John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination: Sacre Conversazioni 9783031215544, 3031215540

Citation preview

John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination Sacre Conversazioni

Edited by Sheona Beaumont Madeleine Emerald Thiele

John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination

Sheona Beaumont Madeleine Emerald Thiele Editors

John Ruskin, the Pre-­Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination Sacre Conversazioni

Editors Sheona Beaumont Bath, UK

Madeleine Emerald Thiele Bath, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-21553-7    ISBN 978-3-031-21554-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Ruskin (and John ‘George’ Hobbs), Venice. St. Mark’s and the Campanile, c.1850–1852. Daguerreotype / Jacobson Collection: 21. Used with the kind permission of Ken Jacobson This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to the memory of George P. Landow

v

Notes on the Ruskin Referencing System Adopted in This Volume, and Other References

This volume uses John Ruskin, editors., E.  T Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin. Library Edition, 39 vols. (London: George Allen 1905). This is what is referred to as the ‘Library Edition’ and is available online at Lancaster University, see: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/the-­ruskin/ the-­complete-­works-­of-­ruskin/ Each Ruskin volume is listed below, and any references will appear intext as opposed to endnotes, in the following format: (ix.190). Biblical quotes are always taken from the King James version and each verse is referred to in the following format: (Genesis 2:7). All other references appear as endnotes. i‌‌—Early Prose Writings ii‌—Poems iii—Modern Painters I (1843) iv—Modern Painters II (1846) v—Modern Painters III (1856) vi—Modern Painters IV (1856) vii—Modern Painters V (1860) viii—The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) ix—The Stones of Venice I (1851) x—The Stones of Venice II (1853) xi—The Stones of Venice III (1853)

vii

viii 

NOTES ON THE RUSKIN REFERENCING SYSTEM ADOPTED IN THIS VOLUME…

xii—Lectures on Architecture and Painting (Edinburgh, 1853), Other Papers (1844–1854) xiii—Turner, The Harbours of England and Catalogues and Notes (1856) xiv—Academy Notes (1855–1859, 1875), Notes on Prout and Hunt and Other Art Criticisms (1879–1880) xv—The Elements of Drawing (1857), The Elements of Perspective (1859), and The Laws of Fésole (1877–1878) xvi—A Joy for Ever (1857), and The Two Paths with letters on The Oxford Museum and various addresses (1856–1860) xvii—Unto this Last (1860), Munera Pulveris (1862–1863), and Time and Tide with other writings on Political Economy (1867) xviii—Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Ethics of Dust (1866), and The Crown of Wild Olive with letters on Public Affairs (1859–1866) xix—The Cestus of Aglaia (1865–1866) and The Queen of the Air with other papers and lectures on Art and Literature (1860–1870) xx—Lectures on Art (1870) and Aratra Pentelici with lectures and notes on Greek Art and Mythology (1870) xxi—The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford: Catalogues, Notes and Instructions xxii—Lectures on Landscape (1871), Michael Angelo & Tintoret (1871), The Eagle’s Nest (1872), and Ariadne Florentina with notes for other Oxford lectures (1872) xxiii—Val D’Arno (1873), The Aesthetic and Mathematical Schools of Florence (1874), Mornings in Florence (1875–1877), and The Shepherd’s Tower (1881) xxiv—Giotto and his works in Padua (1853–1860), The Cavalli Monuments Verona (1872), Guide to the Academy Venice (1877), and St. Mark’s Rest (1877–1884) xxv—Love’s Meinie (1873–1881) and Proserpina (1875–1886) xxvi‌—Deucalion and other studies in Rocks and Stones (1875–1883) xxvii—Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1871–1873) xxviii—Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1874–1876) xxix—Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1877–1884) xxx—Material relating to the Guild and Museum of St. George

  NOTES ON THE RUSKIN REFERENCING SYSTEM ADOPTED IN THIS VOLUME… 

ix

xxxi—Bibliotheca Pastorum: The Economist of Xenophon (1876), Rock Honeycomb (1877), The Elements of Prosody (1880), and A Knight’s Faith (1885) xxxii—Studies of Peasant Life: The Story of Ida (1883), Roadside Songs of Tuscany (1885), Christ’s Folk in the Apennine (1887), and Ulric the Farm Servant (1886–1888) xxxiii‌—The Bible of Amiens (1880–1885), Valle Crucis, and The Art of England (1883), and The Pleasures of England (1884) xxxiv‌—The Storm-cloud of the Nineteenth Century: On the Old Road, Arrows of the Chace and Ruskiniana (1884) xxxv—Praeterita (1885–1889) and Dilecta (1886–1900) xxxvi–xxxvii—The Letters of John Ruskin (1827–1889) xxxviii—Bibliography, Catalogue of Ruskin’s Drawings, and Addenda et Corrigenda xxxix‌—General Index

Acknowledgements

He who offers God a second place offers Him no place John Ruskin

Sometimes a journey to publication takes unexpected detours, extended stop-overs, and changing companions. We, the Editors, have at times felt ourselves caught inside the atmosphere of one of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, absorbed in the swirling densities of cloud and atmospheric distortions. But thankfully, with Ruskin’s steady eye as a guide, we have found our way onto the jewelled brilliance of a Pre-Raphaelite road. To the contributors who have joined us here, thank you for illuminating our lives with words and pictures that glow. We are so grateful for your conversations, richly sacred as they have been in many ways. We are indebted too, to the many institutions and galleries whose support for our contributors has made the volume so rich in thought and image, and to Palgrave Macmillan who have put the conversations so eloquently to paper. We hope that journeys continue off the page, into transformations that matter: the ones where, as Ruskin said, the ‘glory is not at all in going, but in being’. The Editors December 2022

xi

Contents

1 Introduction:  ‘All Great Art Is Praise’ John Ruskin  1 Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele Part I Ruskin’s Sermons on Visual Theology  49 2 Earth  and Heaven: Ruskin on Dirt, Work, and Beauty 51 Flora Armetta 3 Ruskin’s  Venice: Embracing Sacred Fragments of Imperfect Beauty 73 Madeleine Emerald Thiele 4 ‘Those  Are Leaves’: Ruskin’s Analogical Imagination and the Pre-Raphaelite Theology of Nature101 Alison Milbank Part II  Visual Interlude i: An Angelic Conversation 127 5 Sounds  and Visions at the Chapel of St Michael and All Angels129 Sheona Beaumont and Mark Dean

xiii

xiv 

Contents

Part III Pre-Raphaelite Conversations with Ruskinian Truths 141 6 Ruskin,  Rossetti, and the Sacra Conversazione of Colour143 Elizabeth Helsinger 7 ‘The  Loveliest Traditions of the Christian Legend’: Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and the Imaging of the Cross165 Katherine Hinzman 8 Crystal  Balls: Visions of Creation in the Art of Burne-Jones189 Suzanne Fagence Cooper Part IV  Visual Interlude ii: A Syncretic Communion 217 9 A  World Without Ceiling: Mary Watts’ ‘Language of Symbols’ at Limnerslease219 Lucy Ella Rose Part V Reinvigorating Sacred Spaces 231 10 Victorian  Exodus: Visualising the Old Testament in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881)233 Madeline Hewitson 11 Heaven  on Earth: Evelyn De Morgan’s Rejection of Materialism257 Sarah Hardy 12 Art  on Sundays: Henrietta Barnett and the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions283 Lucy Hartley Biblical Index309 Subject Index311

Notes on Contributors

Flora  Armetta holds a BA in Art History and Theatre from Tufts University and PhD in Victorian Literature from Columbia University. She has written on art and literature for The New Yorker, American Arts Quarterly, Victorian Network, and other publications. She was a lecturer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she has taught courses in the classics of Western literature at Columbia and for Classical Academic Press. Armetta was Assistant Professor of Arts and Humanities at Guttman Community College, New  York City, before relocating to Pennsylvania with her family, where she co-runs an arts ministry with her husband, Robert Armetta. She is Assistant Professor of English at Central Penn College. Sheona Beaumont  is an artist and writer working with photography. She was Bishop Otter Scholar (2017–2020) with the Diocese of Chichester and King’s College London, and her doctorate on the Bible in photography was completed from the International Centre for Biblical Interpretation, University of Gloucestershire. Her monograph The Bible in Photography is forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2023. She has written for several journals, held artist residencies in various ecumenical settings, and her artist books include Eye See Trinity (2016) and Bristol Through the Lens (2011). She is the co-founder of Visual Theology, whose first edited publication with Madeleine Emerald Thiele was Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts (2021).

xv

xvi 

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Suzanne Fagence Cooper  is a writer and curator with expertise in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British art and culture. She spent twelve years at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum, researching the Victorian collections, and completed her doctorate in 2005. She is an invited lecturer for the Arts Society and Cunard voyages. Fagence Cooper was a research curator for Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud (2019). Her introduction to Ruskin’s work and legacy, To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters was published in 2020, and her latest book is How We Might Live: At Home with Jane and William Morris (2022). Mark  Dean  is an artist and Anglican priest, working as a chaplain to University of the Arts London, and coordinator of Arts Chaplaincy Projects. Dean made his first looped video work in the 1970s while studying photography and painting; in the 1980s he began working with musical loops in bands and as a DJ; he eventually combined these practices in the methodology for which he became recognised as a video and sound artist. Dean has exhibited nationally and internationally since the 1990s, with work represented in museum collections in the UK and abroad; recent projects have included liturgical events and choreographic collaborations, in addition to gallery installations. Sarah Hardy  has been director of the De Morgan Collection since 2018, following roles in collection and exhibitions management at the National Gallery and British Library. Sarah has curated exhibitions such as ‘Sublime Symmetry: The Mathematics Behind William De Morgan’s Ceramic Designs’, and ‘Evelyn De Morgan: Artist of Hope’ and written the exhibition catalogues for both. In 2022, Sarah contributed chapters to Evelyn & William De Morgan: A Marriage of Art and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite Women. Sarah is currently working on the exhibition ‘A Marriage of Art and Crafts: William and Evelyn De Morgan’ with Delaware Art Museum; it is the first major retrospective of the De Morgan’s work in the USA. Sarah is also a trustee of the William Morris Society. Lucy  Hartley is Professor of English at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of two monographs: Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2001) and Democratising Beauty in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Art and the Politics of Public Life (2017); and she is the editor of The History of British Women’s Writing, 1830–1880: Volume Six (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She is currently working on a book about the Whitechapel Exhibitions as well as two related books: on Henrietta Barnett as a social activist and on poverty and the literature of crisis.

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

xvii

Elizabeth Helsinger  is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor Emerita in the Departments of English, Art History, and Visual Arts at University of Chicago, USA. She is the author of numerous books and articles on nineteenth-century literature and the other arts, including Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder (1982), Rural Scenes and National Representation (1997), Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts (2008), and Poetry and the Thought of Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2015). Her Conversing in Verse: Conversation in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry is forthcoming from Cambridge in 2023. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Humanities Center (twice); and is a co-editor of the journal Critical Inquiry. Madeline  Hewitson  is a research assistant at the Ashmolean Museum working on the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project, Chromotope: the 19th Century Chromatic Turn, as well as an exhibition on Victorian colour opening in late 2023. She completed her Doctorate in History of Art from the University of York in 2020. Her research focuses on British Orientalist visual culture and representations of the Holy Land in Victorian art. This chapter forms a part of her most recent project ‘The First Covenant: Victorian Art and the Old Testament, c. 1850–1897’, which is funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Katherine Hinzman  has recently completed her doctoral studies at the University of York, UK, under the supervision of Professor Elizabeth Prettejohn. Her dissertation, entitled ‘Love Between Worlds: Edward Burne-Jones and the Theology of Art’, focuses on Burne-Jones’ theological background and analyses his artwork as it employs theological themes, methods, and concepts. She has organised lecture series and seminars in the UK and USA, particularly as they relate to Catholic theology and the arts, and a conference on Burne-Jones in tandem with Tate Britain’s 2018–2019 exhibition. She is currently writing articles, book reviews, and an upcoming publication on Christian art in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Europe to be published by T&T Clark. She is currently writing an upcoming publication on Christian European art in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century and teaching as a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Benedictine College.

xviii 

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Alison Milbank  is Professor of Theology and Literature at the University of Nottingham, UK, and her most recent monograph is God and the Gothic: Religion, Romance, and Reality in the English Literary Tradition (2018). She is currently working on a genealogy of Anglican writing about nature in art, poetry, and natural philosophy. She has written several articles about Ruskin, who is also a central figure in her Dante and the Victorians (1998). In her role as Canon Theologian at Southwell Minster, she has been closely involved in study and interpretation of ‘The Leaves of Southwell’, the cathedral’s important carvings of foliage, which will be the subject of a forthcoming edited volume of essays. Lucy Ella  Rose  is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Surrey, UK.  She is author of the book Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender, Word and Image (2018), focused on Mary and George Watts as well as Evelyn and William De Morgan. Rose works on neglected women in nineteenth-century creative partnerships, revealing the cultural importance of these figures and their literary and visual productions. Madeleine Emerald Thiele  is an art historian whose research examines Tractarian aesthetics and the angelic form within British art c. 1840s–1900s. Madeleine has presented papers internationally, taught at the University of Bristol, written reviews for the Victorian Web, and taught at Marlborough College Summer School. She was also the Visual Arts Editor for the journal Harts & Minds throughout its lifespan. She is the author of ‘John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and the Aesthetic Male Body: A Pre-Raphaelite Response to Ideas of Victorian Manliness’, in Thomas Carlyle and the Idea of Influence, ed. by Kerry, Paul (USA, 2018). She is the co-founder of Visual Theology, whose first edited publication with Dr Sheona Beaumont was Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts (2021).

