Exhibition Review: Enchanted Dreams

For my final review of the week, here's one that is very overdue indeed. I visited Enchanted Dreams: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of E R.Hughes at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery back at the end of October, but so much has happened in the meantime (holidays, book publication) that it got somewhat delayed.  Before I launch myself into Blogvent (starting on Tuesday) I best tell you all about it...

Night and her Train of Stars (1912) E R Hughes

When Edward Robert Hughes died at the age of 62 in April 1914, he was still remembered as 'Arthur's nephew'.  The Birmingham Daily Post, in their death notice, mention how he was the foremost watercolourist of his generation but still, before all that, he had a Pre-Raphaelite uncle.  Possibly quite a fitting way to start the new exhibition at BMAG is this image...

Edward Robert Hughes as a child (1853-4) Arthur Hughes

There are many reasons to love Arthur Hughes but often his painting is not one of them.  Whilst a very lovely picture in many ways, the tiny hands in this picture are terrible and led to much giggling and whispering about how the small boy gets out of his frame at night and comes to find you and your normal sized hands. This is not helped by the fact that the ornate and fragile original frame is now contained within a modern box frame.  We deduced this was obviously an attempt on behalf of the museum staff to stop him getting out... Moving on...

 

Edward Robert Hughes, looking far less cherubic...

Ah, now that's better.  This is an exhibition about Edward Robert Hughes, not his Uncle Arthur, so on with the story...

And Then I Knew My Soul Stood Before Me (1871) Simeon Solomon
E R Hughes is probably the figure on the right

Born 5th November 1849, Edward ('Ted') Robert Hughes grew up to model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti (he was one of the models for Love in the replica of Dante's Dream) and Simeon Solomon (who described him as 'the beautiful Hughes' in a letter to a friend) and probably used him in And Then I knew my Soul Stood Before Me (1871) with Johnston Forbes-Robertson (who replaced him as Love in Rossetti's painting).

The Lady of Shalott (1905) William Holman Hunt (and a little bit of Hughes)

However, being a pretty face will only get you so far, and Hughes worked for over 15 years as studio assistant to William Holman Hunt, at the end of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother's life when his eyesight was failing. Hughes assisted in the completion of the massive Lady of Shalott and some attributed the colour palate to him.  Hughes' work was likened to Hunt's in the press at the time which is interesting as it isn't the most immediate comparison we would make now.  Thinking about it, there is definitely a link to be made between the ghostly children in Hunt's Triumph of the Innocents and Hughes' Night and her Train of Stars.

With the Wind (undated)

Back to Hughes, and it is easy to see why this is a beautiful exhibition, but it is harder to see why Hughes is not better known.  His work is very commercial - one recent review referred to him as a greetings card artist, which is true but infers commercial equals rubbish.  Hughes talent seems to be to find the soul-squeezingly gorgeous in everything and put it in front of you so you have no choice to respond.  It's easy to find the Symbolist-like lady with the swirly hair attractive, but how about a rotting corpse in a ditch?

'Oh, What's That in the Hollow...?' (1893)

Taken from Christina Rossetti's poem 'Amor Mundi' (1865), Hughes does not show the two lovers who find the body on their lazy downhill wander into Hell.  Instead we have an almost Solomon-handsome, sleeping beauty of a man, waiting out his eternity by being slowly consumed by nature.  The lovers are represented as butterflies who have been caught in the briar that covers the body.  What should be repellent, a corpse in a ditch, becomes Ophelia-like in his death-glamour, surrounded by flowers.  There is a hint in the exhibition that more could be read into Hughes' homosocial relationships, that his appreciation of male beauty (possibly influenced by Solomon) had conflicted feelings behind it but as he seemed to fall in love with women as well, I think the most you can claim for him is that he saw beauty in everyone, regardless of gender, and thank goodness for it because I love his man-damsels.  Apart from the following which creeps me out...

Blondel's Quest (1912)

Although I can see that technically it is a very skilled piece, I am not a fan of 'creepy harp-Jesus'. It refers to the minstrel Blondel's quest to find Richard the Lionheart (but also reminds me of a still from a 1960s sword and sandal epic).  The blue of Blondel's eyes is so piercing it is really quite disturbing and provides a neat counterpoint to some of Hughes' more 'comfortable' art.

Twilight Fantasies (1911)

If you know anything by Hughes, it is likely to be one of his blue fairy pictures, painted just prior to the First World War.  The powdery watercolours do nothing to dispel the feeling that Edwardian England was a sort of wonderland before the great reckoning of 1914-1918.  In their turn it could be argued that pictures such as Twilight Fantasy have inadvertently 'cheapened' Hughes' currency by being so accessible that they have adorned popular greetings cards and become the byword for frivolous Victorian folly.  Taken together as a set, the blue fairy fantasies are all at once beautiful, mysterious and a little threatening at times but always breath-taking.  As there are light-infused angels and spirits to welcome the day, so too are there darker winged creatures waiting in the shadows.

