Everyone must have the Right to be Equally Bad

This one might be a bit ramble-y, so I apologise in advance.  It is the upshot of a conversation I had with the ever-patient Mr Walker about female artists and whether it is the pinnacle of equality to point out what awful people some of them were. 

Now, this touches on two previous posts - one is on the book Victorians Undone which I felt conflicted about, because it concentrated on Fanny's body and the faults therein. I feel that woman are picked on enough, thanks very much, and the last thing someone like Fanny needed was to have her physical flaws pointed out.  That feels a bit Daily Mail on the whole.  The second post is one of my most notorious as it talks about how much we should balance an artist's words or deeds against their art.  All of the artists I talk about in that post are male, and I don't reveal any great bombshells (unless you hadn't read that book about Eric Gill, in which case I'm very sorry) but it is a subject I return to again and again.  As I type this more Neil Gaiman allegations are coming out, so I won't be watching Coraline any time soon.  

Is there a tipping point when a person's words or deeds should cancel any great art they produce (when the art has no relation to their views/deeds, obviously)? And is that at all connected to their sex? Before I ramble more, let me introduce you to Anna Airy...

Artist Anna Airy (1882-1964) is undoubtedly an incredible artist. She had an astonishing career, was an absolute trailblazer in terms of how women were seen and spoken about in the art world and she was one of the first female war artists. There is this article about her by Alison Thomas which does a far better job than I could in telling her story and there is this piece about her war art, which is fascinating. What really tickled me when I was researching is how her husband, fellow artist Geoffrey Buckingham Pocock, is often referred to.  I rage against 'his wife, also an artist' but in the case of Poor Geoff, he was 'her husband, also an artist.' Come on now, male artists matter too! I found a delightful review of an exhibition in New Zealand of both Anna and Laura Knight's work, where it was noted that both women were married to artists.  However, as the article reported 'In both case, the genius is with the wife, rather than the husband.' Ouch.

The Garden Door (undated) Geoffrey Buckingham Pocock

And very lovely it is too Geoff, don't you worry. This one is by Anna...

An Aircraft Assembly Shop, Hendon (1918) Anna Airy

Yes, I can see what the newspaper meant, unfortunately, but that's the point, Anna was exceptional as an artist. I am in no mood to do a hatchet job on Miss Airy as there is much to admire about how she broke through the barriers to how women artists were regarded in the early twentieth century, however I found something that gave me pause.

Children Blackberrying (1940s) Anna Airy

I started reading what I thought was a fluff piece in the Daily Mirror from January 1921, as Anna had been a judge on the Mirror's beauty contest in 1919, a thought that immediately struck me as hilarious.  Can you imagine that today?  Is Tracey Emin available to judge Miss World? However, I continued reading...

She begins with the following story:

"The Norseman of old had a theory, carried into practice as I've been told, with regard to every child born to them. The father inspected the baby, and if the child were "bright-eyed" it was kept, but if not it was left to die of exposure."

And now time for the swimsuit round! Blimey, that was an interesting opening, but not seeing the red flags, I continued reading...

Mrs Monica Burnard (1916) Anna Airy 

She goes on to explain that the beauty contest was for children and babies, hence the anecdote about bumping off your baby if they aren't pretty enough, but it starts going wrong around this sentance...

"These bonny girls, all of British parents, are Britain at her best, and we may well be proud of them, for their beauty depends, not on languor, not on affectation, nor on artificialities, but on superb health and clean breeding."

When I read that bit out to the teenager in our house, she saw the turn coming from around 'British parents' and it got worse...

"Intermixture of races by marriage may and does sometimes produce a beauty, but as yet we are not, broadly speaking, a much intermixed race. 

Though mixed marriages are, I fear, on the increase, I question whether the children of such unions will retain the clean looking strength, freedom or agility of the well-bred English child..."

She goes on in a similar vein, but you get the gist. This is 1921, by the sound of it Anna hadn't met many people outside her own social circle despite her War Art, and so her comments come off as horrifically ignorant and ridiculous.  Am I surprised that the Daily Mirror merrily gives her a column to be racist in? Not sure, but a century later I'm aware that the newspapers use such euphemisms such as 'urban' and 'spicy' to be racists now, so not much changes. It's also not that I was surprised that artists I like have turned out to be racists because Rossetti was mocked by Whistler for backing the North in the American Civil War (who knew Rossetti would be the least problematic person in any room?)