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3

Ford Madox Brown, Work, 1852–65. Oil on canvas, 68.4 cm × 99.9 cm. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, licensed under CC0 William Powell Frith, The Crossing Sweeper, 1858. Oil on canvas, 43 cm × 35.5 cm. Museum of London. Image © Museum of London William Bell Scott, Iron and Coal: The Industry of the Tyne, 1861. Watercolour, 24.5 cm × 23.8 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Henry Wallis, The Stonebreaker, 1857. Oil on canvas, 65 cm × 79 cm. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, licensed under CC0 John Ruskin, Venice: the Ducal Palace South-West Angle with Austrian Soldiers, c.1849–1852. Daguerreotype, quarter-plate 8 cm × 11 cm. Jacobson Collection: 61. Used with permission of Ken Jacobson John Ruskin, Ca’ d’Oro, 1845, pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper. 33 cm × 47.6 cm. © The Ruskin. Lancaster University Frederic Leighton, Ca’ d’Oro, 1856, pencil and watercolour on paper, 32 cm × 25 cm. Leighton House. © Leighton House, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

58 60 63

64

80 83 85

xix

xx 

List of Figures

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Fig. 3.6

Fig. 3.7

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4

Fig. 4.5 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4

John Ruskin (and John ‘George’ Hobbs?), Venice. St. Mark’s and the Campanile, c.1850–1852. Daguerreotype, quarterplate 8 cm × 11 cm. Jacobson Collection: 21. Used with permission of Ken Jacobson John Ruskin, Part of St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice: Sketch after Rain. 27th May, 1846. Watercolour, 42.1 cm × 28.6 cm. Ashmolean Museum. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford John Ruskin (and John ‘George’ Hobbs), Venice. St. Mark’s. Principal Façade, c.1852. Daguerreotype, half-plate 12.2 cm × 16.3 cm. Jacobson Collection: RF23. © The Ruskin, Lancaster University John Wharlton Bunney. Western Façade of the Basilica of San Mark, 1877–1882. Oil on canvas, 144.7 cm × 226 cm. Sheffield Museum. © Collection of the Guild of St George, Sheffield Museums Trust John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1856. Oil on canvas, 104.3 cm × 74 cm. Manchester City Art Gallery. © Manchester Art Gallery / Bridgeman Images John Ruskin, The Dryad’s Waywardness: Oak Spray in Winter, seen in front, 1875. Watercolour and bodycolour over graphite on blue wove paper, 22.0 cm × 26.7 cm. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. © Ashmolean Museum John Ruskin, Study of a Spray of Dead Oak Leaves, 1879. Watercolour and bodycolour on paper, 29.5 cm × 41.8 cm. Collection of the Guild of St George, Sheffield Museums Trust John Ruskin, Chestnut Leaves, c.1870. Watercolour and pen and ink on white paper, 48.0 cm × 38.0 cm. Indianapolis Museum at Newfields, USA. © Indianapolis Museum of Art / John Herron Fund / Bridgeman Images Charles Collins, Convent Thoughts, 1851. Oil on canvas, 84 cm × 59 cm. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. © Ashmolean Museum Marlborough College, Chapel of St. Michael and All Angels (exterior). Photo: Sheona Beaumont Marlborough College, Chapel of St. Michael and All Angels (interior). Photo © Marlborough College John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, The Expulsion, 1875. Oil on canvas and gilding, 127.0 cm × 167.6 cm. Marlborough College, Wiltshire. Photo © Marlborough College North wall of Marlborough College Chapel, showing John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1875. Oil on canvas and gilding, 127.0 cm × 167.6 cm. Photograph by Sheona Beaumont

89

91

94

96 103

109 110

111 114 130 132 133

134

  List of Figures 

Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

Fig. 7.4

Mark Dean, All Angels, 2019, video still (n.b. the grainy quality of the image represents the original video, as intended). Photo © Mark Dean Mark Dean, Anthem for All Angels, 2019, video still. Photo © Mark Dean John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, The Vision of the New Jerusalem, 1875. Oil on canvas and gilding, 127.0 cm × 167.6 cm. Marlborough College, Wiltshire. Photo © Marlborough College John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’), 1849–1850. Oil on canvas, 139.7 cm × 86.4 cm. Tate Gallery, London; purchased with assistance from the Art Fund and various subscribers 1921. Photo: Tate Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante Drawing an Angel on the Anniversary of Beatrice’s Death, 1853. Watercolour and bodycolour on paper, 41.9 cm × 60.9 cm. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford Hans Memling, Sacra Conversazione. Altarpiece of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, c. 1479. Oil on oak panels (centre panel shown), 173.6 cm × 173.7 cm. SintJanshospitaal, Musea Brugge, Bruges. Photo: Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary in the House of St. John, 1859, watercolour on paper William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World, 1886. Oil on canvas, 49.8 cm × 26.1 cm, Manchester Art Gallery. © Manchester Art Gallery / Bridgeman Images Edward Burne-Jones, design for The Good Shepherd, 1857. Watercolour and ink, 128.9 cm × 47.7 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Edward Burne-Jones, The Merciful Knight, 1863. Watercolour with bodycolour on paper, 101 cm × 59 cm. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, licensed under CC0 Edward Burne-Jones, design for The Tree of Life, 1888. Watercolour and gouache, 181 cm × 242 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

xxi

135 136

138

152

152

156 162 171

176

179

183

xxii 

List of Figures

Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3 Fig. 8.4 Fig. 8.5

Fig. 8.6 Fig. 8.7

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5

Edward Burne-Jones, The Days of Creation: the First Day, 1870–1876. Watercolour, gouache, platinum paint, shell gold on linen-covered panel prepared with zinc white ground, 102.2 cm × 35.5 cm. Harvard Art Museum / Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, Photo copyright President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1943.454 John Hungerford Pollen, carved by O’Shea Brothers, The Angel of Life, Oxford Museum of Natural History, stone sculpture on main door, 1860, photo copyright Kevin Walsh Edward Burne-Jones, The Days of Creation, 1860–1861. Stained glass, Waltham Abbey. Photo copyright Revd. Stephen Day Bible Moralisée, produced Paris, 1226-1275, ink and gold leaf on parchment, 44 cm × 31.8 cm, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl.207b, fol.5v. © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford Edward Burne-Jones, Days of Creation, designs for The Bible Gallery, 1863. Watercolour, bodycolour, gold and white with scraping over pencil, each drawing 6.2 cm × 13.4 cm, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, licensed under CC0 Master of the E-series Tarocchi, Octava Spera (The Eighth Sphere), c.1465–1475. Engraving, 17.6 cm × 9.8 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France via Gallica Edward Burne-Jones, Sixth and Seventh Days of Creation, exhibited 1877. Watercolour, gouache, platinum paint, shell gold, on linen over panel prepared with zinc white ground, 102.2 cm × 35.5 cm. Harvard Art Museum / Fogg Art Gallery, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, Photo copyright President and Fellows of Harvard College 1943.459 Mary and George F. Watts reading in the ‘niche’ at Limnerslease, c.1894–1895. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust Mary Watts and assistants working on a ceiling panel, 1891. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust Mary Watts, the gesso ceiling in the Red Room of Limnerslease, 1891. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust and © Leonie Maya Isaac Mary Watts, Watts Chapel ceiling, 1895–1898. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust Mary Watts, detail of the Egyptian gesso ceiling panel at Limnerslease, 1891. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust

191 194 202 203

206 208

211 220 222 223 224 226

  List of Figures 

Fig. 9.6 Fig. 9.7 Fig. 10.1

Fig. 10.2

Fig. 10.3

Fig. 10.4

Fig. 10.5

Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2

Fig. 11.3

Fig. 11.4

xxiii

Mary Watts, detail of the winged sun ceiling panel at Limnerslease, 1891. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust and © Leonie Maya Isaac 228 Mary Watts, detail of the vulning pelican ceiling at Limnerslease, 1891. Photograph courtesy Watts Gallery Trust 229 Title page from The Brothers Dalziel, Dalziels’ Bible Gallery: Illustrations from the Old Testament (New York: Scribner and Welford, 1881). Mounted leaf size 41.8 cm × 32.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Anonymous Gift, 1926)234 After Edward Armitage, ‘Moses Destroys the Tables [Tablets]’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881). Wood engraving on India paper, 26.8 cm × 22.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Anonymous Gift, 1926) 244 After Simeon Solomon, ‘The Infant Moses’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881). Wood engraving on India paper, 19.4 cm × 16 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Anonymous Gift, 1926) 246 After Edward John Poynter, ‘Moses Slaying the Egyptian’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881). Wood engraving on India paper, 23.3 cm × 20.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Anonymous Gift, 1926) 248 After Frederick Richard Pickersgill, ‘Moses Hands Held Up’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881). Wood engraving on India paper, 26.9 cm × 23 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Anonymous Gift, 1926) 250 Evelyn De Morgan, The Crown of Glory, 1896. Oil on canvas, 105.4 cm × 53.3 cm. Private Collection. © Private Collection 262 Evelyn De Morgan, The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty, 1905. Oil on canvas, 160.0 cm × 100.3 cm. De Morgan Foundation; destroyed by fire 1991. © De Morgan Collection, courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation 269 Evelyn De Morgan, St. Christina Giving her Father’s Jewels to the Poor, 1904. Oil on canvas, 197.5 cm × 304.8 cm. De Morgan Foundation; destroyed by fire 1991. © De Morgan Collection, courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation 272 Evelyn De Morgan, Earthbound, 1897. Oil on canvas, 87.6 cm × 118.1 cm. De Morgan Foundation; P_EDM_0009. © De Morgan Collection, courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation274

xxiv 

List of Figures

Fig. 11.5

Fig. 11.6

Fig. 12.1

Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3

Fig. 12.4

Fig. 12.5

Fig. 12.6 Fig. 12.7 Fig. 12.8

Evelyn De Morgan, Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City, 1897. Oil on canvas, 96.5 cm × 138.4 cm. De Morgan Foundation; P_EDM_0018. © De Morgan Foundation276 Evelyn De Morgan, The Worship of Mammon, 1909. Oil on canvas, 60.3 cm × 50.2 cm. De Morgan Foundation; P_EDM_0039. © De Morgan Collection, courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation 278 ‘Rev. S. A. and Mrs. Barnett at the Time of their Marriage, 1873’, in Canon Barnett: His Life, Work, and Friends, by his Wife, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1918), I, p. 62, photograph, 14 cm × 21.5 cm. Author’s copy 287 George Frederic Watts, Time, Death, and Judgement, 1886. Oil on canvas, 243.8 cm × 168.9 cm, Tate Gallery, London. Photo: © Tate 293 ‘The Mosaic and Fountain on the West Wall of St. Jude’s Church, Commercial Street, E.’, and ‘St. Jude’s Church and Vicarage, Commercial Street, Whitechapel, 1873’, in Canon Barnett: His Life, Work, and Friends, by his Wife, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1918), I, p. 74, engraving (unattributed), 14 cm × 21.5 cm. Author’s copy 294 Francis Gould Carruthers, ‘Sunday Afternoon in the Whitechapel Picture Gallery’ (n.d.), in Canon Barnett: His Life, Work, and Friends, by his Wife, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1918), II, p. 154, engraving, 14 cm × 21.5 cm. Author’s copy 295 Jean-François Millet, Angelus, 1857–1859, oil on canvas, 55.5 cm × 66 cm, Musée d’Orsay/Paris/ France. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY Photo: Patrice Schmidt 298 ‘At the East-End “Academy”. A “Private View” at St. Jude’s Schools, Whitechapel’, Pall Mall Gazette, XLIII (28 April 1886), p.2. © The British Library Board / MFM.MLD28 300 Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition. Fourth Year—Easter 1884 (London: Penny Hull, 1884), front and inside cover. Getty Research Institute: courtesy of HathiTrust 301 Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition. Fourth Year—Easter 1884 (London: Penny Hull, 1884), back cover. Getty Research Institute: courtesy of HathiTrust 302

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: ‘All Great Art Is Praise’ John Ruskin Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele

Sacre Conversazioni The nineteenth-century writer, philosopher, and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) named Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints (1505) one of the ‘best pictures in the world’ (xxii.84).1 The altarpiece is still housed in the fifteenth-century Church of San Zaccaria in Venice and can be found a mere two-minute walk from the Hotel Danieli, which was Ruskin’s favourite place to stay when in Venice. He would often 1  Ruskin cites two paintings: the second is Bellini’s Madonna of the Frari (1488, Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice). John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xviii.492–493). In this instance, the relevant footnote is (xxii.83).

