William Gaunt (1)Reseñas

A queer group biography published in 1942, Gaunt starts with the Argument, a very loose overview of what he is to write about, which is to be the disagreements, disappointments and failures of the primary members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in later life, when compared to their original ideals.
The first short chapter therefore introduces Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti and very briefly other members of the PRB and Ford Madox Brown.
Gaunt then chats on, discussing Millais’ meeting with Ruskin (with Ruskin’s wife subsequently divorcing Ruskin and marrying Millais), Rossetti’s meeting with Lizzie Siddal, Woolner’s emigration to Australia, Hunt’s travels to the Holy Land to paint The Scapegoat.
Then comes Rossetti’s meeting with Burne Jones and Morris, with a reinvigoration of the PRB ideals, however vague and dreamlike these are.
All told in an informal, colloquial fashion, assuming familiarity with the paintings made by the various artists.

Although a work of its time, which I initially felt would deter me from reading the whole book, it is charming, anecdotal and covers the whole of the artists later lives. For example there are fascinating details of Holman Hunt speaking to Charles Dickens about the financial aspects of negotiating the expected revenue from The Finding of Christ in the Temple , where Dickens did not look at the painting! (Page 101).
I found amusing the references to the bestselling author Hall Caine, who befriended Rossetti at the end of his life and rushed out his Recollections of Rossetti. Since this was written in 1942 Hall Caine has been mostly forgotten, but Rossetti and the PRB are still relatively well known.

This is not an introduction to the Pre-Raphaelites, as it assumes a knowledge of the artists’ works, but for those familiar with the paintings, it is a wonderful short overview of the movement as a whole.

A well-thought and equally well-written book which I would recommend this to any well-intentioned general reader. This is important because the phrase "pre-Raphaelite" is almost always understood in terms of that gaggle of painters like Millais, Rosetti, Burne-Jones, and Hunt. That identification is not itself unsound, but one of the virtues of Gaunt's narrative is to people the story with all sorts of people, not just painters. Inevitably, that protean genius William Morris bodes large in the story. Although Morris did indeed have his lapses, I seem to recall that Gaunt portrays him as rather more a chump than he could possibly have been. Meanwhile, I would like to think that sometime before I leave for another dimension, I might have some evidence that more people were succombing to the siren-song of cultural history. Books like this certainly help.

Good reproductions of paintings and watercolors.

Deliciously reproduced watercolors and insightful, lucid commentary.

VG copy in VG DJ