The Montieth Family (1947) Anna Airy

It's because Anna Airy is a female artist who has the potential to be seen as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.  I've been at events where I've been asked, seriously asked, whether women artists aren't included in the history of art because they weren't as good as the men. I need artists like Anna to make it into the discussion to prove that women are equally as good (which is a ridiculous thing to have to prove, yet here we are) so I don't want to be the one who cancels her (as the youngsters say today).  

Hang on though, male artists of note could be truly appalling human beings too - Picasso, Augustus John, Paul Gauguin, Eric Gill, Degas - all terrible people arguably (and unarguably in some cases) but still seen as the best artists.  So is there a point where people can't accept you because of what you do or say?  This is definitely a conversation we have at home due to the author of a once beloved book line causing us to step away from their works. Looking at the list of male artists above, I'm not sure any gallery would have an Eric Gill exhibition these days, but the rest are likely to be London blockbusters without a thought if they were anti-semetic/wife beating/rape-y etc etc. Dear God, what is wrong with people?

Men in a Cafe (c.1930s) Anna Airy

I think my concern is that we don't need another excuse not to include women.  If Picasso is seen as a great artist despite his sins, then why can Anna and her weird baby-racism have her amazing art admired too?  Are we so simplistic that we can seperate the artist from the art? Well yes, and that is partly the fault of people like me who insist on finding the biography of people fascinating in the appreciation of their art. Isn't true equality treating Anna the same as we would treat Picasso? Is it right that we feel comfortable embracing the art of a terrible person?  What if this 1921 column reflects her views then but in time she realised she was an idiot and stopped being a racist? We have images she produced later that included people of colour, so could she have changed her mind.  Does that matter?  Is there room for redemption? 

On theBorderline (1921) Anna Airy

In the end, do we need to have this conversation? After all can't we just see an artist in the round, with warts and all? I think it is definitely easier to tackle this with dead artists, with all their sins revealed and taken in the same stride as their works.  With living artists/writers/actors, their misdeeds are still infinite and we don't know where they will go next so it is preferable to step off the fan-train as early as possible because no-one wants to be wearing the t-shirt when your hero says or does something truly appalling.  In the end, do we put too much trust in our fellow humans, especially those who have the opportunity and platform to say and do awful things.  

So, is true equality our ability to see a flawed artist, no matter their gender and weigh up their misdeeds against their body of work? I wait to see if we can...

The Shock of the Neo

 We all know what Pre-Raphaelite art is, right?

Yes, that's the stuff.  Glad we all agree.

Oh yes, them as well.  Smashing.

Hang on then, what about this?

Or this?

Oh dear, here we go again, and I've talked about things being called Pre-Raphaelite that are technically not (or are they?) before. If I ever get into arguments with people over art, it is normally over what can be called 'Pre-Raphaelite'.  As an upshot, I tend to use the phrase 'Pre-Raphaelite Adjacent' to describe works that have realistic detail/reference Shakespeare, Keats, Tennyson/are about Arthurian stuff etc etc. However, when recently discussing the Pre-Raphaelite status of a certain artist, I pointed out that the newspapers in 1890 called him 'Pre-Raphaelite' so who are we to disagree?

So, who is Pre-Raphaelite, according to the late Victorians? Or were they unexpectedly better at this than we are?

The Morning Leader in 1896 reported on a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition (which was the collection of a Pre-Raphaelite superfan) and gave a very correct definition of 'Pre-Raphaelite' being the work of Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt, joined by Thomas Woolner, Hot Fred Stephens, James Collinson and William Michael Rossetti.  These are our Super Seven and in this we all agree.  And also Madox Brown. Rats, here we go...

Work (1852-1865) Ford Madox Brown

Okay, so Madox Brown is a tricky one because he's there doing art alongside the Super Seven. Also, Windus. And Sandys. Hang on, they are stacking up now. We need some sort of tiering system for Pre-Raphaelitism - would we go by date?  If you doing something poetical and detailed in the 1850s, does that give you extra points?