S. Beaumont (*) • M. E. Thiele Bath, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_1

1

2 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

visit the church to study and revel in Bellini’s colour, arrangement, and pictorial innovation and to meditate on the ‘solemn spirit of religious faith’ which he thought animated the work to the last (ix.31). Bellini’s altarpiece is an exceptional example of a sacra conversazione, a specific Renaissance term used to describe a genre of Italian (first Florentine, then later, Venetian) paintings. Typically, such a scene depicts the Virgin and Child with a group of others (perhaps saints, or even donor portraits) either alongside or below, holding a ‘sacred conversation’ (or conversations—sacre conversazioni). This genre was more informal than previous artistic conventions had been, and it was done in order to create a less remote vision of biblical figures. A sacra conversazione creates a shared intimate conversation between the holy figures, in particular, those of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. This most holy relationship is key to the sacra conversazione. However, we (the editors), in turn, suggest that the conversation extends beyond the altarpiece itself to include the congregant viewing the image. The congregant is, therefore, enabled to participate in the conversation most sacred. Pictorially, the intimacy of the scene is achieved by bringing together the different spheres of narrative action into one pyramidal shape (rather than maintaining different scenes within one picture plane or even separating the narratives into different panels, such as in a triptych). The Madonna and Child are enthroned, bonding the entire scene together through their own unique and holy relationship. Beneath them, an almost melancholic angel kneels poised to play the viola, and there are four standing saints; St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Lucy stand nearest to the Madonna on either side of her, and St. Peter the Apostle and St. Jerome are nearest to the viewer, facing out from their opposing outer edges. Bellini uses the figures to create balance through symmetry, rendering the scene quiet and graceful as a result. This arrangement is typical of a sacra conversazione: quiet, close, and meditative in tone. Rather than depicting highly animated figures, the atmosphere seeks to convey a ‘rapt stillness of mood, in which the Saints, scarcely looking at one another, seem to communicate at a spiritual rather than a material level’.2 It is something of a distillation of a shared sacred moment: a pictorial space where the sacred, the spiritual, and even the psychological commune together. Bellini’s work is a pinnacle of Renaissance 2  John Steer, A Concise History of Venetian Painting (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 62.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

3

artistry. Its Giotto-esque colour and symmetry, combined with, as Ruskin says, its spirit of solemnity makes it almost motionless, otherworldly. Bellini’s ambitious design seems intent on bringing humankind nearer to the divine or at the very least in conversation with the divine or musing upon it. The devotional intensity of Bellini’s altarpiece is not, therefore, to be underestimated. It invites active engagement and prayer from those who stand witness to the sacred conversation pictured. While the term sacra conversazione pertains to religious images such as Bellini’s, we, the founders of Visual Theology, use this volume as a space to carefully extend the metaphor beyond its original and particular Renaissance usage. Just as Ruskin sought to find the grace of God through contemplation of Bellini’s aesthetic achievements, we too seek to find a way of enlightening your, and our, understanding about the complexity of the religious imagination and our collective cultural, historical, and theological relationship with religious imagery. In keeping with this, the theology we are defending art historically/academically is predominantly that of New Testament Christianity, where Christ is understood to bring humanity closer to God. As you read on, we invite you to consider yourselves to be the congregant: included, observant, engaged, and perhaps part of the religious community. You do not have to be committed to faith, Christian or otherwise, but committed to the idea of conversations about religious imagery and theology. Perhaps you may even be a strenuous and undecided believer, to paraphrase Mark Twain. Either way, this volume intends to further conversations about such sacred matters and to do so, not cynically, but joyfully through engagement with the deeply spiritual and sensitive attention given by great thinkers like Ruskin in the nineteenth century. Our book’s tone follows in the footsteps of Richard Gibson, whose Charitable Writing calls ‘you, reader, to take up your inheritance: the inexhaustible wealth of the Christian tradition’.3 We include the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates, alongside Ruskin, for they, too, keenly reflected on matters of the spirit and, as Bellini did in his time, created a wealth of innovative religious imagery. Art born from the religious imagination had the ability to aid transformative experiences:

3  Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III, Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), p. 1.

4 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

‘[w]hen language [alone] was not transcendental enough’,4 biblical images and scriptural references could illuminate deeper truths and, as Ruskin saw it, make the invisible visible (v.273). Art, aesthetics, and the religious imagination fuse together a sense of connectedness, creating what Ruskin called a ‘continuous chain’ (x.83) of meaning. This chain is created via conversations about what is meant by the word sacred and is something that has been done continually through the ages via the arts and literature.5 The title of this book is designed to reflect examples of these imaginative artistic innovations, showing how important Ruskin and the PreRaphaelites and their associates considered Christian imagery to be. Here, then, we present the literary, philosophical, poetic, and religious ideas as imagined by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, as a form of sacra conversazione. The combination of their voices can be heard in their earnest observations, the soft tones of their leaf studies, the sadness of their social realist paintings, and their jewel-toned calls to charity. These sacre conversazioni unveil the imaginative ways in which these artists express their ideas about theology, ecology, and beauty. They offer, in the end, a threshold, beyond which we hope more conversations about matters sacred will arise. After all, neither the Christian tradition nor its corresponding visual tradition is static.

John Ruskin This volume reflects a growing appetite for Ruskin’s voluminous output, which is, in part, due to the bicentenary celebrations of his life to which we contributed.6 Marking Ruskin’s bicentenary in 2019 was significant: it demonstrated a growing international academic interest in and a public concern for the many issues Ruskin wrote about. The success of the events 4  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Two Vols (New York, USA: Macmillan, 1905), Vol. I, pp. 260–261. 5  In this sense a broader consideration of the religious imagination and the sacred could certainly open onto wider visual cultures and other religions: indeed, they are not entirely excluded from this book as we see with, for example, the designs of Mary Watts (1849–1938). With Ruskin, however, our book seeks to deepen the understanding of a specifically Western tradition of picture-making, and our focus is on sacre conversazioni as a particular visual expression of the Christian religious imagination. 6  Visual Theology II’s international conference ‘Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites: Sacre Conversazioni’ was held 21–22 September 2019 at Marlborough College, Wiltshire. Details of the programme, and of Visual Theology’s aims, can be found at https://www.visualtheology.org.uk/conferences.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

5

also showed a renewed affection for a complex man who must now be counted as one of Britain’s finest polymaths and culturally significant figures of recent centuries. Over the course of his long career, Ruskin wrote extensively on social, philosophical, and political theory, as well as theology, botany, aesthetics, architecture, and even a fairy tale. Ruskin helped shape the cultural landscape of Britain by challenging society’s moral assumptions and questioning its responsibilities. Some of the subjects he contemplated at length are ones which are becoming increasingly important to us today: aesthetics, theology, labour, industrialisation, and ecology—and even climate. This volume covers some of these subjects and is born from our own celebration of Ruskin’s life and work. The chapters presented here keep Ruskin’s voice alive in both academic and public spheres. The celebrations may now be past, but it is clear from the content in these pages that Ruskin’s value and influence is not. His voice has a relevance to it and, as such, his reputation deserves to be on the ascendant. Ruskin speaks to us today through his extensive and capacious writing. The entire catalogue of his work was edited by E.  T. Cook and A. Wedderburn and published by Ruskin’s own publishers Messrs. George Allen between 1903 and 1912. The ‘Library Edition’, as it is known, is so vast that it used eighteen hundred pounds of ink to produce.7 Few will labour through the entirety of Ruskin’s work as presented in those volumes, preferring instead to dip in and out. The sheer scale and breadth of his work means it is difficult to glean a sense of the complete nature of Ruskin’s mind. And yet, one finds underneath his painterly prose, a man prone to disenchantment and sorrow, but with a keenness of eye, and an enormous love for literature and the world around him. What one also learns to recognise is Ruskin’s fallibility—a distinctly human trait. It is this flawed aspect of Ruskin’s nature that makes his writing such a fascinating and enriching read: through him we can, perhaps, recognise our own sense of fallibility and humanity. He cared deeply, not just about his fellow beings and the state of their existence but, to a surprising extent, about his reputation and his relevance. This was not due to a sense of arrogance, but rather because Ruskin wanted people to have clarity about his meaning so that people’s lives—working men’s and women’s lives—could be enriched 7  See https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/empi/notes/hcookwed01.htm, accessed June 2022.

6 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

and improved by the lessons he offered them. Ruskin actively sought to correct people’s misunderstandings about his writing and their interpretation of its truths, for he considered his mission to educate to be too important to be casually mistaken or disregarded. He wanted the result of his efforts to produce not minions but skilled, hard-working people. It was through Ruskin’s involvement with the Working Men’s College that, for example, George Allen’s (1832–1907) life was transformed: from joiner to publisher.8 That being said, Ruskin wanted no ‘disciple’ of his to ever be called ‘a “Ruskinian”!—he will follow not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its creator’ (xxiv.371). In these pages, you shall read and learn about Ruskin’s message, but we shall not ask you to call yourselves Ruskinians in so doing. Today, as in his own lifetime, Ruskin is often referred to as a prophet.9 He should in many ways be considered a preacher too; if he had not pursued a different path for himself, he would no doubt have made, as his parents hoped, a fine cleric. The Church was an almost expected career path for an ‘Oxford Graduate’ (the pen name he used when publishing Modern Painters). He was often preacherly, visionary and sage-like in his conceptualisation of the world around him: particularly in his observations of the damage being done to the natural world through industrialisation. His prophetic voice cuts through many of the moral ambiguities and assumptions of both the nineteenth century and now. His texts are so powerful that, as Francis O’Gorman suggests, they can appear sacred to those who read them.10 Ruskin’s stern clarity of voice carries like a priest to his ­congregation, and because of this, it can be easy to overlook his

8  The Working Men’s College is one of the oldest extant adult education establishments. It was established in Camden, London, by Christian Socialists in 1854 and was supported by various Victorian notables: Ruskin was particularly involved, as was Dante Gabriel Rossetti— particularly in the drawing classes there. Rossetti had been teaching at the College the night his wife, Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), died. See Virginia Surtees, Rossetti’s Portraits of Elizabeth Siddal: A Catalogue of the Drawings and Watercolours (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1991), pp. 10–11. 9  Ruskin is often described as a prophet, both in passing and more seriously. Studies assigning him this role include W. G. Collingwood, The Life and Work of John Ruskin (Boston and New York: Riverside Press, 1893), John T. Middlemiss, A Modern Prophet and His Message: John Ruskin (Sunderland: Smith and Taylor, 1896), and J. Howard Whitehouse, ed., Ruskin the Prophet and Other Centenary Studies (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1920). 10   Francis O’Gorman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2015), p. 2.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

7

contradictions and weaknesses (which Ruskin himself acknowledged).11 In his defence, he fairly said: ‘All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change’ (vii.9). Even when aware of Ruskin’s contradictions, we are still provoked into contemplating our own intellectual and spiritual positions precisely because of the heartfelt clarity of his writing and our own desire for nourishment.12 No man may step in the same river twice, but he may know the water to be just as invigorating and crystal clear each time he dips his toes in. Moreover, in every passage Ruskin always aimed for diamond-like clarity: The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one. (v.333)

His deep immersion in Christianity and the Bible stemmed from his childhood, during which time his Evangelical Anglican mother, Margaret Ruskin (1781–1871), made him read vociferously, study hard, and learn vast swathes of Scripture by heart.13 As a youth, Ruskin was perhaps rather spoiled, but as an adult he became an artist, a scholar, an intellect, and a polymath with a deep knowledge of Old and New Testaments, and a penchant for wine. One only has to turn to any chapter in his six-volume masterpiece Modern Painters (1843–1860) or his three-volume work The Stones of Venice (1851–1853) to find the aforementioned preacherly tone and a scripturally resonant voice. He became extremely successful after Modern Painters proved to be a huge commercial success amongst a broad demographic: his readers included artists, clergy, working men, and devotees. The Bible References of John Ruskin, published in 1898 by Mary

11  The nature of Ruskin’s contradiction is mentioned by Cook and Wedderburn, for example, in (iii.25) and it is a word that Ruskin frequently uses. He sought to take in ‘both sides at once’, knowing that contradictions could arise, but he deemed it necessary while attempting to come to a firmer conclusion about the matter at hand. 12  Ruskin rearranged his texts, as part of his concern to remove his own contradictions: ‘while the parts of the text which needed contradiction, or correction, have been dealt with as they occurred, in notes distinguished from the old ones by being placed within marks of parenthesis’ (iv.3). 13  Tim Hilton, John Ruskin: The Early Years, 1819–1859 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), documents much of Ruskin’s family’s religious side, particularly their churchgoing in South London during the 1830s and 1840s.

8 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

and Ellen Gibbs, further testifies to the importance of Ruskin’s biblical references to his audience. Ruskin could be a remarkably perceptive and generous soul, but he could also be a demanding patron, with exacting standards. He was, however, also extremely charitable: providing generous financial support to various artists, including to some members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Pre-Raphaelites had formed in 1848, although Ruskin only came across them when they were being roundly criticised in the press by Charles Dickens (1812–1870), because of their unconventional religious figures and gaudy realism. Ruskin’s pamphlet Pre-Raphaelitism (1851) defended the artists against the ‘directly false statements’, although he was not without his own criticisms.14 Nonetheless, it is no exaggeration to say that Ruskin’s public intervention in the early days of the Pre-­ Raphaelite Brotherhood helped alter the course of their careers, even if it was, in the end, their own talent and vision that sustained them. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their subsequent associates and affiliates are now widely revered both in Britain and abroad. In this volume William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), John Everett Millais (1829–1896), Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), Mary Watts (1849–1938), Henrietta Barnett (1851–1936), and Evelyn de Morgan (1855–1919) all variously feature. These people, and others that our contributors consider, shared food and wine together with Ruskin: they variously sought his advice, his patronage, and his friendship; wrote letters to him; went on trips abroad with him; followed his teachings; and soaked up his writing. In return, Ruskin was a thoughtful and encouraging friend, even allowing for his dogmatism and the complex personal dynamics of their various relationships.15 Despite the individuals’ artistic temperaments being distinctly different, their interests were synergetic: spurred on by their particular religious sensibilities. In 14  Hunt laments these criticisms by Ruskin in his memoirs. See Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism (1905), Vol. I, p. 254. 15  Hunt maintained his friendship with Ruskin and visited him during his later frail days, at his home in Brantwood, Cumbria. There are photos in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, showing them together there. For further details on the correspondence between Hunt and Ruskin, see George P. Landow ed., ‘“Your Good Influence on Me”: The Correspondence of John Ruskin and William Holman Hunt’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 59 (1976–1977), pp. 95–126, 367–396.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

9

combination Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites held rich conversations about aesthetics, religion, literature, and the natural world; their collective and lasting impact on visual culture should not be underestimated.

