conventionality no
00:05:47
arrogance notice it's not pre Raphael
00:05:51
the word is actually pre
00:05:53
raphaelite so it means before the
00:05:56
raphaelites or the followers of Raphael
00:05:59
now the idea here is that Raphael
00:06:02
himself was a great artist great artist
00:06:05
of the hyene sance just after the year
00:06:09
1500 but that his style had got
00:06:14
conventionalized um made into a formula
00:06:17
by his students and the next Generations
00:06:20
after that those are the raphaelites the
00:06:23
followers the imitators and that's what
00:06:26
the uh the prite Brotherhood is
00:06:29
completely
00:06:32
rejecting M's Christ in the house with
00:06:35
his parents marked his attempt to
00:06:37
portray a lifelike scene rather than an
00:06:40
idealized one with crisp detail and a
00:06:42
composition that brushed away Academy
00:06:44
rules it came as a complete shock to an
00:06:47
unsuspecting
00:06:49
public this painting was revolutionary
00:06:52
on a number of levels firstly when it
00:06:54
appeared in public it appeared
00:06:56
completely audacious because of the way
00:06:58
it was composed it was SE to break all
00:07:01
the rules of composing you know great
00:07:05
paintings but coupled with that you have
00:07:07
this sort of audacious realism this what
00:07:10
was really I'm
00:07:13
shocking and the idea is he's playing
00:07:15
fast and loose with um sacred um imagery
00:07:18
and in doing so he's really sticking his
00:07:20
fingers up at the established way to
00:07:22
present religious
00:07:25
painting mle's audacity is clear when
00:07:28
his work is compared to that of of one
00:07:29
of his contemporaries Jr Herbert's
00:07:32
picture of the same subject follows the
00:07:34
Royal Academy's expectations with two
00:07:37
simple groupings Joseph and Mary on the
00:07:39
right and an Angelic faed Jesus isolated
00:07:42
against the background on the
00:07:47
left milles by contrast was far less
00:07:50
sacaran
00:07:55
[Music]
00:08:04
Millie was painting Christ like a street
00:08:06
urchin and I think what was also acious
00:08:09
was the the attention to different body
00:08:11
parts of the um of the figures rather
00:08:13
than as in the Herbert painting you the
00:08:15
fa is being smooth idealized with no
00:08:18
wrinkles or blemishes here you have of
00:08:20
Joseph his sunburnt hands his veins
00:08:25
protruding his broken dirty toenails
00:08:30
figure of Christ too you can see how his
00:08:31
nails haven't been sort of
00:08:35
cut Mary veins in her hands the swollen
00:08:39
hands of St an as said be a woman of
00:08:42
that particular
00:08:43
[Music]
00:08:45
age the blood actually looks real and of
00:08:48
new
00:08:49
[Music]
00:08:52
SCH to get the you the Sheep making them
00:08:54
not vivid in the background he obtained
00:08:56
sheep heads from a butchers
00:09:01
so as this real attention on all those
00:09:03
areas you would normally edit out of a
00:09:05
painting the fact M has made a point of
00:09:08
making them quite so you know clear and
00:09:10
apparent to the viewer that was
00:09:12
considered to be really audacious and
00:09:14
shocking quite Blasphemous in a way how
00:09:16
dare you treat Jesus you know or Christ
00:09:19
like
00:09:20
that shocking too were a technical
00:09:23
aspects of M's
00:09:25
work the forensic detail of M's brush
00:09:28
Strokes on the on John the Baptist's
00:09:30
covering in which every hair is
00:09:32
separately shown was
00:09:37
unprecedented the public were unused to
00:09:39
this literal style they had grown up on
00:09:42
more painterly approaches typified by
00:09:44
artists such as Edward Lancia who
00:09:47
depicted fur such as that on this donkey
00:09:50
with a uniform area of smooth Brown
00:09:52
using a large
00:09:57
brush but the Press couldn't stomach
00:09:59
melee's almost photographic sense of
00:10:05
[Music]
00:10:07
detail the attempt to associate the holy
00:10:09
family with no conceivable emission of
00:10:12
misery of dirt and even disease is
00:10:18
disgusting such criticism was a novelty
00:10:20
for melee he was the youngest ever
00:10:23
student to enter the Royal Academy
00:10:24
school at the age of 11 and became their
00:10:27
star pupil his front to the institution
00:10:30
that had nurtured him was therefore all
00:10:32
the more
00:10:33
