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Europe 1800 - 1900
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 and Philip Webb, Red House
- Pre-Raphaelites
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Hunt, the Awakening Conscience
William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853, oil on canvas, 762 x 559 mm (Tate Britain, London). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- What is the symbolism behind some of the other objects in the room?(3 votes)
- The presenters note the cat that has caught a bird. They don't mention that the bird seems to still be alive, and is spreading its wings. This furthers the analogy to the woman with her awakening conscience.(4 votes)
- Why we define Victoria women period being fallen waiting for awakening? Are we saying feudal society is more morally superior than capitalist society. The woman in the painting looks happy in her lover's lap.(1 vote)
- The Fallen Woman was a common topic in this period.
http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/fallen.html(2 votes)
- Atwe can see clearly the name "Lear" on the scroll in the bottom left, could this be a reference to Shakespeare's King Lear? (perhaps indicating the woman liken unto Cordelia) 3:37(2 votes)
- It's Edward Lear's musical arrangement of Tennyson's poem "Tears, Idle Tears" and the music on the piano is Thomas Moore's "Oft in the Stilly Night"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awakening_Conscience(1 vote)
- What is the ekphrastic work on this painting.(1 vote)
- its kind of gold and looks creepy(1 vote)
- can you guys see that one of his hand is normal but the other is kind of dark(1 vote)
- Atthe video zooms in on the ornate clock on top of the piano. what is this representative of? 4:04(1 vote)
- That she's running out of time; or that she still has time? I can't quite tell if the clock readsor 11:00. I guess either way it's the eleventh hour for her; she's wasted some time with this lifestyle, but there is still time before something irrevocable happens (say, losing her virginity). 11:55(1 vote)
- If it is a new apartment then why does it look like there are scribbles in the back right side?(1 vote)
- I noticed those as well, and at first thought they were a child's chalk drawings, but they are too high. Perhaps the girl is bored and/or is an aspiring artist, and passes the time (when her lover is not with her) by sketching on the wall in chalk the flora outside that window (that we see reflected in the mirror).(1 vote)
- What is the full name of hunt?(0 votes)
- That information can be found above the video.(3 votes)
Video transcript
(piano music playing) Steven: We now live in
a culture where the new is sought after or the new
is something that we want, but in Victorian culture,
the new was something that was not always trusted. Beth: Ruskin referred to
all the new furnishings in the painting that we're looking at, William Holman Hunt's
Awakening Conscience is, having a fatal newness. Steven: The newness of
the piano, the newness of the table, the newness of
the rug, all of this was meant to suggest a kind of
falseness, actually, and it's a perfect example of the
concerns of Victorian culture in this fabulous pre-Raphaelite image. Beth: So we're looking at a kept woman and we see her with her lover.
We're in a space that is her apartment filled with
brand new furniture and new wallpaper and prints on the wall. Steven: That he's bought for
her, in order to create a [unintelligible] place
that he can escape to. Beth: She's probably of lowly
origin. I mean, this is all standard narrative that
Victorians knew and that had been repeated over and over again
of a girl who came from the countryside and became a fallen woman or a kept woman in the city. Steven: Who is compromised
by a class above her. Beth: She's been sitting
on the lap of her lover, who's been playing the piano,
but unbeknownst to him, he plays a song that
reminds her of her childhood and at that moment, she remembers her past innocence and experiences
of spiritual awakening, an awakening of her
conscience. So she is a subject that we see often in Victorian
paintings. She's a fallen woman, but at a moment of redemption. Steven: Look at the way
that Hunt, the artist, has organized the painting.
We're looking at her and we're looking at her ensconced
in all of this luxury of the home that he's created for her, but this artificial place that's not real. Beth: Where nothing is
worn, nothing is used, where nothing has been transformed
by the life of a real family. Steven: But she's facing almost
towards us and we can see her reflection in the
mirror in back of her and we can see that she's
looking towards the outside and so, here, nature and
light take on the role of the spiritual take on the role of the moral that she needs to now move towards. Beth: That's right and
that's really what interested Holman Hunt, who was a very religious man and is using this modern life subject to speak to a bigger issue
of spiritual transformation and how God can come to
us at unexpected moments. Steven: And look how Hunt plays one figure against the next. She's
standing up, her posture is straightening as she is
awakening her moral conscience. But she's contrasted
against the man who is the source of corruption, who is
the source of her moral fall and he is reclining. All of
this is an entrapment. In fact, he holds her back. She's
going to have to, literally, break past that. Beth: I think one of the points
that Hunt is trying to make is that the same person that
can be the source of your sinfulness can be the same
person who unwittingly provides the inspiration
for your redemption, for your awakening and so
we have this inscription on the frame "As he that taketh
away a garment in cold weather," "so is he that singeth
songs to an heavy heart." Steven: So here are weighty
moral issues that are really spiritual and, yet, what the
artist is doing is placing these in his contemporary world
and in a sense not showing Biblical stories, but showing
stories that resonate a social problems in his immediate world. Beth: And making it all very
material and real in that typical pre-Raphaelite way,
painting the furnishings of the room with incredible
exactitude and making everything in the room
have symbolic value. Steven: Well, we know that
the artist were actually looking back, not to the
Baroque, not to the Rennaisance, but to artists immediately
before that and specifically, this is an artist who is
probably looking at something like Jan van Eyck, perhaps the
Arnolfini Wedding Portrait, which is in the national
gallery in London and was understanding that objects within a room can have a secondary symbolic meaning. Beth: This painting would
really need to be read by its viewers. Hunt is
asking us to look closely at all the elements in the
room and to think about what they mean, in terms of the narrative that he's telling of this
woman's spiritual awakening. Steven: And so, for instance,
if we look under the table on the left, you can see
a cat and if you look very closely, you can see that
that cat has caught a bird and this is clearly an analogy
to the man and the woman. He has kept her. He has caught her. Beth: The pre-Raphaelites
were concerned with, as you said, these very
serious, moral subjects and modern life's problems
and taking those on. Steven: So an artist who is
using Art History in order to really explicate contemporary subjects, contemporary moral dilemmas, some of the driving issues of the day. (piano music playing)