Ruskin’s Religious Context The first decades of Ruskin’s life saw him under the religious yoke of his devout and strident mother. She ensured that his daily routine was grounded in Bible recitations and reading, the content of which was often highly academic. Ruskin responded dutifully. The relationship between him and his parents was somewhat suffocating, a dynamic which continued into his adulthood. However, his enforced childhood disciplines shaped the hard-working habits Ruskin adopted in his own adult life. He was a vociferous reader and wrote extensively, with a demanding timetable each day. But it was through his parents’ religious commitment that Ruskin had first become acquainted with a wide range of literature, beyond the Bible, including doctrinal and theological writing. As a child he was acquainted with Wesleyan beliefs and practice and those of the seventeenth-­century Puritans. As a young adult, he was well-versed with the preaching of Henry Melvill (1798–1871). He frequently attended Melvill’s sermons in London and would read them as soon as they were published in The Pulpit (a weekly magazine which published the sermons of eminent Evangelical preachers). Ruskin and Melvill also became friends. Another evangelical figure Ruskin admired was John Charles Ryle (1816–1900), who later became the Bishop of Liverpool. Ryle was a distinguished and keenly intellectual figure, and his influential tracts were well-read by Ruskin. They were, he said, ‘the pleasantest and most useful reading I know, on nearly all religious questions whatsoever… They are not professedly doctrinal, but chiefly exhortations. The doctrine, however, comes in incidentally, very pure and clear’ (xxxvi.180). In 1838, Ruskin matriculated at Oxford University, joining Christ Church the following year. Throughout his degree, Ruskin was often unwell, but he read a great deal. He also travelled to the continent (during which time he began composing Modern Painters). There he met John Keble (1792–1866) whose religious practice was decidedly unlike the Evangelicalism of Ruskin’s childhood. He was also aware of John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and watched his religious journey, and eventual conversion, with interest. Tractarianism was extant in Oxford, and although Ruskin’s letters do not give undue attention to its influences, it seems Oxford’s heady atmosphere was responsible for the

10 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Right Reverend Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, confirming Ruskin into the Anglican communion on 22 April 1837.16 As late as 1848—the year Ruskin married Euphemia Grey (1828–1897) and the year the Pre-Raphaelites formed—Ruskin still seemed to accept the relentlessness of his parents’ manifest Evangelicalism. This is, to some extent, evident in his publication of that year—The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1848)—which has an evangelical zeal to it. In contrast, The Stones of Venice (1851–1853) shows Ruskin moving away from his parents’ sectarian ideas as he starts to (re-)evaluate other Christian traditions. Enlivened by his trips to France and Italy, and Venice in particular, The Stones sees him engage directly with Catholicism and the Gothic aesthetic. Both his mother and his wife were concerned about his exposure to Catholic influences, although his writing shows him being on the one hand decidedly anti-Romanist and on the other having what he called an ‘affectionate prejudice’ (viii.268) for Catholicism (even though he was deeply critical of Romanist tendencies and the institution of the Catholic church). However, in spite of initially warming to Roman Catholicism, or at least its aesthetic as he had seen in Venice and Rouen, Ruskin seemed in pursuit of a more medieval doctrine on which to pin his religious impulse. His personality and upbringing naturally lent itself towards something more austere than Catholicism. In 1850, Ruskin met Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). He came to be a mentor and father figure, and they would speak at length about a range of subjects, including Carlyle’s Calvinism. Carlyle’s objections to the industrialisation of the world mirrored Ruskin’s search for a more monastic purity. Compare, for example, the two men’s quotes: Men are grown mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavours, and in natural force, of any kind.17 People speak in this working age, when they speak from their hearts, as if houses and lands, and food and raiment were alone useful, and as if Sight, Thought, and Admiration were all profitless. (ix.29)

16  Michael Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 14. See also Osborn T. Smallwood, ‘John Ruskin and the Oxford Movement’, CLA Journal 3:2, (December 1959), pp. 114–118, for further detail about Ruskin and Tractarianism. 17  Thomas Carlyle, ‘Signs of the Times’, Edinburgh Review 49 (June 1829), p. 441.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

11

Spiritually and intellectually, Ruskin seemed to be searching for substance, and yet, particularly within the Protestant Church, he increasingly encountered only sentiment. He complained: ‘in general, any man’s becoming a clergyman in these days implies that, at best, his sentiment has overpowered his intellect’ (xxviii.239). In the Broad Church, where more liberal ideas were shared amongst a variety of Anglican churches and practice, there was perhaps more of this substance in intellectual figures such as Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) and Matthew Arnold (1822–1828). The movement was less political than some of the other church parties; it eschewed narrow expressions of doctrine (by either High or Low churchmen), and it encouraged the incorporation of the liturgical and doctrinal preferences of both clergy and laity. Matthew Arnold had complained: ‘The Evangelical clergy no longer recruits itself with success, no longer lays hold on such promising subjects as formerly. It is losing the future and feels that it is losing it’.18 However, the Broad Church’s desire to appeal to all resulted in the weakening of points of doctrine, particularly where science and geology undermined belief and biblical historicity (e.g. the flood narrative). The influence of German thought on matters such as the authorship of the Pentateuch or the historicity of Jesus had percolated through to English readers, in part proliferated by Carlyle, and seemed to encourage Ruskin’s seedling doubts about the literal truth of the Bible.19 In 1851, he wrote a letter to his good friend from Oxford University, Henry Acland (1815–1900), where he explained his struggle: You speak of the Flimsiness of your own faith. Mine, which was never strong, is being beaten into mere gold leaf, and flutters in weak rags from the letter of its old forms; but the only letters it can hold by at all are the old Evangelical formulae. If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses. (xxxvi.115)

18  Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism: With an Essay on Puritanism & the Church of England; and Last Essays on Church & Religion (London: Smith and Elder, 1870), p.viii. 19  Carlyle was well-versed in German intellectual culture, including biblical criticism, where the ideas of historical-critical analysis grew from the studies of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn in the eighteenth century. Later research from the Tübingen School was to include David Friedrich Strauss’ groundbreaking The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, translated into English by George Eliot in 1846.

12 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

The following year, in 1852, Ruskin informed his father about his personal Pascal’s wager: ‘I resolved that at any rate I would act as if the Bible were true; that if it were not, at all events I should be no worse off than I was before; that I would believe in Christ, and take Him for my Master in whatever I did’ (x.xxxix). This period of Ruskin’s life, from 1848 up to 1858, shows him to be intellectually conflicted and doubtful about both religious institutions and the revealed truths of the Bible, despite having broadened his understanding of different doctrines. George Landow argues this period culminated in a ‘decisive loss of religion’.20 More reasonably, as Michael Rectenwald put it when discussing Carlyle: ‘this wandering in the early nineteenth century—from religious faith to skepticism [sic], to materialism, to “natural supernaturalism,” to “rational Christianity”’—provides a point where one might disembark, however briefly, along the journey of faith.21 These disembarkations, even if disruptive, can be conducive to deeper understandings of faith. For the next seventeen years, Ruskin wrestled with his faith and fell into a period of agnosticism. Nonetheless, during this time, his general attitude remained devotional and attentive, and he would always read the Bible and take great interest in spiritual and Church-related matters. It was only after the loss of his great love Rose La Touche (1848–1875) that Ruskin began to settle into a more personally infused relationship with Christianity—moving away from the strict doctrinal and theological confines under which he had been raised. The ‘decisive loss of religion’ to which Landow refers occurred in 1858. It was in that year that Ruskin claimed to be unconverted before Paolo Veronese’s The Presentation of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (c.1580). After seeing the painting in Turin, he then attended a church service which he left in disgust. As he explained to his father: I went to the Protestant church last Sunday … Protestantism clumsily triumphant … and building [for] itself vulgar churches with nobody to put into them, is a very disagreeable form of piety. (xxxvi.287-288)

20  George P.  Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 243. 21  Michael Rectenwald, Nineteenth Century British Secularism, Science, Religion, and Literature, Histories of the Sacred and Secular 1700–2000 (New York: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2016), p. 17.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

13

Ruskin had been so ‘overwhelmed’ by Veronese’s painting and his ‘God-given power’ that when he left the service, he ‘came out of the chapel, in sum of twenty years of thought, a conclusively un-converted man’ (xxix.89). He later called it ‘the Queen of Sheba crash’ (xxxv.497). Ruskin’s religious doubts had been growing before Rose’s death. He had already criticised the clergy in his Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds (1851) and in Unto This Last (1860). These texts go some way to dealing with the declining moral integrity of the Church of England, and the issues of clergy and society’s structures, as Ruskin saw them. But it was the contrast between his two aesthetic experiences, more than his theological wranglings, which caused Ruskin’s faith to ‘crash’. Perhaps for reasons of politeness, Ruskin made no mention of his unconversion in the letter to his father, but he did return to the experience in his autobiography and elsewhere. Over time it came to represent a moment of clarity.22 The moment highlighted the potential power of religious (Catholic) painting versus the dreary Protestant tradition and its correspondingly drab aesthetic. It was that aesthetic gap—between spiritual transformation and moral decline—which brought Ruskin’s Evangelicalism to its knees. It was, as Andrew Tate describes, a ‘profound spiritual transformation’.23 The Veronese image spoke to Ruskin’s desire to find truth, as divinely given, within the world. The profundity came from the unconversion being a decidedly unexpected encounter between conflicting and contradictory versions of Ruskin’s past and present self. The present sought to reject religion, but his past self did not. It is important to highlight, however, that the unconversion did not result in a rejection of the Bible, or of Christian truths, or of the inherent value of Christian faith for the arts. Instead, it resulted in a shift of focus and understanding about the expression of spiritual revelation. Significantly, even though he felt himself unconverted, Ruskin’s own faith was not irretrievably lost. David Downes has suggested Ruskin’s belief was more durably Christian than even his autobiography Praeterita (1885) would

22  The ‘unconversion’ is mentioned variously in other writings and in different ways, for example, Praeterita (1885) and Fors Clavigera (1871). 23  Andrew Tate, ‘“Sweeter Also Than Honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 39:1/2, Literature and Religion (2009), pp. 114–125. See also Andrew Tate, ‘“Archangel” Veronese: Ruskin as Protestant Spectator’, in Robert Hewison, ed., Ruskin’s Artists (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2000), pp. 131–145.

14 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

allow for.24 We, too, argue that it was less fragile than it seems: the entire output of Ruskin’s writing and his whole mode of working was a form of devotion. We suggest that Ruskin’s loss of faith, in that 1858 moment, was in itself a renewal rather than a denial. Revealingly, what is important, is that his spiritual consolation came from engagement with a painting. So, although Veronese’s own contemporaries had accused him of being irreligious and Ruskin himself acknowledged the painting’s gross sensuality (which Veronese’s detractors called unchristian), it was the ‘god-given’ power of the visual which shook Ruskin theologically. Veronese’s painting always makes me feel as if an archangel had come down into the room, and were working before my eyes. I don’t mean in the piety of the painting, but in its power… Veronese is superhuman. (xxxvi.176) (emphasis original)

It is also interesting to note that Hunt later followed suit in this aesthetic taste: Veronese was ‘to us [Pre-Raphaelites] an endless delight’.25 Stephen Cheeke argues that Ruskin’s ‘un-conversion from evangelicalism turns around the question of how much of the beauty and the wonder and the power of the world should be received rightly and reverently’.26 Contemplating beauty in material forms, Ruskin sought to demonstrate that Christian symbolism and Veronese’s sensuous and joyful imagery could co-exist in the same plane, particularly when the philosophical matter of beauty was in play. This incident in Ruskin’s life is an important illustration in that it demonstrates whenever he was looking, he was also theologising: for Ruskin, art and religion were in many ways indivisible, even if they were not always happy bedfellows. Regardless of Ruskin’s personal religious harmony, he knew that ‘things done delightfully and rightly were always done by the help and in the Spirit of God’ (xxxv.496). Even when Ruskin’s faith was distilled to an intellectual rather than a devotional mode of thinking and seeing, Christianity always informed his 24  David Anthony Downes, Ruskin’s Landscape of Beatitude (California: California State University, 1980). Others, such as Michael Wheeler, suggest that doubt itself, as displayed by the likes of Ruskin, is an unveiling of the ‘agnostic liberalism of the twentieth-century mind’ rather than part of a decidedly antagonistic march towards modern secularism. Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (2006), p.xiv. 25  Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism (1905), Vol. I, p. 191. 26  Stephen Cheeke, Transfiguration: The Religion of Art in Nineteenth-Century Literature Before Aestheticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 119.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

15

view of the world: such was the impress of his religious upbringing and his cultural saturation in the Bible and its stories. The Bible and its Psalms enrich Ruskin’s most insightful and illuminating passages, whether they are about art, landscape, or architecture. Even his intense concentration on a fallen leaf can, and will be shown here in this volume, to be doctrinally rich. Ruskin’s entire output was rooted in Christian thinking and Scripture: and if we are to understand it, we, too, need to engage with Scripture and theology. In turn, this will then enrich our understanding of works by the Pre-Raphaelites and the conversations they participated in.

