On Tuesday I attended a lecture provided by The Arts Society Coventry. It was a pleasure because the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) is one of my favourite topics. My degree was History and Victorian Studies where they featured as one of the many interesting topics of the period.
The talk was provided by Dr Matt Wates who is a very personable academic out of London. Clearly very professional and able to hold an audience with his talk where I learnt the difference between classical and realistic forms of art. It is the realistic that the PRB focused on producing a new and impressive movement in art.
The PRB focused on religious themes because they saw a gap in the market. In the English tradition religious art had atrophied since the reformation and certainly had not been encouraged in Puritan circles. Religion offered Holman Hunt an opportunity to express his faith an example of which is ‘The Light of the World’ (1851-1854) which is an allegorical painting showing Christ knocking on the door of peoples heart. It is a very moving painting still referenced on the Alpha course to this day. Other members who were not religious read the bible stories with the same spirit that they would the Arthur legends and saw the material as useful for their paintings but no more than that. Despite being very important and moving today, inspite being out of fashion during the 1970s, the PRB were sometimes unsuccessful in the Victorian period. Charles Dickins was very critical of the realistic style and the representation of Christ as a normal human boy.
The next talk is on the 8th of October and is by Colin Pink and discusses Gabriele Munter.