shocking wanting to know what all the
00:10:35
fuss was about Queen Victoria sent to
00:10:38
have the painting brought from the walls
00:10:40
of the ra I hope it will not have any
00:10:43
bad effect on her mind melee
00:10:46
joked 22-year-old William Holman hunt
00:10:49
had entered the academy after hard graft
00:10:52
from a trade background he had faced
00:10:55
parental opposition to his decision to
00:10:56
be an artist but in the same year as
00:10:58
melee's Carpenters shop he exhibited an
00:11:01
equally radical painting of early Roman
00:11:03
missionaries converting a British family
00:11:05
to Christianity critics were equally
00:11:11
damning what had Mr Hunt eaten for his
00:11:14
supper and these in congruities came
00:11:16
into his head the British grapes have
00:11:19
had their effect on both the
00:11:20
missionaries who seem to have suffered
00:11:22
quite as much from this mistaken
00:11:23
Hospitality as from The Druids we hope
00:11:26
they had something better than British
00:11:28
Bry to counteract the effect we have
00:11:31
lingered too long over this frantic
00:11:33
[Music]
00:11:36
trash hunt instead of using the
00:11:38
Traditional Academy space which involves
00:11:41
having a sort of pyramid of a people
00:11:43
with the most important person at in the
00:11:44
middle sort of set slightly back into
00:11:47
the canvas he brings everything a Long
00:11:50
Way Forward uh like a Roman piece of
00:11:52
relief sculpture which makes the
00:11:54
painting modern in that you get this
00:11:56
incredible intimacy you feel incredibly
00:11:59
part of the scene a particularly
00:12:01
compelling figure is this young lad here
00:12:03
who's listening at the ground for the
00:12:05
approach of of footsteps who looks
00:12:07
straight out of us and we really feel
00:12:09
like we're on a level with him at the
00:12:12
same time he uses the the trick of 15th
00:12:15
century paintings of dividing space up
00:12:18
and having little apertures with
00:12:19
secondary scenes in them to make the
00:12:22
contrast between the the mob and family
00:12:26
and to suggest perhaps another stage in
00:12:28
this in this missionary's life to
00:12:30
suggest the danger that he might be
00:12:33
in this is one of my favorite passages
00:12:36
in a painting by hunt where the water
00:12:38
dribbles down and stains the Earth and
00:12:40
captures the light at the end you'll
00:12:43
notice that the water stains the red
00:12:46
Earth so it begins to take the
00:12:48
appearance of spil blood so we get a
00:12:51
suggestion that this missionary will
00:12:53
also die he'll also become a
00:12:57
martyr and most interesting here we have
00:13:00
the first ever appearance in a paraf
00:13:02
light painting of one of their most
00:13:04
famous models Lizzy Sidle who would
00:13:07
eventually appear in many of their
00:13:10
paintings Elizabeth Ellena Sidle was the
00:13:13
daughter of a Cutler who had been born
00:13:16
in Sheffield she was the second eldest
00:13:19
in a large family and The Story Goes
00:13:21
that Lizzie was working as a millona
00:13:23
when she was spotted by Walter deil who
00:13:26
was a close buddy of the prbs
00:13:29
I think Lizzie was taken up so enthusi
00:13:31
because she was enthusiastic about about
00:13:33
modeling and posing for them and being
00:13:35
with them uh she obviously entered into
00:13:38
the life of the studios very
00:13:43
eagerly the third founding member of the
00:13:46
prite Brotherhood Dante Gabriel Rosetti
00:13:49
was the son of a political Refugee from
00:13:51
Italy a poet as well as a painter the
00:13:54
Bohemian Rosetti dropped out of the
00:13:56
Royal Academy school choosing instead to
00:13:58
study with working painters in 1850 he
00:14:02
exhibited e Anila domini otherwise known
00:14:05
as the
00:14:08
enunciation one of the prb principles
00:14:11
was not just truth to nature but to
00:14:14
imagine how scenes from the past might
00:14:17
actually have been like to kind of imbue
00:14:20
them with a lifelike quality and so
00:14:23
Rosetti is thinking what could the
00:14:27
enunciation really have been like the
00:14:29
Virgin would not have been in a
00:14:31
neoclassical arcade as she's often
00:14:34
depicted in Italian
00:14:36
art so rosette is imagining what it was
00:14:39
like in
00:14:43
Nazareth so he's drawn her wearing a
