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But Pre-Raphaelitism was an unstable compound, liable to explode upon the experimenter, and its component parts to return to their old antithesis of crude naturalism on the one hand, and affectation of piety or poetry or antiquarianism, on the other. And that their new champion did not then foresee.
Pre-Raphaelitism must take its position in the world as the beginning of a new Art, new in motive, new in methods, and new in the forms it puts on. To like it or to dislike it is a matter of mental constitution. The only mistake men can make about it is to consider it as a mature expression of the spirit which animates it.
Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute, uncompromising truth in all that it does, obtained by working everything, down to the most minute detail, from nature, and from nature only. Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself.
This very deficiency of Pre-Raphaelitism, then, points to its true excellence, and indicates that singleness of purpose which is an element in all true Art.
With the commencement of the present half-century there began a systematic movement in revolt from the degradation of Art in England, which, unfortunately, so far as significance was concerned, assumed the name of Pre-Raphaelitism. It extended itself rapidly, absorbing most of the young painters of any force or earnestness, and attracting some who already held high places in public esteem.
J.J. Ruskin called on William Hunt and found him feeble: "I like the little Elshie," he says, nicknaming him after the Black Dwarf, for Hunt was somewhat deformed: "He is softened and humanized. There is a gentleness and a greater bonhomie less reserve. I had sent him 'Pre-Raphaelitism. He had marked it very much with pencil. He greatly likes your notice of people not keeping to their last.
Meynell's John Ruskin; Sizeranne's Ruskin and the Religion of Beauty, translated from the French; White's Principles of Art; W. M. Rossetti's Ruskin, Rossetti, and Pre-Raphaelitism. Macaulay. Criticism: Essays, by Bagehot, in Literary Studies; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions; by Harrison, in Studies in Early Victorian Literature; by Matthew Arnold.
But if Pre-Raphaelitism be true, not to the letter, but to the spirit of its principles, if its artists remain unspoiled by flattery and success, if they avoid mannerisms, conceits, and the affectations of originality, if they can keep religious faith undimmed by the "world's slow stain"; then we may expect from the school such works of painting as have not been seen in past times, works which shall be the forerunners of a new period of Art, and shall show what undreamed conquests yet lie open before it, works which shall take us into regions of yet undiscovered beauty, and reveal to us more and more of the exhaustless love of God.
The water-color representation is, indeed, complete and interesting; but we have only present use with five of these drawings, by Turner, and from different stages of his progress. Ruskin, in his pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, has drawn such a comparison between Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites as to make them only different manifestations of the same spirit in Art.
She is not now, I believe, more than eighteen years old, very pretty, and with the manners of a lady, not prim and precise, but with enough of freedom and ease. The books on the table were "Pre-Raphaelitism," a tract on spiritual mediums, etc. There were several shelves of books on one side of the room, and engravings on the walls. Mr. Weiss was there, and I do not know but he is an inmate of Mr.
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