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Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 4
Lesson 2: The Pre-Raphaelites and mid-Victorian art- A Beginner's Guide to the Pre-Raphaelites
- The Aesthetic Movement
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Millais's Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Portrait of John Ruskin
- A Portrait of John Ruskin and Masculine Ideals of Dress in the Nineteenth Century
- Sir John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms)
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- John Everett Millais, Bubbles
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts
- Hunt, the Awakening Conscience
- Hunt, The Awakening Conscience
- William Holman Hunt, Isabella or the Pot of Basil
- William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott
- William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death
- William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Ford Madox Brown's 'Work'
- Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini
- Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
- Rossetti, Proserpine
- Wallis, Chatterton
- Wallis, Chatterton
- William Powell Frith, Derby Day
- Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Sleeping Beauty — but without the Kiss: Burne-Jones and the Briar Rose series
- Burne-Jones, The Depths of the Sea
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Sir Edward Burne-Jones, four stained glass windows at Birmingham Cathedral
- Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott
- William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street
- William Morris, The Green Dining Room
- William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
- Pre-Raphaelites
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John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past, exhibited 1859, oil on canvas, 864 x 508 mm (Tate Britain, London). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
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- At0:24they declare the Victorian viewer would know the young lady was a prostitute. How would they know this?(6 votes)
- One of key Pre-Raphaelite characteristics is the analogy being applied similarly to the allegory being used in Renaissance's arts. During the period of transition from feudalistic society to flourishing capitalism. People are struggling with values they were told as child and the new value. I learnt from Professor Wrightson of Yale university http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-251, specifically women from countryside were forced to prostitution being deprived economically after "enclosure movement". That is very self evident in English history from Tudor to Stuart dynasties.(5 votes)
- why do they always put other paintings in these videos(0 votes)
- So you can compare them to the main painting of the video and see what the narrators are referring to.(9 votes)
- Why does she look scared, yet calm?(3 votes)
- Since it is called Thoughts of The Past I presume this lady might have recalled a distant and disturbing memory.(2 votes)
- Why does this painting look as if it was influenced by medieval art and paintings in particular? Was the artist influenced by the medieval period?(2 votes)
- Yes. J.R.S.S. was a later member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which was strongly influenced by medieval art and what it saw as an indigenous English heritage rather than a classical late Renaissance (or post Raphael) style. I suppose in a sense you could say they saw more truth in this earlier style and thought that classicism had exhausted itself.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/praf/hd_praf.htm(2 votes)
- I notice the most stunning color in this painting is the Blue color of her dress, which may be lapis lazuli - the color that previously would mainly be used for Madonna's cloak. Does it have any connection with her red hair, which is associated with Maria Magdalene's hair, you know, in terms of religion?
Could you explain more about this Blue color, besides the sense of deep melancholy it brings? I think it is one of the most prominent features of the painting, and ignoring it would be a big oversight.(2 votes)- Perhaps it alludes to her goodness and her immorality which is the human condition. Corrupted, yet created for perfection.(2 votes)
- why do all paintings with people look like they are staring at you?(1 vote)
- may be it gives us a relationship b/w it and us(4 votes)
- I have noticed a repeated usage of the red hair amongst the PRB. Why is this?(1 vote)
- From the author:New ideals of beauty among the Pre-Raphaelites I think - and therefore a rejection of earlier Victorian ideals of beauty.(3 votes)
- This painting looks very similar to "Mariana". Any connections other than their similarity as Pre-Raphaelite paintings?(1 vote)
- Is there a hint of a halo about her head? I definitely see some white lines above her head and on her hair on the side of her head, which made me think she might be wearing a very thin white veil, but I don't see a veil in front of her face.(1 vote)
- the narrator says or describe many things in the picture.did the artist did this purposely or are the narrators making up stories(1 vote)
- could be either way. each of us is free to make up our own stories from this material, too. That's one of the wonders of having things in front of us that are not already explained. Try it. Look at the picture again, or at any picture, and make up your own story.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music playing) Steven: She stands against the window, looking out, but really looking in In a terribly gaudy purple nightgown. Out the window, we can
see the city of London. We can see the Thames River. Beth: We're looking at John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's Thoughts of the Past. Steven: If we were Victorian
looking at this painting, we would immediately recognize
that she was a prostitute. Beth: And that she's
thinking about her past life as a virtuous woman, likely
from the countryside, who had come to the
city and who had fallen, in Victorian terms, a
fallen woman, a prostitute. Fallen women were the subject of paintings and literature during
this period, a kind of social problem for artists
and writers to deal with. Steven: So she's a
sympathetic figure to a large extent and we, as a middle-class public, were expected to grapple
with her predicament. Beth: Exactly and who was at fault and what could be done about it? You can see how closely
the artist ties her problem to the problem of the city
and the growth of the city. Steven: Well, let's look out that window. It's this bustling port on
the Thames, on the river that bisects London. I can almost hear men
yelling to each other across those boats and in the foreground, we see what looks like hay on a barge and that hay, of course,
would have been brought to the city from the
country in order to feed the horses and it does make
it kind of analogy to this woman who has become a kind of commodity, something that is bought and sold. Beth: Apparently, this part of the Thames was an area that was
well-known for prostitution. So all of this would
have been recognizable to a Victorian viewer. Another thing we can immediately notice, just the fact that this
is painted very much in a Pre-Raphaelite style. We
have those intense colors that are really saturated,
like this purple and the greens and the reds and
showing a female figure with long, red hair is
also very Pre-Raphaelite. Steven: One of the things
Pre-Raphaelites are so known for, is to imbue
almost everything with a kind of secondary meaning
with a kind of symbolism. They were looking back
at the great paintings at the very beginning of the Renaissance, perhaps, for instance The
Arnolfini Wedding Portrait, which is in the national gallery now. So when you look at that red hair, does that secondary
reference to the Renaissance tradition of representing Mary Magdalene with long, red hair and of
course the tradition of her being a prostitute, but
there there's a sense of redemption and here, I think,
that's an open question. Beth: We're not sure
what her future holds. She's thinking about her past. She's thinking about
what's happened to her and perhaps her family in the countryside, her lost childhood, her lost innocence. As you said, all of that
is also indicated by the accessories in this room. Steven: In the lower left
corner of the painting, I see a potted plant, maybe
two, and they're little bit too low, so the plants have
been stretching up to get back to the sun. They're dry. They're not
tended. They may die. Beth: And their leaves are turning yellow. Steven: Perhaps worse,
up in the lower right corner of the painting,
you can see those ... those violets, there's purple
and white, which are linked directly to the
colors that the woman wears and they've been discarded
and they will now wilt and die. Beth: And if you look at
the Arnolfini Wedding, everything in that painting
speaks about the wealth of the couple that's represented, but here we have furniture
that's chipped and worn. Even her jewelry on the
table looks cheap and tawdry. Other details in the room
that tell us about her life are a little bit hard to see,
perhaps, in the foreground on the left, we see a man's
walking stick and glove. Steven: So this painting in many ways, is a wonderful window into
the moral preoccupations of Victorian life in
the city at this time. (piano music playing)