Too Late (1858) William Lindsay Windus

If date becomes a factor, then surely Windus gets more PRP (Pre-Raphaelite Points) than Sandys who hits his stride in the 1860s, but arguably the Pre-Raphaelite works Sandys is best known for are Rosetti-inspired from the 1860s, when arguably he wasn't very Pre-Raphaelite anymore.  The question is then, do you ever stop being Pre-Raphaelite if you are one of the founding brothers?  Is it like being a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader? Millais's later stuff is not exactly what you would call Pre-Raphaelite, but Holman Hunt hangs in there until the bitter end. When people casually refer to women looking 'Pre-Raphaelite' they normally are referring to a beauty standard set by Rossetti in the 1860s, but is he being Pre-Raphaelite then? Did he redefine Pre-Raph-ness? Lawks...

The Heretic (1906) Frank Craig

When Frank Craig died in 1918, his obituary in the Daily News cited him as 'one of the most eminent of the group of painters who came to be known as the new Pre-Raphaelite school.' So, when did this 'new Pre-Raphaelite school' form? By 1918, from the original Super Seven, all but William Michael Rossetti had died and we were running a bit thin on the immediately adjacent artists like Windus (died 1907), Frederick Sandys (died 1904), Arthur Hughes (died 1915), let alone Burne-Jones and Morris who had both popped off in the 1890s. In 1907, Frank Cadogan Cowper was declared a member of the new Pre-Raphaelite movement (not school on this occasion) with his entertainingly titled How the Devil, disguised as a vagrant Troubadour, having been entertained by some charitable nuns, sang to them a song of love, which is quite frankly ridiculous.

How the Devil etc etc I'm not going through that again (1907) Frank Cadogan Cowper

One thing I am noticing is a lot of red in our new Pre-Raphaelite school/movement, so is that what gives them PRP? To be fair, I did put Noel Laura Nesbit in my Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang and her painting The True Love is very red indeed, so many be that's the key...

If One Could Have That Little Head of Hers (1900-1909) Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale

 The mighty EFB is undoubtedly New- or Neo-Pre-Raphaelite (she did some very red paintings, but I chose this one) and the Morning Leader in 1901 announced this fact in connection to her exhibition at the Dowdeswells Galleries.  Interestingly, they said she was Pre-Raphaelite despite her work being both pretty and clever, even though 'certainly neither cleverness nor prettiness were characteristic qualities of our English Pre-Raphaelites.' I beg your finest pardon?! Mind you, why preface Pre-Raphaelites with 'English'? That raises a few questions for 1901.  The Morning Leader finish this piece by saying that EFB got her Pre-Raph credentials from this chap...

The Queen of Hearts (1896) John Byam Liston Shaw

Good Lord, I love Byam Shaw and will fight anyone over the fact that he is possibly one of our fair nation's most important artists.  I've written about him and his circle far more than is possibly healthy but in the history of Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism, he is vital and wildly influential. What makes Byam Shaw (and by influential extension, EFB) Pre-Raphaelite? The colours? The subjects? It's hard to put your finger on, but I think the delicacy, the whimsy, the absolutely crystal clear colours have all contributed to what we think of as 'Pre-Raphaelite' today but of course they aren't Pre-Raphaelite, they are Neo-Pre-Raphaelite! This is the problem we have, it isn't understanding lines of influence, it's how we speak about it.  I think I have time for another Byam Shaw...

Boer War (1900-1901) Last Summer Things Were Greener (1901) Byam Shaw

Thank you.  I know I have a problem, I don't care. Onwards!

The Westminster Gazette of 1902 made the bold assertion in its coverage of the Royal Academy's May exhibition that the lack of emeralds and purple in the paintings that year must mean that Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism was over. However, in 1904, it was back reporting on the Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism of Byam Shaw and EFB, so it was the beast that would never die, apparently. Especially as in 1914, this was heralded as the height of Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism...

Costermongers (1914) Eric Kennington

Kennington is not going to be the first person you'd name when listing Pre-Raphaelite artists, but this has a definite echo of Madox Brown's Work and the Pre-Raphaelite obsession with noble working folk, so yes, I agree with the Western Daily Press, he gets to be Pre-Raphaelite. Sorry, Neo-Pre-Raphaelite.