00:14:46
very simple shift rather than any
00:14:49
elaborate
00:14:52
costume what's most striking about the
00:14:55
painting is the for
00:14:56
shortening so the The Spectator tumbles
00:14:59
right into the picture space there's no
00:15:02
foreground distancing the viewer from
00:15:05
the scene depicted Mary's face comes
00:15:08
forward to meet us in this very unusual
00:15:11
and alarming
00:15:15
way and it sort of abandons really the
00:15:18
true rules of perspective that artists
00:15:21
normally followed this dramatic
00:15:23
foreshortening and that's way before the
00:15:26
posst impressionist challenge to
00:15:27
perspective and framing
00:15:29
in addition to that the Archangel
00:15:31
Gabriel is not a winged creature in the
00:15:35
traditional manner but a very corporeal
00:15:37
young man who's actually naked
00:15:40
underneath his kind of
00:15:44
gown the only way he's depicted as an
00:15:46
angel is that he's flying on Flames
00:15:49
under his feet and one hand is allaying
00:15:54
Mary's fear and the other is thrusting
00:15:57
the Lily stem
00:15:59
right at her womb and that's the moment
00:16:02
of
00:16:03
[Music]
00:16:12
conception and of course roset didn't
00:16:15
escape the attention of the press either
00:16:18
the face of the Angel is insipidity
00:16:22
itself as shocking as the art itself was
00:16:25
the audacity of these painters forming a
00:16:28
coherent self styled movement the first
00:16:31
instance of artists with a Manifesto in
00:16:34
British art was met with
00:16:36
horror their ambition is an unhealthy
00:16:39
thirst which seeks notoriety by way the
00:16:42
eyes which continues to rage with
00:16:44
unabated absurdity among a class of
00:16:46
juvenile artists who style themselves
00:16:49
the
00:16:50
[Music]
00:16:55
pp as Holman hunt remarked the storm of
00:16:59
abuse was now turned into a hurricane we
00:17:02
hold them to be utterly heretical Dam as
00:17:05
an idiot counts The Strokes of a
00:17:09
[Music]
00:17:10
clock the brothers suddenly found
00:17:13
themselves at the center of a national
00:17:14
debate but at the same time they knew
00:17:16
that outrage often provides the pathway
00:17:19
to fame and with this in mind they moved
00:17:22
on from their initial religious subjects
00:17:24
to explore scenes of Modern
00:17:27
Life we often think of the French
00:17:30
Impressionists and Painters of that
00:17:32
generation as being the ones who were
00:17:34
the first to produce compelling scenes
00:17:37
of Modern Life Life in the modern city
00:17:41
the Modern urban world and a very famous
00:17:45
point of reference is charl bod's essay
00:17:49
published in 1863 the painter of Modern
00:17:52
Life where he describes a a painter who
00:17:56
goes into the streets of the modern city
00:17:59
and very rapidly captures the bustle the
00:18:03
excitement the flurry of of Modern urban
00:18:07
life now what's interesting is that the
00:18:09
prulite Brotherhood were interested in
00:18:13
exploring Modern urban life a full
00:18:16
decade before
00:18:20
that at the heart of this was their
00:18:23
fascination with the role of women in
00:18:25
society this was sometimes dressed up in
00:18:27
historical gu as in M's 1851 painting
00:18:31
Mariana where he explores women's
00:18:33
dependence on marriage the scene is
00:18:35
drawn from a poem by
00:18:38
Tennyson the Tennyson poems relate back
00:18:41
to Shakespeare's play measure for
00:18:43
measure um which describes this
00:18:45
character Mariana um whose DIY has been
00:18:48
lost at sea and as a result she's been
00:18:51
abandoned by a fiance Angelo and she's
00:18:54
sort of stranded in this moed gra and
00:18:57
somehow lamenting her present day
00:18:59
existence it's an image really of
00:19:01
lassitude on WE and boredom and
00:19:06
frustration and she's at her table
00:19:08
working on this embroidery and she's put
00:19:11
a pin down almost in a gesture of
00:19:14
frustration and she's presented in this
00:19:16
extraordinary pose with herself in her
00:19:18
hands on her back as if she's got back
00:19:20
ache and that cor relates to not only
00:19:23
the task she's been doing but also it's
00:19:25
an expression of her frustration and how
00:19:29
you know um you the agony she feels on
00:19:34
within she's obiously desperate for a
00:19:36