The Pre-Raphaelites’ Religious Context In 1847, Hunt was loaned a book by a friend who had recently converted to Roman Catholicism, with the vain hope Hunt would follow suit. On reading the book, Hunt excitedly told Millais how he ‘had great delight in skimming over a certain book, Modern Painters, by a writer calling himself an Oxford Graduate; it was lent to me only for a few hours, but, by Jove! passages in it made my heart thrill’.27 The writing that Hunt was first excited by includes the subject of Jacopo Tintoretto’s The Annunciation (1583–1587) (v.264), a painting based on one of the most fundamental and transformative moments in the New Testament. Tintoretto’s crumbling architectural scene with its cherubic celestial army was to be transformative in a tripartite sense: Mary is transformed in the story; Ruskin was transformed by Tintoretto’s painting of Mary when he first saw it in 1845; and Hunt (and the Pre-Raphaelites) would, in turn, be transformed by Ruskin’s writing.28 He declared Ruskin ‘feels the power and responsibility of art more than any author I have ever read’.29 Many years later, in 1880, Hunt wrote to Ruskin to explain his initial response to the volume in which he says he found ‘the voice of God’, before rather arrogantly proclaiming: ‘All that the Preraphaelite [sic] brotherhood had

 Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism (1905), Vol. 1, p. 90.  On first seeing the painting, Ruskin wrote: ‘I never was so utterly crushed to the earth before any human intellect as I was to-day—before Tintoret. [sic] … and then heaven and earth come together’ (v.38). Later, when Ruskin and Hunt serendipitously bumped into each other in Venice in 1869, they decided to visit Scuola Grande di San Rocco to study the painting together. Ibid., p. 73 and p. 90. 29  Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism (1905), Vol. I, p. 90. 27 28

16 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

of Ruskinism came from this reading of mine’.30 As self-important as this claim is, it does ‘convey precisely the kind of [excited] response Ruskin had hoped to awaken in every young artist’.31 Ruskin had famously exhorted young English artists, which he also impressed upon the Pre-Raphaelites, to ‘go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instructions; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth’ (iii.624). This quote is often taken out of context, and it is worth remarking here that Ruskin concludes the paragraph with the following Christian sentiment: ‘we will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher Authority and Master’ (iii.624). Whilst we do not suggest these artists always surrendered to a ‘higher Authority’, it is clear they gave a whole-hearted attention to matters of spirit and truth in their attention to Christian subjects. And it was Ruskin’s preacherly, yet painterly style of writing that appealed to the Pre-Raphaelites and caught their imagination. One year on from this first Pre-Raphaelite encounter with Ruskin’s writing, the Brotherhood was formed. Their ambition was to replicate ‘the honesty and simplicity [of] primitive Christian artists’.32 It is true that ‘Pre-Raphaelitism is often portrayed as a reforming force purifying art by rejecting decadent traditions, just as Protestantism had ousted the corrupt faith of the Catholic Church from England during the Reformation’.33 Their choice of name was precise and tells of their interests in artistic traditions pre-Raphael. It does not, however, reveal much of their respective faiths, which were varied, not least because the religious landscape of the nineteenth century was itself dynamically changing: doctrinally, architecturally, theologically, and aesthetically speaking. 30  George P. Landow ed., ‘“Your Good Influence on Me”: The Correspondence of John Ruskin and William Holman Hunt’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 59 (1976–1977), pp. 95–126, p. 377. 31  George P.  Landow, Replete with Meaning: William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979) and The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 265–292, and https://victorianweb.org/painting/whh/replete/ruskin.html, accessed June 2022. 32  Christopher Wood, The Pre-Raphaelites (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), p. 10. 33  Tim Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (USA: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 127.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

17

Hunt’s relationship with faith and the religious establishment is more akin to Ruskin’s than any of the others in the founding group. As an infant, Hunt was baptised into the Anglican faith, but he could be considered both agnostic and atheist at different periods in his early life. However, in the early 1850s Hunt’s belief became manifest and he turned to Christianity, converting in 1853. He showed what may be seen as increasingly devout expressions of Christian faith through his choice of painting subjects from that point on. Whilst painting his now famous The Light of the World (1851–1854) (of which there are three versions), Hunt said: ‘I painted the picture with what I thought, unworthy though I was, to be divine command, and not simply a good subject illustrating’.34 It was Scripture (Revelation 3:20) and his faith which inspired him directly. During the early years of his career, much of his work, and Rossetti’s and Millais’ too, are full of biblical symbolism and reveal a growing sensitivity to liturgical and theological nuances of spiritual expression. As the decade progressed, Hunt’s faith began to intensify, partly in response to his trips to the Holy Land where it began to take on a different hue. On his second visit to the Holy Land, in 1854, Hunt’s faith proved resolute. He began to pursue a sincere, moral, and literal relationship with Christianity and the text of the Bible: the Holy Land provided a veracity to both his faith and his religious imagery. He became a close reader of Scripture, like Ruskin, and from this point onwards, his artwork became increasingly indebted to the Bible: for example, with The Scapegoat (1854–c.1856).35 As Carol Jacobi argues: ‘Hunt makes it clear that he considers the Bible to be an authentic historical text, a viable piece of evidence’.36 Hunt’s belief can be contrasted with Ruskin’s doubts about the literal truth of the Bible: a contrast which is indicative of much of the religious debate of the day. In preference to sacramental doctrines or formal attendance at church, Hunt adopted a keen and personal relationship with Christ based upon his familiarity with Scripture and his  Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism (1905), Vol. 1, p. 350.  The Scapegoat is demonstrative of Hunt’s missionary zeal; his choice of subject drew directly on Leviticus 16:22 and was designed to encourage people to convert to Christianity. He made two different versions: the preliminary work included a rainbow—a covenantal symbol—whereas in the second version the rainbow is absent. Both Ruskin and Collins defended the work, which was extremely unusual in style and subject, sympathising with its visual power and evangelical ambition. 36  Carole Jacobi, William Holman Hunt, Painter, Painting, Painter (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 44. 34 35

18 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

strict sense of morality. In contrast to Rossetti, he was, in the end, more of a Protestant whose moral overtones also suggested a particularly British sensibility. Rossetti’s background more obviously explains the religious references we see in his poetry and painting. His Italian father was a lapsed Catholic and his Anglo-Italian mother was an Anglican. Rossetti himself was ostensibly Anglican; although in 1895, his brother William Michael wrote: ‘He was never confirmed, professed no religious faith, and practiced no regular religious observances; but he had … sufficient sympathy with the abstract ideas and the venerable forms of Christianity to go occasionally to an Anglican church—very occasionally, and only as the inclination ruled him’.37 While this is arguably a presentation of the facts, it is a tempered portrayal of Rossetti’s religious inclinations and fascination with matters spiritual and does not account for the profound impact the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century had upon Rossetti’s work and writing.38 William Sharp, one of Rossetti’s earliest biographers, is right in his observation that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ‘followed directly in the footsteps of Newman and Pusey and Keble’.39 There is ample evidence to support Sharp’s reading in the chosen reading material of the Pre-Raphaelites, as is also the case with Burne-Jones. The Oxford Movement made a deep impression on the young artists’ oeuvre. From 1853, when still a teenager, Rossetti attended Christ Church, Albany Street, London. Christ Church was one of the first Anglo-Catholic centres outside of Oxford, Tractarianism having spread from Oxford to London during the 1830s. Its services reflected the Reverend William Dodsworth’s Tractarian sensibility: Dodsworth was responsible for the Catholic practice of placing flowers and candles by the altar and the use of  William Michael Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family Letters, with a Memoir, Two Vols. (London: Ellis and Elvey, 1895), Vol. 1, p. 114. 38  William Michael Rossetti was inclined to downplay the religious sensibilities of the Pre-­ Raphaelites in writing that sought to distance them from Ruskinian intention or Church partisanship. For example, in his article The Externals of Sacred Art (1857), he opens with a Ruskin question: ‘How far Fine Art has, in all or any of the ages of the world, been conducive to the religious life?’ but makes it plain that ‘we do not profess to speak of the religious but simply of the “artistic feelings and sympathies” engaged in this question’ (W. M. Rossetti, Fine Art Chiefly Contemporary (London: Macmillan and Co., 1867), p. 41). Elsewhere he attempts to reposition the Brotherhood during the wake of the so-called Papal Aggression of 1850, seeking to dispel the rumour that the Pre-Raphaelites were sympathetic to the Oxford Movement (ibid., p. 152). 39  William Sharp, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study (London: Macmillan and Co., 1882), p. 41. 37

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

19

a surpliced choir for the singing of the responses. Dodsworth was also renowned for his apocalyptic sermons; Newman proclaimed him one of the ‘chief preachers’ of the Oxford Movement.40 Rossetti no doubt responded to what The Edinburgh Review, in 1874, described as Christ Church’s: …flavour of combined learning and piety, and of literary and artistic refinement, in the representatives of Tractarianism which enlisted floating sympathies…it was the old wine of Evangelicalism settling itself into new High Church bottles; in others literary affinities fastening on congenial forms of historic and aesthetic sentiment.41

The Rossetti family home, in Charlotte Street, was situated in precisely the area of London where the influence of the Tractarians first arrived and was most evident: so it is unsurprising that the family’s interest was piqued. In ‘literary affinity’ Rossetti had already cultivated a particular attention to Songs of the Art Catholic, as an early collection of his poems was titled in 1847: he was attuned to more creative and sensuous expressions of Marian theology and the Psalms which would later develop through his paintings, such as Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1849–1850).42 Rossetti was also surrounded by architectural innovation: in addition to attending Christ Church, he also attended St. Andrew’s Church on Wells Street, which was described as a ‘unique casket of architectural jewels and decorative treasures’.43 St. Andrew’s construction was completed in 1847, and another church appeared around the corner in the 1850s: All Saints Church, Margaret Street. They were both High Church in their services and highly decorative in their architecture and decoration: Augustus Pugin (1812–1852), William Butterfield (1814–1900), G.  E. Street (1824–1881), and G. F. Bodley (1827–1907), Clayton and Bell, and other familiar names of 40  John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, first published 1864 (Glasgow: Fontana, 1965), p. 170. 41  Anon, The Edinburgh Review (January, 1874), pp. 63. 42  Rossetti sent this collection of poems including early versions of ‘Ave’ (‘Mater Pulchrae Delectionis’) and ‘The Blessed Damozel’ to William Bell Scott. Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1849–1850) is a visual example of his developing Marianism, highlighting his Art Catholic sensibility. Tellingly, Ecce Ancilla Domini! has the stillness of the Bellini altarpiece: a most holy conversation, but this time between the Archangel Gabriel and the young Virgin Mary prior to the birth of Jesus. 43  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/chapter28_wells_ street.pdf, accessed June 2022.

20 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

the day all contributed to the construction and features of these church buildings.44 All of these highly visual and sensual experiences no doubt contributed to the shaping of Rossetti’s religious imagination and to his aesthetic impulses. When he indignantly asked, ‘Do not my works testify to my Christianity?’45 we understand that his Christianity was never meant to be dogmatic and rarely concerned itself with either theology or formal liturgy. Instead, a visual tradition took precedence over doctrinal and institutional affiliation to religion. As Landow has noted: ‘Evangelicals sought the pleasures of the ear and High Anglicans those of the eye’.46 Rossetti’s exposure to Tractarian sacramentalism in these churches attuned his eye to the power of the symbol, ritual, decoration, and iconography which he, in turn, shared with the other Pre-Raphaelites (just as Hunt shared Modern Painters). Tractarianism also introduced a revival of analogical and typological modes of thinking which all the Pre-Raphaelites explored in their paintings. The group were certainly intellectually dynamic and engaged with the fast changing religiously world around them. Of all the Pre-Raphaelite Brothers, Millais was the least formal in his Christian observance. He was more of what we could call a cultural Christian, although he, too, explored Tractarianism during the late 1840s and early 1850s. In 1847, Millais met an important Tractarian in Oxford: Thomas Combe (1797–1872). Millais’ son recalled how Combe was ‘among the first to recognise and encourage the efforts of the Pre-­ Raphaelite School, took him [Millais] under their wing, treating him with almost parental consideration’.47 During these early years, Millais often wrote to Combe about the church services he regularly attended, including some at St Andrew’s when in London: Every Sunday since I left Oxford Collins and I have spent together, attending Wells Street Church. I think you will admit (when in town) that the 44  Clayton and Bell was a British stained glass workshop run by partners John Richard Clayton (1827–1913) and Alfred Bell (1832–1895). The company was founded in 1855 and continued until 1993. 45  Thomas Hall Caine, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Eliot Stock, 1882), pp. 39–40. 46  George P. Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 19. 47  John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy Two Vols. (London: Methuen and Co., 1899), Vol. 1, p. 88.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

21

service there is better performed than any other you have ever attended. We met there yesterday morning a University man of our acquaintance who admitted its superiority over Oxford or Cambridge.48

Millais’ letters also show him attending other churches, such as the Foundling Church and the Church of Scotland, as well as being familiar with village churches in Croydon and Bromley.49 In the main, Millais’ church attendance seems, in contrast to that of Ruskin and Hunt, not to be a search for spiritual solace, but about social mores. He does, however, refuse to dine with Cardinal Wiseman who he seems to have had a dislike for. Millais describes him as a ‘Jesuit’ and other more unflattering terms, further saying: I expect he looks upon me as a promising convert. He smiles at the notion of my attending Wells Street Church, and, no doubt, pictures in his imagination my sitting on a three-legged stool, painting a Holy Family for the only church.50

It was, of course, an image of the Holy Family which thrust the Pre-­ Raphaelites into the limelight after Millais exhibited his first religious subject Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–1850) at the Royal Academy, London.51 Millais was unprepared for the resulting furore caused by his representation of this sacred subject, having underestimated the contentious nature of religious imagery and the related theological and political sensitivities at that time. The response by the press was vociferous, and the painting seemed to take the lid off wider arguments about religious iconography, morality, and visual theology when it was 48  Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais (1899), Vol. 1, p.  90. Charles Alston Collins (1828–1873) and Millais were friends from the earliest of days of the Pre-­ Raphaelites and, as we have seen, attended church together. It was Millais who recommended Collins be allowed to join the Brotherhood, although William Michael objected. He was abstemious, sensitive, and devout, favouring ‘the Puseyite form of faith’ (Rupert Maas, ‘Charles Allston Collins 1828–1873’ (2014), http://www.maasgallery.co.uk/images/ PDFs/Collins_small_file_for_email_1.pdf, accessed June 2022). He became increasingly ascetic and is best known for his work Convent Thoughts (1850–1851), which is given due attention in Milbank’s chapter in this volume. 49  Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais (1899), Vol. 1, p.  90, p.  92, p. 109, and p. 112. 50  Ibid., p. 106. 51  Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of Pre-Raphaelites (London: Tate Publishing, 2000), pp.xx.