Dinner on the Hotel Lawn (1956-7) Stanley Spencer

Interestingly, in the Western Morning News in 1934, they call Stanley Spencer 'Neo Pre-Raphaelite' because of his painstaking details which are 'sincere and deeply felt.' I love a bit of Spencer and know that David Inshaw, of the Brotherhood of Ruralist (also described as 'Neo Pre-Raphaelites' in the Illustrated London News in 1981) is a great admirer of his work, but of all the things to call Spencer, 'Pre-Raph' isn't the first one that springs to mind. Mind you, look at that figure in red on the left of Dinner on the Hotel Lawn, isn't she almost parodying the 'Pre-Raphaelite bend'? Isn't the whole piece somewhat reminiscent of Millais' Isabella and Lorenzo (1848-9)?

Autumn (1898) Harold Speed

In 1905, the Westminster Gazette called Harold Speed a Neo-Pre-Raphaelite and the possible (although not literal, obviously) grandson of Holman Hunt.  In March of 2024, Vogue called Zendaya's hair 'Pre-Raphaelite' and I think therein lies the rub.  What gets on the nerves of some people is the loss of the preface 'Neo' in our liberal distribution of the adjective 'Pre-Raphaelite'.  I think, for the most part, we can all see why the Neo-Pre-Raphs were linked to the art of Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt, even as late as the 1970s but somewhere in the 1980s we possibly dropped the Neo and just started to assert things, people and paintings were 'Pre-Raphaelite' which in turn drove the purists mental.

Modern, not Neo or New...

Now, I'm not an idiot (honest) and I know why we, or rather curators of exhibitions, writers of books, and anyone who wants to sell something, use 'Pre-Raphaelite' rather than 'Neo-Pre-Raphaelite.' Firstly, it's shorter and getting 'Pre-Raphaelite' onto a poster is hard enough (it's a lot of letters) let alone shoving 'Neo' in front of it too. People have a vague (or a very definite) idea of what Pre-Raphaelitism is and it's popular right now - I bet if you asked people the leading proponents of Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism not many would start babbling on about their utter devotion to Byam Shaw.  For most people, 'Neo' is the bloke form the Matrix, not a turn of the century continuation and evolution phase of Pre-Raphaelite art. The popularity of Pre-Raphaelitism is definitely the lead in why people don't want to overtly add anything - people will go to a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, people will buy a Pre-Raphaelite book (thank you very much), people understand Zendaya's Pre-Raphaelite hair is wavy.  Jonathan Jones knows he hates all of it, it seems cruel to tell him it is actually more than one thing and he might actually have to re-evaluate his ideas because he might already like something that has been deemed in the past to be Neo-Pre-Raphaelite. Bless him.

The New Year (1901) Percy Bulcock

It is necessary that we move forward (I had the urge to add 'brothers and sisters' then) and bravely start adding the Neo or New to Pre-Raphaelitism, if only to stop the eye-rolling and 'well, actually' that happens whenever anyone uses Pre-Raphaelite for anything other than the Super Seven 1848-1856 (Holman Hunt gets to use it for his entire life as he was special). Imagine the fun we will have lobbing Neo-Pre-Raphaelitism into everything and shaking up the Art History Narrative that insists (or at least did when I was at uni in the Nineteen Hundreds) that Pre-Raphaelite art was a cul-de-sac, a no-through-road that British Art never recovered from. We could launch The Shock of the New Pre-Raphaelitism and bring all those wonderful artists together, all of whom languish in that hinterland between Turner and Damien Hurst when British art was, apparently, rubbish. 

In 2005 at Campbell Wilson Fine Art, there was an exhibition called Pre-Raphaelite, Neo Pre-Raphaelite, Post Pre-Raphaelite which surprised me as twenty years later we are still not using the 'Neo' - also I would argue that we will never be Post Pre-Raphaelite as it is now part of us. If we can have a quick meeting and agree on a start date for Neo-Pre-Raph then I think we are good.  How about 1890? Anything after that becomes Neo-Pre-Raphaelite, anything before that (that isn't by the Super Seven) is Pre-Raphaelite Adjacent.  I am flexible on dates as I know the period is complex, but as long as Byam Shaw is involved, I'm happy.

There are so many gorgeous works of art and artists out there from the Edwardian period onwards that have been forgotten.  Let's make 2025 the year we reclaim the New.