relationship for fulfillment of through
00:19:38
marriage and it's is being denied to
00:19:41
her she's been compelled towards a
00:19:43
nun-like existence on the other hand she
00:19:46
desires sexual fulfillment and her gaze
00:19:49
is looking rather abstractly at the
00:19:51
figure of the angel Gabriel on the
00:19:54
stained glass window um Gabriel should
00:19:57
really be looking at the figure of the
00:19:58
Virgin Mary was actually looking a
00:20:00
scance at
00:20:06
Mariana and there are accounts of women
00:20:09
in particular crowding around this
00:20:11
picture and really sort of empathizing
00:20:14
with the figure of Mariana and her
00:20:18
plight there were know more women there
00:20:20
were men at this this particular time so
00:20:22
he's in sense is addressing a particular
00:20:24
social issue from through the subject
00:20:26
from the past
00:20:31
but Holman hunt Bolder than melee felt
00:20:34
no need to dress his subject up in
00:20:36
medieval costume he painted in the here
00:20:38
and now when in 1853 he looked at the
00:20:41
role of the kept woman in the Awakening
00:20:47
conscience prostitution was a big issue
00:20:49
for debate at this time in Victorian
00:20:51
London especially amongst the middle
00:20:53
classes who were concerned about its
00:20:55
visibility in the city and prostitutes
00:20:57
also peer as marginal figures in novels
00:21:00
and in illustrations but what is very
00:21:02
different about the Awakening conscience
00:21:04
is that hunt brings the prostitute
00:21:07
Center Stage it's not a caricature of
00:21:09
the prostitute it's actually a portrait
00:21:11
which looks into the psychology of her
00:21:15
situation so what we see is the young
00:21:18
girl at the center of the painting
00:21:21
together with her
00:21:23
protector Hunt's characteristically set
00:21:26
up a very complex composition here so
00:21:29
that we actually see the window to the
00:21:32
Garden as it's reflected in a mirror on
00:21:35
the back wall so in a sense he's giving
00:21:37
us the whole view of the room from the
00:21:40
back wall with the mirror on it through
00:21:43
to the view to the Garden Hunt is
00:21:46
looking with Fierce intensity at every
00:21:49
detail of the modern scene he's
00:21:51
recording it all it's like a historic
00:21:54
documentation of a particular moment in
00:21:57
time and he's in a sense freezing that
00:21:59
all in the picture for
00:22:04
us it's a relationship which is based on
00:22:07
beautiful things on the apparent
00:22:09
protectiveness of the
00:22:12
man but we see at the bottom of the
00:22:15
painting uh a glove a discarded glove
00:22:18
which I think is meant to imply that she
00:22:19
will be discarded once he's finished
00:22:21
with
00:22:22
her she has just jumped out of his lap
00:22:27
she has just understood that the life
00:22:31
she's living is not the one she wants
00:22:33
she's understood the falseness of
00:22:36
it and we can see that under the table
00:22:39
there is a cat imitating the pose of the
00:22:41
man with his pore out um and a Birds
00:22:44
trying to escape trying to fly out of
00:22:46
the window and so we're left in some
00:22:48
uncertainty as to whether she will
00:22:50
escape
00:22:58
prostitutes were understood to have a
00:23:00
very set future which involved um a slow
00:23:03
degradation and very often suicide and I
00:23:06
think that's linked to the fact that the
00:23:07
model was not just a paid model but
00:23:10
somebody whose life hunt was very
00:23:11
interested
00:23:13
in the model was Annie Miller a working
00:23:16
girl who hunt found in a pub they
00:23:19
started an affair and Hunt set Annie up
00:23:21
in a boarding house and paid for her
00:23:23
education he intended to marry her
00:23:26
although he never kept his promise The
00:23:28
Awakening conscience mirrored the
00:23:30
relationships the prer rites were
00:23:32
developing with their
00:23:33
sitters they were becoming increasingly
00:23:36
attracted to work in class women as both
00:23:38
models and Mistresses as such a kind of
00:23:42
praly Sisterhood formed with them
00:23:44
appearing in many of the
00:23:46
paintings Elizabeth siddle now Rosetti's
00:23:49
mistress was joined by Annie
00:23:52
Miller and then Fanny cornforth who sat
00:23:55
for Rosetti's painting found
00:23:58
[Music]