22 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

given damning reviews by The Times, Blackwood’s Magazine, and Household Words.52 Dickens’ review was merciless and is now infamous.53 The Times review was equally unpleasant describing the painting as ‘revolting’ and objecting to the way in which the artist had dared to depict the Holy Family as ordinary, lowly people in a humble carpenter’s shop ‘with no conceivable omission of misery, of dirt, of even disease, all finished with the same loathsome minuteness’.54 From the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelites’ career, their innovative expressions of biblical subjects were received as polemical and held to be intentionally so. And, of course, the average Victorian would be well acquainted with biblical stories—of both Old and New Testaments— regardless of their individual faith or church attendance. Scripture was, in some senses, common currency, on occasion a touch-paper for matters of doctrine, and certainly a topic ripe for public discussion in the visual arts. As such, the Pre-Raphaelites used the subjects within Scripture as a way of expressing and overturning the tired artistic conventions which they felt existed within the cultural sphere of institutions like the Royal Academy, and they did so more often than not in pursuit of the visual purity they observed in early Renaissance imagery. Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents, whose given title included a biblical reference to Zechariah, is an example of an imagined biblical scene (not recounted in the Gospels) to which a typically naturalistic attention is given to the details—rather more than to symbolic or narrative representation. Unsurprisingly though, Millais was bruised by the experience, and his appetite for biblical imagery was dimmed, or rather reimagined thereafter. He was, after all, serious about his art and his reputation—more than about his religion. Later works by Millais attend to more general religious themes, arguably richer in their achievements, for example, Autumn Leaves (1856), The Vale of Rest (1858–1859), and The Brunswickers (1860). In Ruskin, Millais found someone in whom his wider Christian 52  For examples of the different press reviews, see Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais (1899), Vol. 1, pp. 74–78. 53  Aside from deploring the characterisation of the Holy Family, Dickens also mocked the Pre-Raphaelites’ choice of name, which had been overlooked by critics the previous year. He guffawed at the ‘Pre-Harvey Brotherhood’, or the ‘Pre-Gower and Pre-Chaucer Brotherhood’ (P.G.A.P.C.B.), failing to notice how they challenged the conventions of the Royal Academicians who signed themselves R.A. See Charles Dickens, ‘Old Lamps for New Ones’ Household Words 1 (15 June 1850), pp. 265–267. 54  Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais (1899), Vol. 1, p. 75.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

23

aesthetic was encouraged, as remarked upon in Millais’ letters: during their trip to Scotland, they discussed modern church architecture, cathedral designs, church windows and foundations, and angelic designs.55 It is clear from his recorded conversations and his sketches that religious architecture, in particular, inspired him: ‘“Oh,” said Millais, “I want to paint the church.”’56 Not being an avid Bible reader as either Ruskin or Hunt were, Millais’ focus was given to the ‘how’ of visual expression rather than on the content of the doctrine or Scripture which may have inspired it. Despite Millais’ son proclaiming his father’s faith was ‘no mere profession, but a living force’, Millais’ own comments belie a more earthly pragmatism: ‘And so it is; creatures are buried and creatures are born’.57

The Wider Pre-Raphaelite Religious Context Our outline of religious contexts for the founding members of the Pre-­ Raphaelite Brotherhood—Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais—is necessarily brief, touching only on aspects of their biographies that help situate the work of our contributors more fully. Yet, between the three Brothers, we can observe the concentration of various visual ideas about theology—at times, more or less personal, more or less Ruskinian. Together though, they developed a complex visual register which, with its bright, fresh colours, was in stark contrast to the stale muddy ones that lined the walls of the R.A. The Pre-Raphaelite vision was luminescent: it was shaped by their collegial friendships and their individual upbringings, as well as being informed by ecclesial/Scriptural traditions and wider religious discourse. The Brotherhood’s fresh painting style and their unique application of religious typology was an aesthetic rebellion against the establishment. The fraternity’s avant-garde style soon spread to other young artists: this resulted in an informal extension of the original group into what, for ease, is often now referred to as Pre-Raphaelitism. The wider group collectively invigorated the religious imagination into ever new visual articulations. This has ever been the path of religious expression: philosophical and theological ideas are one thing, but sacre conversazioni, as we present them, are enmeshed in the circumstances and specificities of those  Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais (1899), Vol. 1, p. 204.  Ibid., p. 120. 57  John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy (London: Methuen and Co., 1900), Vol. 2, p. 312, p. 57. 55 56

24 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

engaging in the conversation. Certainly, the motives, social and commercial expectations, biblical literacy, and church backgrounds of those within this book show that the complexities of these conversations, visual or otherwise, extend beyond the founding members. Although we include first Edward Burne-­Jones, and then Mary Watts, Henrietta Barnett, and Evelyn De Morgan, this, too, is also a necessarily limited selection and, in fact, our contributors include a number of works by others alongside their primary subjects (including works by Ford Madox Brown, Henry Wallis, Simeon Solomon, Charles Alston Collins, Edward Armitage, and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope). Through the decorative and commercial arts of the second wave Pre-­ Raphaelites (both with Burne-Jones’ work and the Dalziels’ book illustrations) and the Brotherhood’s female successors, we find conversations no less important and no less sacred in tone. The extensions of a visual theology discourse seen at the edges of, or even outside, the fine art academy offer important new perspectives on the widening sacre conversazioni. Burne-Jones was born into an Evangelical family and what was a rather impoverished single-parent household. The loss of his mother when he was a tiny baby meant his childhood home was plagued by the realities of hardship and the home atmosphere was rather circumscribed. His father, who he loved dearly, discouraged him from reading novels, but when given the opportunity to, Burne-Jones devoured books and drew constantly. As an only child, his world was a quiet, interior one. His later life saw him eschew the narrowness and self-righteousness of his father’s evangelical mindset, although he also brought to his prodigious work ethic an application of the Protestant emphasis on diligence and self-discipline. He was a warm and affectionate adult, particularly for those he loved, like his wife, Georgiana Burne-Jones (1840–1920), and his life-long friend and business partner William Morris (1834–1896). Although prone to melancholy, the distraction Burne-Jones’ children and grandchildren provided proved a great comfort from the self-imposed rigour of his work days. Children were often the recipients of his humorous cartoon doodles, and Morris was a frequent target. Fearing poverty and its corresponding drabness—a scar from his childhood poverty—art, and humour, became his defence. He always battled with the sermonising legacy of his early Evangelical years, and there are records of his musing upon the dangers of sin and temptation (a vice he would fall foul of with an extra-marital affair).

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

25

Georgiana, who acted as Burne-Jones’ biographer, recorded how he hated the ‘barren ugliness of the Evangelical Churches’ and their pompous preachers.58 He often displayed a cynicism for the church as an institution, and even when young, he lamented the plainness of the liturgy and church decoration. This changed when, in 1849, Burne-Jones had the opportunity to visit Hereford Cathedral: there his vision was transformed.59 The centuries old stonework of the cloisters and its ancient precincts stirred his senses. It was also there that he was introduced to Newman’s writing. ‘In an age of sofas and cushions he [Newman] taught me to be indifferent to comfort, and in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen’.60 But the unseen was, in the end, overturned by Burne-Jones for the seen: he wanted to make his imagination visible. He was fascinated by Christianity but in a manner more mystical than dogmatic, and he wanted to share it with the world, even whilst he preferred avoiding the world. When a student at Oxford University studying theology, where he met Morris, it was the visual sense of Tractarianism that he particularly responded to. Both men attended St. Thomas’ Church, where the ritual of Anglo-Catholic devotion aroused his senses and aesthetic taste. He seemed easily distracted by his youthful whims: from becoming a Christian Socialist to his wild plans to establish a brotherhood, become a monk, or join the army or the priesthood. But with the encouragement of both Morris and Rossetti, he redirected his religious imagination and energies into the arts. His education, and the access to books and manuscripts that Morris purchased, exposed him to the European Christian traditions and heritage that drove his love of the medieval. He claimed he ‘couldn’t do without Medieval Christianity. The central idea of it and all it has gathered to itself made the Europe that I exist in. The enthusiasm and devotion, the learning and the art, the humanity and Romance, the self denial and splendid achievement … all belong to it’.61 It was the institution which he resisted, not the spirit: ‘Belong to the Church of England? Put your head in a bag!’ he once exclaimed.62 Later, in a revealing insight about his devotional position, he proclaimed, ‘I never doubt for a moment the real 58  Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Two Vols. (London: Macmillan, 1904), Vol. I, p. 38. 59  Ibid., p. 39. 60  Ibid., p. 59. 61  Mary Lago, ed., Burne-Jones Talking; His Conversations 1895–1898 Preserved by His Studio Assistant Thomas Rooke (John Murray: London, 1982), p. 27. 62  Ibid.

26 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

presence of God, I should never debate about it any more than I should argue about beauty’.63 He suggested to Ruskin that ‘we ought to belong to a church that writes its gospels on gold and purple vellum, every kind of purple that Tyre could devise, from indigo purple to rose purple—let’s go, on condition that the Pope makes a great fuss of us and sings himself, in his finest cope’.64 The colour and ritual of Catholicism, in particular, appealed to him, and he was keenly in tune with its devotional practices and iconographic symbolism. It is in this sense that his motivation for painting and design, as aesthetically driven as it was, drew on the more romantic elements of Christian visual tradition. As one of the founding partners of the decorative firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., he perfected his stained glass designs which can be found throughout churches across Britain, Europe, and even in the USA.  It is particularly in this medium where we see him exploring theology, moving ever further away from the rigid tenets of his upbringing towards more mystical and mythical imaginings. He remained, however, deeply indebted to canonical theology, and in many of his designs we see him give new visual form to biblical narratives, including works about creation and light, among other things. Importantly, when appraising Burne-Jones’ theological context, we must also remember the extent of his role as a decorative artist: many of his commercial designs, for example, were for churches.65 This was also the case for many producers in the arts at the time, from stone-masons to needle-workers producing work for churches, to publishers working in the production of Bibles and their illustrations. As we have seen with the founding Pre-Raphaelites, ideas about the religious visual imagination certainly develop as part and parcel of the accepted Western tradition of fine art—in the gallery and the academy, Christian and biblical subjects in painting were part of the elevated history genre. But amongst others such

63  Georgiana Burne-Jones, The Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones Vol. 2 (London: Chiswick Press, 1904), p. 325. 64  Lago, Burne-Jones Talking (1982), p. 27. 65  Morris & Co. was reorganised under Morris’ sole direction in 1875. From then onwards, Burne-Jones became the firm’s main figure designer and their commissions—the majority of which were for stained glass—proved to be Burne-Jones’ most regular source of income. Together, the two friends ensured the firm responded to the market for church decoration and developed their distinctive compositions which can still be found throughout churches in the UK, Europe, and the USA.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

27

as Burne-Jones and the Dalziel Brothers, significant contributions to visual culture and religious imagery are found in churches and on the printed page. We include the Dalziel Brothers’ work in this book precisely because it shines a much-needed light on a sacred conversation that takes place according to developing public and commercial enterprise, as much as to aesthetic tradition. Like Burne-Jones, the Dalziel Brothers had religious intentions that were mixed with business intentions (their wood-­engraving business), and like Burne-Jones, they hoped for a refreshing of biblical theme through the production and placement of contemporary and accessible depictions. Their publication considered in this book, Dalziels’ Bible Gallery: Illustrations from the Old Testament (1881), sought to bring all the elevated spiritual and innovative artistic qualities of Pre-Raphaelite painting to a broader public. Visual art held in the hand in this way (or in front of congregations, as with Burne-Jones’ church commissions) elicited a particular kind of agency from the viewing public, one which Ruskin would have no hesitation in calling its true moral and religious purpose. Indeed, in the Bible Gallery woodcuts it is the attention given to Old Testament narratives—in contrast to the predominance of New Testament imagery in Pre-Raphaelite painting—that a moral gravitas is emphasised for humanity through their somewhat immediate, black-and-white form. In a similar vein, the three women who feature in this volume traverse a more active and engaged religious context. Also a business orientation (in the case of Barnett), the extension of Christian visual traditions through community or craft initiatives (as with Watts and De Morgan) invigorates many of the ideas that the earlier Pre-Raphaelites had set in motion. What can be observed of their enterprising and purposive explorations of faith is that their various visual expressions of the same assume an active and animating relationship with others. In some ways this should not surprise us—religious discourse in whatever form tends to be generative, if not questioning. But it is nevertheless our opinion that this most dynamic thread of Ruskin’s theology perhaps receives its most generous and pioneering response through the work of these women. Watts, née Fraser-Tytler, was born in India in 1849, but spent much of her youth in Scotland, where she was raised by her grandparents. After settling in England in the 1860s, she studied at the South Kensington School of Art before undertaking a period of study in Dresden, Germany. In 1872, she enrolled at the Slade School of Art, London, to study sculpture: a decision which changed her life. It was there she met the photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) who was an important link