The Valkyrie's Vigil (1906)

Enchanted Dreams is a very easy exhibition to enjoy because E R Hughes' work is so very luscious, however the story of his life is equally as interesting.  It is hard to see how and why we forgot him in the great resurrection of the Pre-Raphaelites but his watercolours have such power that they refused oblivion.  This is a fabulous opportunity to go and revel in their tender power on a grand scale, and one I would urge you not to miss.

Enchanted Dreams: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of E R Hughes is on at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 21st February.

There is sadly no catalogue for the exhibition, but you can read Victoria Osborne's thesis on Hughes online here. On the strength of it, I hope she gets the time and funding to write a catalogue in the near future.

Endless Night

Welcome to 2015, my lovely readers and what a splendid year it should prove to be!  There are a veritable bevy of gorgeous exhibitions littering the horizon, including one this autumn on the artist Edward Robert Hughes.  Probably better known as 'The Other Hughes', he is best known for late Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite influenced works, including this one...

Night with her Train of Stars E R Hughes

Dark hair and dress, Night flutters through the sky, shushing a baby who scatters poppies into the air, which turn into a flight of golden birds.  All is movement, travel, but on silent wings, and cherubs cling to the folds of her dress.  I can't quite work out her wings, it is as if another figure of equal size to her travels behind her, just out of our sight.

Night and Sleep Evelyn de Morgan

It is not unusual for Night to travel with a companion; de Morgan shows us two androgynous figures, swirling through the sky.  Night leads Sleep, shelters them, while Sleep rains down poppies, symbol of both dreams and death.  The sky is not dark, but Night seems to be holding up a cloak that symbolises the night sky and both have closed eyes.  I love the echoes in the figures, the girdle and the shoes, the cloak held by night and the robe worn by sleep.  Night leads us, protects us and we are powerless but to echo its movement.

The Spirit of the Night Constance Phillott

More often than not, Night is a woman and there is a feeling of protection, of a mother tucking in her children to sleep.  Because of the darkness, the deep colouring of the robes, there is also a slight hint of threat. Night covers and smothers, Night renders us unconscious and the poppies speak both of dreams and death.  The bats that fly Phillott's Night are not comforting or protective and she looks like Death, rather than Night, about to engulf the slumbering young woman.

Night and Sleep (1894) Simeon Solomon

When Night and Sleep appear together, they can appear like lovers.  Solomon's images of Sleep and Dreams often have them intertwined, echoing lovers in the night, bound by darkness.  Possibly the safety of the dark can enable love, allowed by Society or otherwise, to express what cannot be looked upon in the light of day, expressed and explored.  Night can allow things to happen, things to be seen that would otherwise not be approved of.

Night (1885) Heinrich Faust

Moon Nymph Luis Falero

The sexuality of Night, Night as a saucy nymph, is expressed in works such as the ones above.  Again I have to call for a full exhibition of Falero's work because it is delicious.  Night as wanton streaker, her skin glowing like the moon, her hair as dark as the night sky, is the flipside of Night as Mother.  This is not a woman who wants to tuck you up and she certainly doesn't seem to want any sleep.  The presence of bats reflects the animalistic nature of Night, unruly, somewhat demonic but irresistible.

Night Edward Burne-Jones

Night Wilfred Gabriel de Glehn

When not enticing the viewer to nocturnal orgies, Night can appear as a solitary, almost lonely figure.  Night can be a time when we feel alone, that all other people are absent from our landscape and we travel friendless and unaided.  Burne-Jones' Night floats, her face turned away, unaware of our presence and de Glehn's figure closes her eyes, her arms protectively across herself.  Night is often a time for worry, the unending roll of thought which is devoid of light or hope.  Night sees no company, no help, she travels alone.  In the endless stasis of the night, we feel vulnerable like de Glehn's figure, yet completely alone.  There is no threat, nor any company, in the landscape of the night, so why do we feel so afraid? Possibly it is the darkness, disguising the things we fear, the eternal anticipation of attack as they remain unseen, untackled.  All we need to do is wait for morning, and all can be revealed and relieved.

Dawn Frank Dicksee

 Night, for once almost recognisably male, is driven from his position by the glory of Dawn, who seems a nice girl if a little ostentatious. There is nothing dynamic about Night who looks, for want of a better word, sad, weary, and just trundling off down from the hill.  Dawn seems to be shouting 'Ta Dah!' in a golden triumph of rebirth, but the figures echo each other, her swirl of scarf becoming Night's mists.