00:24:02
she's generally identified as a
00:24:04
prostitute but she's probably better
00:24:06
described as a Goodtime girl she was
00:24:08
willing to go with any man who she
00:24:10
fancied to supper rooms and and dance
00:24:12
halls and she was certainly unescorted
00:24:15
when Rosetti met her in the tside
00:24:17
pleasure Gardens uh and accidentally
00:24:21
dislodged her Bonnet and loosening a
00:24:23
whole wealth of corn colored hair she
00:24:26
was a true stunner and at one Rosetti
00:24:29
took Fanny to his Studio positioned her
00:24:31
head against the wall and Drew the
00:24:34
careful study that forms the basis for
00:24:36
the
00:24:37
[Music]
00:24:39
painting in found Rosetti paints The
00:24:42
Prostitute at her most desperate State
00:24:45
when the end of the road is near it
00:24:47
shows the fate of a former country girl
00:24:49
laid Low by Urban
00:24:52
Vice it's Dawn in London a countryman
00:24:55
has come up to town to bring his calf
00:24:57
for Market
00:24:58
he spots his former sweetheart who
00:25:00
recoils in
00:25:02
shame to underline this the symbolic
00:25:05
nature of the encounter the poor little
00:25:07
calf which is on the way to slaughter is
00:25:11
held under a net which is symbolic of
00:25:13
the net that sin and shame have trapped
00:25:17
the young woman
00:25:19
in the chief focus of the painting is
00:25:22
the intertwined hands which the dro
00:25:26
Carter is grasping the woman by her
00:25:29
wrists and she's pulling away trying to
00:25:32
wriggle out from his
00:25:35
[Music]
00:25:39
grasp Rosetti would continue to work on
00:25:42
found over many years but eventually set
00:25:45
it aside
00:25:51
unfinished within just a few years of
00:25:54
the prite brotherhood's foundation in
00:25:56
1848 they had achieved their aim of
00:25:58
reforming British
00:26:00
art they had brought a new realism to
00:26:03
the
00:26:04
table they had upturned the rules of
00:26:10
composition they introduced new painting
00:26:14
techniques and new subject
00:26:17
[Music]
00:26:20
matters but they were still critically
00:26:22
damned and they faced a bleak future
00:26:25
their work didn't sell and they were
00:26:27
short of money
00:26:29
[Music]
00:26:33
but then an unexpected savior came along
00:26:36
John Ruskin the author of modern
00:26:38
painters was a Critic of almost
00:26:40
unprecedented power in the art world and
00:26:42
at the Vanguard of cultural
00:26:46
thinking he had kept quiet for 2 years
00:26:49
reading the abuse the prer ralyes had
00:26:52
suffered in the Press but then he
00:26:54
decided to put pen to paper in a letter
00:26:56
to the times to support the young
00:27:01
Rebels these pre-raphaelites will draw
00:27:04
either what they see or what they
00:27:06
suppose might have been the actual facts
00:27:08
of the scene they desire to represent
00:27:10
irrespective of any conventional rules
00:27:12
of picture
00:27:14
making when ruskin's letter appeared in
00:27:16
the
00:27:17
times it was as if the the gods had come
00:27:22
down from their Olympian Heights and
00:27:24
bestowed benefaction on the pral light
00:27:26
suddenly they could do no wrong
00:27:29
everyone knew that this man was quite
00:27:30
extraordinary everyone trusted his eye
00:27:32
in his judgment because his ideas were
00:27:34
so fresh exciting and they really struck
00:27:36
a cord with the Victorian public so a
00:27:39
word from John Ruskin was enough to make
00:27:41
or break an
00:27:44
artist they may as they gain experience
00:27:48
lay in our England the foundations of a
00:27:50
School of Art nobler than the world has
00:27:52
seen for 300 years
00:27:59
this marked a turning point in the prer
00:28:01
raites
00:28:03
fortunes now with ruskin's backing the
00:28:06
abuse in the Press fell away they could
00:28:09
continue with their revolutionary
00:28:10
Ambitions safe in the knowledge their
00:28:12
future careers were
00:28:15
secure despite all the hardships the
00:28:18
prite Brotherhood had finally won the
00:28:21
battle British art would never be the
00:28:23
same again
00:28:29
and you can have your say about this or
00:28:31
any of our programs on the bbc4 website
00:28:34
where you can also sign up for our email
00:28:36
newsletter next tonight have a giggle
00:28:38
with a comedy song
00:28:40
[Music]
00:28:53
[Music]