28 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

to many high society Victorian figures, including the Pre-Raphaelites. More importantly, it was here Watts met the man she was to marry: George Frederic Watts (1817–1904). The couple wed in 1886. They had an extremely close relationship and nurtured each other’s artistic imaginations. The couple were keen readers, and Ruskin was an important focus of their musings: she and her husband used to sit and read Ruskin together; they called him one of the ‘great preachers’, and they championed his ‘great gospel’ and his ‘beautifully holy mind’.66 Together they built a house in Surrey, which they named Limnerslease, in 1891.67 The house is testament to their private life together, and to the fostering of Ruskin’s ideas, but also to Watts’ artistic outlook upon the world. It was here that the context of the home became one of personal and devoted attention to visual theology, expressed through painting, gesso relief, and modelled clay. George introduced Watts to many of the cultural figures of the day, and they were well-respected by the cultural elite. Nonetheless, it was Watts’ own intellectual curiosity which saw her explore a visual theology that included religions other than Christianity. Her exposure to different faiths and cultures in her youth helped her develop an interest in complex visual patterns and mythological histories. She drew upon ancient myths, as well as Christian metaphors, producing a rich symbolism in her own practice. It was a conversation with world religions, rather than the Protestant faith per se, which fired her imagination although she regularly attended church services and was devout. The results of her syncretic symbolism can be seen in the ceiling of Limnerslease and in what is undoubtedly her masterpiece: the Watts Chapel, near her home. The chapel is a unique and visionary triumph, full of Christian (Romanesque), Celtic, and otherworldly imaginings. Watts’ talent and vision was tempered with a social conscience, such that she founded the Compton Potters’ Arts Guild in 1900, with a view to helping those in her locale learn to make tiles and crafts. The Guild was, and still is, a distinctly Ruskinian venture, mirroring Ruskin’s own ambitions in Brantwood. In this venture of hers, we can detect a Christian Socialist bent, centred around Watts’ belief of the democratisation of art: art for all. She was also appointed to the Committee of the Homes Arts 66  Mary Watts, from Diaries of Mary Seton Watts held at Compton: Watts Gallery Archives [COMWG2008.4, MSW/1-10]: 23 August, 15 April 1893; 23 March 1891. 67  ‘Limner’ is Latin for ‘artist’ and ‘leasen’ is an Old English word meaning ‘to glean’.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

29

and Industries Association—an organisation founded on Ruskinian principles to further teaching of craft skills for the greater good. She undoubtedly had greater opportunities for women in mind as part of this and in the political sphere became an important figure in Surrey’s Suffrage movement, acting as President of the Godalming society. Most importantly, in terms of the context here for her visual theology, Watts was a talented symbolist craftswoman whose achievements are increasingly being given their due recognition. And at the heart of her creative approach was her devout adherence to the Christian faith, where expression through both symbol and society held equal merit. The idea of art for all also mirrors Barnett’s and De Morgan’s approaches to visual culture. Both women also had a Christian Socialist ethos and sought to make meaningful social changes to their environments for the greater good. Barnett was wealthy, putting this to good use by becoming a reformer and an activist. It was as a co-worker of Octavia Hill (1838–1919) that she met Samuel Augustus Barnett (1844–1913). He was a Church of England cleric who had studied at Oxford in the 1860s; he was a curate in London, before being ordained as a priest in 1868 and the couple married in 1873. They were well matched in terms of Christian values and social ambitions and jointly set out their Christian Socialist beliefs in Practicable Socialism (1889) and Toward Social Reform (1909). Barnett’s sincerity was matched by her husband’s, and resulted in the couple moving to Whitechapel—one of London’s worst slums. It was there Barnett used her means, along with her compassion and faith, to improve the social conditions of that area of London. The method by which she sought to improve a lot of those less fortunate than herself was via fine art: in 1881 she established Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions, there in the slums. Her aim was to improve the mindset of the precariat, and thereby, as Ruskin did with George Allen, their lot in life. She was, of course, well aware of Ruskin and had read much of his work. Extending Ruskin’s thinking into an impressive and practical activism, Barnett’s hope was central to her innovative curatorial practice, and the achievements of her arts-­based social initiatives are remarkable for their time. De Morgan, a similarly wealthy woman, was born to upper-middle-­ class parents, in London in 1855. She was raised and educated in a comfortable home, benefitting from a well-rounded education. Theology was an essential part of De Morgan’s early instruction. She grappled with comprehending the complexity of religious ideas from a young age, and much of her youthful poetry has a Christian tone to it. She regularly

30 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

attended church with her father throughout her adolescence and well into her early adulthood. It was, however, not conventional Christianity which De Morgan explored so much as Spiritualism. She had been introduced to its philosophies of the spirit world through her mother-in-law, Sophia De Morgan (1809–1892), not long after the movement became widespread in the UK. De Morgan and her husband, William (1839–1917), partook in automatic writing, recording messages they received during these séances. Although Rossetti had attempted to contact his deceased wife, Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), through regular séances, De Morgan’s exploits were motivated by intellectual curiosity rather than personal grief. The couple even produced a publication from these explorations: The Result of an Experiment (1909). De Morgan herself was fascinated by the idea of what was unknown: liminality and the idea of the numinous appealed to her and appear in her paintings through a strange, mythological style that lies somewhere between the clear distillations of Bellini and the metaphysical visions of Burne-Jones. Much of De Morgan’s work manifests itself in a moral and social context which has echoes of some of the early Pre-Raphaelite work. For example, in The Crown of Glory (1896), De Morgan relies on traditional Christian imagery, but does so to present a moral dilemma of materialism versus charity. Just as Ruskin was keen that his writing would improve the life of those who read it, so, too, was De Morgan keen for her work to improve the moral choices of those who had the capacity to aid the general population. It is telling that she read Ruskin’s The Crown of Wild Olive (1866) while developing her ideas for the painting. Her reading material and its corresponding artistic expression are indicative of her own Christian charity and compassion. Arguably, these women’s relationships with Christian traditions were the most socially reinvigorating of those we include in this book, certainly more so than the Pre-Raphaelites, if not Ruskin. Their application of their respective skills is testament to the women’s characters, aesthetic sensibilities, and intellectual capabilities. Further, the visual language of their theology and faith is deserving of our celebration and our greater critical attention. In our book, the chapters on these women are highly innovative and our contributors open exciting new areas of research which we are keen to present.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

31

Resounding Conversations In today’s theological discourse, the still-wider contexts for the visual religious imagination of Ruskin continue to evolve. There are a number of sensitive and engaging studies that extend a faith-centred attention to the field of religion and the arts as influenced by Ruskin and the Pre-­ Raphaelites. These include Simon Marsden’s Emily Brontë and the Religious Imagination (2015); Tim Larsen’s Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (2006); Kathryn Barush’s Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790–1850 (2016); and Jessica Ann Hughes’ Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ (2022).68 Many of these deny the rigidity of the secular modernist viewpoint of the arts, suggesting instead that authentic faith, even when it appears untenable, is authentically rooted in Christian enquiry and creative practice.69 Their writing is faithful, not post-faith, and so conceives of a theological continuity to Ruskin’s ideas and influence that includes their own practices of sympathetic observation and criticism, as well as that of their subjects. In our volume we identify a line of continuity rather differently, through a more specific visual subject, namely the natural world. Ruskin saw the natural world as an ancient architecture that had been divinely and beautifully created. He argued that close attentive looking at our natural surroundings—whether at a passing cloud, a small flower, or one of His creatures—would bring humanity closer to God. We orbit in ‘circles of vitality’ in which all things are ordered towards God (xvi.378). This ordering and arranging towards God was the theophanous foundation of all of Ruskin’s literary and artistic practice. To Ruskin, the natural world was God manifest: a living embodiment of truth. Devotion to it was devotion itself. John Holmes argues similarly about the Pre-Raphaelites: they ‘observed the world like naturalists concerned to meticulously record the botanical, ethological, and ecological in pursuit of truth’.70 68   See also Mark Knight and Emma Mason, ed., Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 69  For example, Larsen counters the suggestion that Christianity in the nineteenth century was intellectually weakened by biblical criticism, and instead flips conventional thinking by highlighting greater doubts about doubt than we have previously been given to understand. The premise of the critical understanding of faith in England at this time is one of sustained intellectual rigour and the assumption that faith has to be an ongoing enquiry. See Tim Larsen’s Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 1–18. 70  Quoted in Mason, Christina Rossetti (2018), p. 9.

32 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Today the echoes of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite’s interest in theophany and natural realism is, we contend, paradigmatic for twentyfirst-­century discourse. The theologian George Pattison is enlivened by Ruskin’s natural theology through its ‘moral character’ and its ‘passions’ (such as ‘patience, courage, wisdom and love’).71 These virtues may not express the kind of doctrinal certainty that other forms of Christianity express, but they do invite a more subjective dimension of looking at the natural world and humanity: Alongside the view of nature which a rigorous scientific approach has to offer is the view of nature as we experience it, as we feel it speaking to us, luring us, mocking us, delighting us, humbling us and revealing to us the deep things of God.72

Another scholar indebted to Ruskin is Alister E. McGrath. He argues the ‘ontology of creation that is an integral part of a Christian natural theology allows us, to use Ruskin’s phrase, to “love a stone for a stone’s sake, and a cloud for a cloud’s”’—thereby revealing the importance of our love for the world we inhabit.73 C.  S. Lewis is perhaps useful here in binding McGrath’s and Ruskin’s positions together: ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else’.74 Through such theological discourse, the spiritual value of the natural world is made richer and the need for a corresponding artistic expression deepened. Conversely, there are increasingly strident voices in contemporary ecocriticism who utilise debates about climate change alongside the language of religion or myth to emphasise their relational aspects. Writing about Ruskin’s The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, Jesse Oak Taylor has asserted the need to include theology within the ongoing ideological and scientific discussions about the planetary health:

 George Pattison, Art, Modernity and Faith (London: SCM Press, 1998), p. 75.  Ibid., p. 76. 73  Alister E.  McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), p. 231; McGrath is quoting from (xxxv.219). 74  Lewis’ Augustinian toned quote is from a paper entitled ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ which was delivered to the Socratic Club at Oxford in 1945. C.  S. Lewis, ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ pp. 150–165. Quoted in Paul Brazier ed., C. S. Lewis Revelation, Conversion, and Apologetics (Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2012), p. 115. 71 72

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

33

The question of climate change must be approached as a question of meaning … Ruskin recognised that modern society had changed the climate, and in so doing had changed its own relation to it.75

Such debates contain an overtly contemporary voice, but additionally, they carry a particularly Pre-Raphaelite and Ruskinian voice too: one which emphasises the need for dynamic and holistic understanding of the natural world and our place within it. Ruskin’s own dynamism towards the natural world as a subject worthy of devotion and attention sees him draw an explicit comparison between the painter and the preacher: ‘Both are commentators on infinity’ and aid in the revelation of God’s creation (iii.157). Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti too had the quality of speaking from a revelatory tradition of Christian commentary, through which relation to the natural world was experienced as something like grace and proclamation. With this eye on verbal tone, it is unsurprising to us that a consideration of poetry should also here inform a contemporary view on nineteenth-century ideas about nature and faith, as with Emma Mason’s Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (2018). Her study is an insightful demonstration of how Tractarianism provided a bridge with which the religious imagination could move between the visible and the invisible world. She also explores how ‘the Brotherhood’s focus on a vibrant and luminous natural world spoke to the ideal of a harmonious cosmos’ where ‘natural detail is one with the sacred’.76 This, Mason suggests, is a ‘reciprocal communion of matter and spirit, nature and grace’: an ecological understanding which is in harmony with Ruskin’s.77 The natural world provided Ruskin solace. He would climb mountains, wander through fields, study feathers, or sail around Coniston Lake where he spent his declining years. At points, he would take himself off to the British Museum, in London, to seek the penguins there. After all, ‘one 75  Jesse Oak Taylor, ‘Storm-Clouds on the Horizon: John Ruskin and the Emergence of Anthropogenic Climate Change’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, Vol. 26 (2018). 76  See also Emma Mason, Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 71. 77  Ibid. Another important study of poetry is Kirstie Blair’s Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), where she examines the bitter wranglings, by different denominations, over acceptable forms of worship, and the influence of the literary arts on ecclesiastical settings.