On the Wings of Morning E R Hughes

So back to Hughes, and the coming of the dawn over the landscape of night.  Dawn is winged, like Night and her confetti of birds shower from her pastel wings and the blush of the clouds. Below her, bats of night turn to birds of day.  Her face is definitely one of triumph, day over night, life over death, hope over despair.  She, like Night, is alone, but she is flying towards something, bringing with her the day in all its golden splendor.

We are past the shortest day of the year and although our nights are long, Spring is coming.
Sleep well, dear readers.

Night (19th Century) Unknown American Photographer

Tears, Idle Tears

I am an inveterate cryer.  I will weep at the drop of a hat, really I'm awful.  I believe the technical term for it is a 'self-defuser' which means that whenever I get angry or a bit too happy or generally overcome by un-English levels of emotion, I start crying.  Ridiculous creature.  Anyway, this week I came across this picture of someone having a good cry...

The First Place (1860) A Erwood



This charming genre piece is of a young maid overcome with the misery of her position in her first post away from home.  She was sweeping up the rug and just felt like having a sob into her pinny.  We've all been there love.  My first job after I left home with Mr Walker was as a temp receptionist at a business that sold doors.  I spent all day on the phone with people shouting because they hadn't received their doors.  It was all a little rum.  Anyway, I got to thinking that I should do a piece on people having a bit of a cry...

A Wife J E Millais

I wonder what's up with her?  Has her husband been cheating on her, gambled all their money away or maybe just not slept with her for five years?  Probably the latter as this is Millais.  I'm guessing she has found out her husband's deep, dark secret and it has rendered her unable to sit on a chair.  The horror!  The shame!  The implication for property prices in her area!  I dread to think what Mr Walker's deep dark secrets are; some of the stuff I already know is worrying enough...

Recalling the Past Carlton Alfred Smith

There are people who just cannot move beyond a moment in time.  Pinkie here seems to be weeping over some letters, love letters I'm guessing, and the recollections are not happy ones.  Did she leave him?  Did he leave her?  I'm not one to dwell on past love affairs (because there aren't any), mainly because stuff that happened in the past rarely makes me cry unless it affects my present.  Maybe Pinkie never got another offer.  Maybe she turned down a man for not having enough money, he then went on and made a fortune and married her sister.  She weeps because Jeremy Kyle will not be available for her to vent her spleen for another 150 years.  Smith seems to have done a lot of paintings of women contemplating - women gazing into fires, women looking out of windows.  A sizable body of his work could be entitled 'Do you remember that thing that happened in the time before now?  I feel a bit sad about it.'

At the Altar (1870s) Firs Zhuravlev

Oh deary me.  Well, it's leaving it a bit late when you're all dollied up in the big white frock but I suppose better now than five years down the line.  Is that who she is marrying?  Is that her father?  I don't mean to be personal as he does look a bit perturbed by the whole scene and that his bride (I'm guessing) has become a big meringue-y puddle on the floor.  Advice to the person in the doorway:  don't get involved, Love.  Leave them to it and see if you can your present back from the gift table.  Just in case.

The Restitution (1901) Remy Cogghe

I've used Cogghe's works a few time in my posts and I think he is a very interesting painter.  This is a curious picture as it is uncertain what is being restored to whom.  If the sturdy chap is giving the lass back something then why does she cry so much?  Has she returned something that doesn't belong to her and feels ashamed.  If she is the villain of the piece, he has painted her in such vibrant green and gold that it is impossible not to feel the compassion that our priest here seems to feel.  Is the woman being 'restored' to the church?  I love the gold of her hair in the middle of the canvas, echoing the gold in his hand, and I think the viewer is being told that she is the treasure that is being restored.

Lesbia Weeping Over a Sparrow (1866) (detail) Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Everyone gets sad when pets die, especially metaphoric, possibly phallic symbols of pets, but few of us have chosen to show our grief by sitting around with a dead sparrow on our lap.  It's time to bury that sparrow and move on.  The sparrow is meant to symbolise the passion of her lover and now it's all dead in her lap.  Well, that's the problem with symbolic pets.  Plus she doesn't seem very weepy.  I get a lot more soggy than that.  She looks a bit bored.  She should be thanking her lucky stars it wasn't a Great Dane.

Tears, Idle Tears E R Hughes

This young lady is managing dignity in crying, something that eludes the best of us otherwise.  Named after the Tennyson poem, either the girl is reading his work or reading something that is reminiscent of 'the days that are no more'.  I really like Tennyson's poem, he sums up the problem of feeling sad with no real reason other than things are not as they should be or were.  Sadness springs from nowhere, from memento mori in life, passing time, the seasons, remembering the dead, but then he mentions this: 'Dear as remembered kisses after death, / And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd / On lips that are for others'.  That is a very complicated sadness, for things that never existed, of unrequited love, mentioned in a poem mostly about time passing and death.  Maybe the young lady in the picture is being moved to tears by the thought of never kissing the lips of the one she loves, but who does not love her?  Sad thought indeed.

