Fun and Games With the Pre-Raphaelites

 

Last night saw the showing of the first episode of a dramatised TV program about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters and poets in mid 19th century England and great fun it was. It managed to incorporate all of the predjudices that the general populace has about art students. Hard drinking and sexual promiscuity seemed to abound until Holman- Hunt, here portrayed as a tough bull like man taken to using a punching bag at every opportunity is seduced by his prostitute model and is found to be a virgin. 

Dante-Gabriel Rosetti on the other hand appears more experienced but rather than seducing his muse Lizzy Siddal, is seduced by her after he saves her from near death when she nearly drowns in a bath whilst posing for John Everett Milais as Shakespeare's Ophelia drowning in a brook. He is made to pay her father thirty pounds 'damages' before she is permitted to pose again.

On a serious note the program makes much of the relationship between the painters and John Ruskin, the critic who after a couple of false starts becomes their patron, praising in particular Millais work at a Royal Academy exhibition, much to the shock of Charles Dickens who had said that Millais painting of Christ and his parents had the holy family looking like 'alchoholics and slum dwellers'.

John Ruskin's relationship with his wife, in particular his inability to consummate the marriage is also explored with Ruskin towards the end of the episode offering her to Millais as a model, not something that a respectable woman of the times would consider.

 I wait with anticipation the next episode. ABC1 Sunday 14th March at 8.30 p.m.,