The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848-1875

by Diane Waggoner, Tim Barringer, Joanne Lukitsh

As photography steadily gained a foothold in the 1840s, a group of British painters calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelites came of age. Answering John Ruskin's call to study nature, 'rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing,' these young painters were also spurred on by the possibilities of the new medium (introduced in 1839), particularly its ability to capture every nuance, every detail. And yet, the Pre-Raphaelites' debt to photography has barely been acknowledged. From photography, painters learned to see adapting such radical qualities as abrupt cropping, planar recession, and a lack of modulation between forms, painters made their art modern, sometimes shockingly so. Photographers in turn looked to Pre-Raphaelite visual strategies and subject matter - mined from literature, history, religion - to secure,' as Julia Margaret Cameron wrote, 'the character and uses of High Art.' These artists developed a shared vocabulary - featuring light and minute detail as an emblem of visual truth - which helped launch realism as the century's dominant visual mode. 'Exactness,' a critic affirmed in 1856, 'is the tendency of the age.' This volume explores the rich dialogue between photography and painting through the themes of landscape, portraiture, literary and historical narratives and modern-life subjects. These artists - from photographers Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Gustave Rejlander, to such painters as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John William Inchbold - not only had much in common, but also upended traditional approaches to making pictures.

Genres: Art, Art History

230 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2010

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is published in association with an exhibition organized by the National Gallery in Washington and Museum D’Orsay. The exhibition was quite unique in its attempt to put side-by-side the art of Pre-Raphaelites and early contemporary photography – altogether, an impressive 125 plates. Following a solid introduction, the book is organized into 5 topical sections each starting with an essay and illustrated by a section of the plates, which mixes paintings and photographs on the topic (many more photographs than paintings though). In each section, the essay and the plates highlight the interaction between photographs and paintings showing that these two types of art affected each other. This is something I have not seen in other books devoted to Pre-Raphaelites. The first section “minute details” focuses mostly on landscapes and shows how much Pre-Raphaelite “Ruskinian” landscapes with their attention to details resembled early attempts at landscape photography. The second section “natural effects” also focuses on landscapes, but places side-by-side attempts in photos and paintings to capture specific light effects. The third section, “portraits and studies” shows portraits in both media placing in a few cases both types of portraits of the same person (Jane Morris, Tennyson). Finally, the last two sections, “poetic subjects” and “romance and modern life” show how photography and paintings attempted to present scenes motivated by books and poetry and scenes related to historical and modern romance. Altogether, the books provide a very informative story highlighting vision similarity and frequent interaction between these two art mediums. The book could be a good additional reading for those interested in Pre-Raphaelites since it shows the context where their art evolves. It could be also considered an interesting introduction to early Victorian photography since the majority of the plates shows photographs and represent many major photographers of the epoch including Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Margaret Cameron.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the deal: the book is beautiful, no question. The pieces are well selected and curated. If I were only rating the artwork, this book would get five stars. However, as the pieces were created by artists long dead and then selected from an already existing exhibit, I think it's fair for me to heavily consider the writing when evaluating the book.

I've spent a large percentage of my life in academia and I've read about as much verbose, stuffy writing as I can handle. From reading the majority of the essays collected here, I can draw one of two conclusions: One, these essays were intended only for other art historians; or Two, these essays were intended for no one, the authors assuming people would browse through the images without ever bothering to read a word printed.

This is a pretty fascinating subject, so how it was made so dry and boring is beyond me. I will say that Diane Wagonner, who also edited the collection, wrote an engaging piece, and there were certainly interesting tidbits here and there, but overall it was disappointing.

I'm probably giving this book an undeserved amount of flack because it happens to be the last in a long stream of dry art books I've read. I just think it would be nice if publishers would figure out that pretty pictures don't make up for bad writing. Also, if these art historians could realize the language they use is not impressive but instead alienating and convoluted, they might attract more readers.