Old School Fellows (1854) Alfred Rankley

There are obviously very few or no images of men having a good cry.  The Victorians went as far as men leaning manfully upon their male manly companion in times of manly need, but that's all.  When one feels extreme levels of grief, one remembers one is English and one bites ones knuckle and thinks of the Queen.  One would never cry until one makes the snorty noise. 

So, to those who only know me virtually, feel lucky that you never have to put up with me dissolving unexpectedly.  To those who do know me, at least I bring my own hankie...

Pre-Raphaelite Hobbits

I really should start this blog with Fanny Cornforth, as she is my overriding concern, obsession and general bore-subject in the realm of Victorian art.  However, I will start with a subject much on my mind at moment:  Men.  

Sorry, let me rephrase…I am currently obsessing over the links in visual aspects of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Pre-Raphaelite art. See, when you say it like that it sounds vaguely intellectual and not like I spend my time giggling over medieval boys in armour. Honestly.

O What's That in the Hollow?

It started when I went to see the recent exhibition on Pre-Raphaelite drawing in Birmingham.  There were a cavalcade of stunning works (even though they did not get out their amazing pastels of Fanny Cornforth. You see, I am obsessed), but the picture that made me gasp was O What’s That in the Hollow? by Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914).    

Dead One in the Dead Marsh

The reason this absolutely beautiful work made me utter a completely un-ladylike phrase in a room full of quiet intellectual types is that it could have been a still from The Lord of the Rings.  It immediately made me think of the Dead Ones in the Dead Marshes, and comparing the images I began to wonder if Tolkien was a Pre-Raphaelite fan.  

 The reason I was drawn to the image was that it is a bit of a rarity among Pre-Raphaelite art, in that it is an image of a dead man.  Now, this is a subject for another time, but thinking about it, there are very few images of beautiful, dead men.  Off the top of my head, I can think of only Chatterton by Henry Wallis (1830-1916) and Rienzi Swearing to his Brother he will call his Painting Something Shorter Next Time by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), and possibly The Wounded Cavalier by William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916), unlike the endless images of Ophelia, the Lady of Shalott, Elaine, Beatrice and so on.

It is generally held that the inspiration for the Dead Marshes were the fields of the First World War, and you can see how Frodo and Sam, picking their way across these haunted pastures, now sodden and steaming with cut down life seem to owe more to First World War images than Victorian Medievalising.  Hughes’ image is a corpse hidden in a forest, a ‘thin dead body which waits the eternal term’, but roses grow over the body, which has yet to decay.  Either you believe the man inserted himself very carefully among the roses before dying or he is simply not corrupting, remaining intact, his eyes still open, awaiting some further course of action, like the Dead Ones.  Peter Jackson’s Dead Ones that lure Frodo into the marsh are fairly intact at first glance, still elfin, elegant creatures, but unlike Hughes’ preserved young man, whose lack of decay could reference sainthood, the Dead Ones have become possessed of the evil of Mordor, which keeps them intact for uncertain purpose. 

Boat approaching....

...and off to another world

The words ‘Fellowship’ and 'Brotherhood' could be interchangable in the worlds of Pre-Raphaelite Art and The Lord of the Rings.  Think of images of the fallen King Arthur, being taken to the edge of the lake, then think of Boromir, set adrift in his boat, fallen but not forgotten.  In Arthur Hughes’ The Knight of the Sun, Arthur is carried to the water’s edge by his loyal knights.  In John Mulcaster Carrick’s Morte d’Arthur, Bedivere rouses the dying Arthur to assure him of his passage to eternal life, coming across the water.  Aragorn and Boromir play the same parts, only reversed with the king reassuring the erring knight that his honour is assured, the battle will be won.

 

Medieval Lady, white dress...

Medieval Lady, white dress....

The Lord of the Rings iconography seems to be couched in terms of the Victorian notion of medievalism and the romance of Camelot.  The still of Eowyn in her ‘bower’ could well be any number of Pre-Raphaelite maidens, shown here with The Accolade by Edmund Blair Leighton (1852-1922), with her long cuffed, girdled dress, and flowing hair.  It is not beyond argument that the designers for Peter Jackson’s films were influenced by this pictorial tradition, as it seems to have many parallels in the films, but when addressing the source material it becomes a little less clear.  

 It is a little foolhardy possibly to claim that a writer who had passed through two World Wars was overwhelmingly influenced by art of the century before, but Tolkien read William Morris’ works and found his sagas and stories of great inspiration, as did other members of his circle, the Inklings.  It is easy to see Morris’ call for a respect of craft and tradition in Tolkien’s portrayal of the Hobbits, possibly the last hope for civilization, and now I cannot think of William Morris without wondering if he would have liked a round green door on the front of Kelmscott Manor…