34 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

can’t be angry when one looks at a Penguin’ (xxxvi.346), for in each beautiful natural form ‘we may be sure there is something of [the] divine’ (iv.46). He acknowledged that humanity could live entirely without observing or finding any pleasure in the natural world, but he understood it is only by virtue of participating in its given beauty that we are able to ‘partake of, Himself’ (iv.46). Looking would, Ruskin thought, prevent ‘the human soul from gazing upon itself’; the human spirit could be saved by feeding it honest ‘food for eternity;—this and this only is in the pure and right sense of the word beautiful’ (ix.364–365). Among other things, Ruskin’s fascination for thunderstorms and wild waterfalls is demonstrative of his tender embrace of Romanticism and the sublime while overall, he tended not to inhabit the grandiose. Instead, he lived amongst the small details that others had a tendency to overlook. His most earnest and meaningful commentaries were brought to life by slow study which he collated in his drawings, notebooks, and correspondence, before he finally presented his observations to the world in his carefully composed tomes. It is this careful disposition of his which enabled him to study a rock, watch the path of the clouds as he walked in the Alps, or sit reverentially in front of the Bellini meditating upon its details. When recalling 1 Kings 19:11–13, Ruskin declared that ‘God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice’ (iii.345). His mission, as he saw it, was to encourage his readers to look beyond the ‘earthquake’ for the ‘still’ and the ‘small’; just as he, too, sought the still voice of God in the smallest stone, and leaf, and carving. With this in mind, we ask you when reading this volume, to also listen to the ‘small’—by which we mean the quiet, distilled voice of Ruskin. (Ruskin’s voice is anything but small in terms of depth and breadth. His writing requires patience and time to digest.) His mission was to educate others about the natural/divine world, and he sought to do so through his biblically infused, didactic, poetic, and often contradictory writing. He declared: ‘the entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things’ (xviii.435) (emphasis original). * * * Standing as they did at mid-nineteenth-century crossroads of Empire and technological progress, Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites continually brought a questioning approach to the frontiers of knowledge. Instead of adopting triumphant positions on military, political, or social might, they

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

35

sought out places and subjects in need of redemption. For Ruskin, all human endeavour came down to the sacredness, or wealth, of life itself. His preoccupations with painting and the architecture of Venice were subjects that celebrated and distilled such sacredness. For those inspired by Ruskin, the feeling for Christian conscience, if not for the emulation of forebears in the faith, prompted social action (as with Barnett and Watts) or spiritual suggestion in the face of scientific gain (as with Burne-Jones). Most distinctly perhaps, conventional biblical subjects were re-cast in a way that presumed their living and meaningful connection for all. Hunt later recalled how the Pre-Raphaelite circle agreed with the tenets of Modern Painters; he cited one of Ruskin’s passages as being transformative for his own artistic development, as well as that of the Brotherhood’s more generally.78 They responded not with dour visual sermons but by creating colourful and rejuvenating imaginings and displays of Christian narratives. When Pre-Raphaelite approaches to Scripture, theology, Christian virtues, spiritual thresholds, poetry, and even museum display are found pressed up against Ruskinian truths about beauty, ecology, and theophany, they are at their most successful and their most revealing. Often conversing with, and sometimes pushing against Ruskin’s ideas, the Pre-Raphaelite artists each pursued their own theological understandings into textured visual renderings of natural and poetic forms, of sacred forms, and what Ruskin called ‘vital beauty’. The interdisciplinary nature of this volume enriches the gaps between theology and ecology, faith and curation, and aesthetics and poetry. The chapters that follow not only talk of ideas shared between Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, but also converse together to forge new meanings, through original research and new analysis. These ‘conversations’ shine light upon sacred texts, religious images and architecture, and even curatorial practice. Together they contribute to a growing chorus of voices about the value and richness of the artistic gifts Christianity has bestowed upon us through the centuries. These renewed scholastic investigations into nineteenth-century expressions of faith, theology, and the stories within the Bible augment existing analysis on both Ruskin and the Pre-­ Raphaelites. At points our contributors engage with and extend ideas and themes found in the likes of John Dixon Hunt, Art of Ruskin and the Spirit of Place (2021); Elizabeth Ludlow (ed.), The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century (2020); Tim Barringer (ed.), Unto This Last:  Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism (1905), Vol. 1, pp. 90–91.

78

36 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin (2019); Michael Giebelhausen’s Painting the Bible (2006); Michael Wheeler’s Ruskin’s God (2006); and the catalogue of Ruskin works by Landow. This volume also offers our contributors the space to unveil new research, inspired by their scholarly research journeys, as well as being the start of new ones.79 To us, the editors, the most important aspect of presenting our contributors’ research is that of critically examining different expressions of Christianity in the nineteenth century. In recent years, the philosopher Charles Taylor has suggested the Western world is trying to cast off its religious beliefs, at least in their most public forms.80 Are we moving, as Taylor suggests, from ‘belief’ to ‘unbelief’? Were the Victorians? Will complex Christian symbolism simply fade from view if we do not work to keep them in our collective consciousness? Taylor certainly makes a compelling case for Western secularisation, but we wish to reforge connections to Christian ideas and heritage in books such as this, especially in an international context that has been described as ‘post-secular’.81 More generally, we suggest understanding religious, particularly Christian, expression helps society when determining the value—cultural or financial—of an object, piece of art, or building. If we understand the message within what we are looking at, then, we might more carefully protect the work itself, whatever its form. We hope to exhilarate new meanings and reinvigorate existing ones as you take time to examine a leaf, a painting, a pillar, or a sphere. We 79  We commend: Suzanne Fagence Cooper’s, To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters (2019); Lucy Hartley’s Democratising Beauty in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2019); Alison Milbank’s God & the Gothic (2018); Lucy Ella Rose’s Suffragist Artists (2017); Elizabeth Helsinger’s Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts (2008) and her John Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder (1982). 80  Charles Taylor deals with the repositioning and removal of religion within public spaces in his A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). See also Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Secularisation or at least elements of it as a theory have also been challenged in Callum G. Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000 (London: Routledge, 2001). 81   See James Hodkinson and Silke Horstkotte, ‘Introducing the Postsecular: From Conceptual Beginnings to Cultural Theory’, Poetics Today 41:3 (2020), pp. 317–326. The writing of Peter Berger is also particularly interesting in this regard; see ed., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.  Eerdmans, 1999) and The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

37

encourage your participation in these conversations, as a way of making meaning and perpetuating the flow of Christianity’s sustaining impulses. In our small way, we seek to defend Christianity’s gifts. Christian thought is after all both inherited and participatory. In part, as we have said elsewhere, our focus is affirmed by the observations of those identifying a ‘return’ of religion, in art and in society.82 T. J. Clark suggests that our age is actually one ‘of revived or intensified religion’.83 Similarly, David Morgan argues for the identification of a ‘sacred gaze’ in visual culture.84 Morgan, for example, describes a viewer’s ‘covenant’ with images, in which visual culture is understood to have a symbolic, even credal, dimension to it. Such covenantal explanations are in keeping with Ruskin’s own; a viewer’s observations are conditional and help affirm meaning with the image (/building/leaf): in order to be engaged by it, in order to believe what the image reveals or says or means or makes one feel—indeed in order to believe there is something to believe, some legitimate claim to truth to be observed.85

It is this pursuit of, and engagement with, truth that interests us: just as it did Ruskin. We are interested in the journey, the earnestness of faith, and how it manifested itself in the writings of Ruskin and in works by the Pre-Raphaelites. Our contributors draw upon many of these facets, giving new interpretations to the revelatory light of the Bible, theology, and the religious imagination. Our contributors include art historians, academics, members of the clergy, and artists. Here we introduce all of them with an eye to the conversations they have initiated, as well as those that took place in the nineteenth century. Through their writing, they demonstrate reciprocal relationships between art, poetry, curation, and theology, and each other.

82  See Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele, ed., Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts Theology, Aesthetics, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2021). 83  T. J. Clark, Heaven on Earth (London: Thames and Hudson, 2018), p. 22. 84  David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). Morgan’s research exemplifies a more sociological enquiry into religion in art and material culture, though his conversation with broader philosophical currents is also reflected in James Elkins and David Morgan, eds., Re-Enchantment (London: Routledge, 2009). 85  Ibid., p. 76.

38 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Part 1: Ruskin’s Sermons on Visual Theology Identifying Christian and theological aspects of Ruskinian thought, our first three contributors bring to the fore ideas of labour, beauty, theology, and ecology alongside paintings and architecture. This section is the most concertedly Ruskin based and shines light on his writing and his role as intellectual soothsayer. In ‘Earth and Heaven: Ruskin on Dirt, Work, and Beauty’, Flora Armetta considers Ruskin’s view of stone as a material that reflects a divine presence and order. Armetta reveals how Ruskin’s musing upon the Gothic cathedral in The Stones of Venice is a worshipper’s surest means of encountering God, as it points the way towards heaven. She demonstrates how Ruskin’s discussion of stones, and the labour of shaping them, is picked up in other writings by Ruskin as an extended appreciation of earthy materials, including earth itself—that is to say, dirt, and work that is dirty. Using English paintings from the 1850s and 1860s, and extracts from Victorian literature, Armetta engages with critical and philosophical writings by Ruskin and twenty-first-century critical readings of Ruskin and his contemporaries. She argues that the radical value for dirtiness, so contrary to the Victorian ideal of cleanliness, becomes for Ruskin an insistence on the transforming power of God at work in His creation. As a complementary piece, Madeleine Emerald Thiele in ‘Ruskin’s Venice: Embracing Sacred Fragments of Imperfect Beauty’ explores Ruskin’s time in Venice and his response to the damaging restorations which took place from the 1840s onwards. Thiele brings Ruskin’s literary record, particularly The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), into conversation with seldom-discussed watercolours and daguerreotypes by him and other artists, including John Wharlton Bunney (1828–1882) and Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896). Ruskin’s dissipating watercolours and radical daguerreotypes are here shown to promote the expressive qualities of Venice’s architecture as a form of imperfect beauty. The chapter illuminates Ruskin’s sympathetic attempt to capture the city’s ‘fleeting beauty’; in so doing, Thiele demonstrates that behind this mission to record the city’s buildings was, in fact, Ruskin’s preference for architectural preservation, as opposed to restoration. Ruskin’s mission, then, was to ensure the stones of Venice were understood as beautifully imperfect. Thiele argues that Ruskin’s visual radicalism alongside his philosophy of beauty encourages spiritual consolation through acceptance of imperfection. For both Armetta and Thiele, their circumspect interrogation of the value of work,

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

39

whether more or less extant, helps make sense of Ruskin’s philosophies of life as a way of defining what is important to society and to individuals in the immediate and the historic. In her thoughtful presentation of Christian theology, Alison Milbank in ‘“Those Are Leaves”: Ruskin’s Analogical Imagination and the Pre-­ Raphaelite Theology of Nature’ brings to life Ruskin’s metaphysics. More concentratedly theological than other chapters, Milbank’s readings draw upon Richard Hooker’s The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (c.1597). She argues that Ruskin derives from Hooker the doctrine of analogy, by which the divine and creatures are ontologically distinct, yet related by virtue of their direct creation and participation in God. Milbank gives close attention to Ruskin’s drawings of foliage in order to explore how his metaphysics works in practice and how modes of analogy between natural forms demonstrate the interdependence and reciprocity of Hooker’s vision of the created order. Ruskin’s appreciation of Pre-Raphaelite paintings of leaves is attributed to his engagement with analogy, which also lies behind his criticism of their work. Through Milbank’s contrasting of Ruskin’s ecological mindset and writing alongside Pre-Raphaelite natural realism, we are able to luxuriate in close-up depictions of leaves and flowers. We see in this piece, a fecundity and richness that is both spiritual and intellectual.

Part 2: Pre-Raphaelite Conversations with Ruskinian Truths In our second section, which particularly builds upon the natural realism and theophany of Milbank, our contributors attend to the Pre-Raphaelites in a more focused way. Using both poetry and art as different instances of visual encounter, Christian thought is articulated alongside the visual arts’ capacity to enrich meanings spiritually and philosophically. The three contributors in this section illuminate how the Pre-Raphaelites received Ruskin’s wisdom but, in turn, reveal how the exchanges and influence were not only one way. These chapters also illuminate Ruskin’s suggestion that both painters and preachers ‘are commentators on infinity’. In Elizabeth Helsinger’s ‘Ruskin, Rossetti, and the Sacra Conversazione of Colour’, Helsinger explores Rossetti’s paintings from the 1850s which, she argues, posed for Ruskin a test case for the validity of his own strong responses to colour. She asks: was colour, as eighteenth-century English philosophers argued, secondary to form, and properly suspect to English

40 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Protestants for its overt sensual appeal? Or was it, as Ruskin had proposed in the second volume of Modern Painters (1846), part of a typological language providentially found in the Book of Nature, signifying divine redemptive love? His excitement at colour in the Old Masters in Italy, and his ambivalence regarding the harshly realistic colours of the English Pre-­ Raphaelites, were further altered by his discovery of Rossetti’s imaginative watercolours of Dante and the Virgin Mary. Rossetti, Ruskin wrote, was the moving genius behind ‘the sternly materialistic, though deeply reverent, veracity, with which alone, of all schools of painters, this brotherhood of Englishmen has conceived the circumstances of the life of Christ’. His use of colour led Ruskin, almost despite himself, to accept the power of colour as a moral and emotional force in the sacre conversazioni of both old masters and new. In ‘“The Loveliest Traditions of the Christian Legend”: Ruskin, Burne-­ Jones, and the Imaging of the Cross’, Katherine Hinzman concentrates on Burne-Jones and his formative experience with formal religion and its subsequent impact on his art. Ruskin was an early mentor of Burne-Jones, at the time he left theological study at Oxford to pursue art in 1853. This chapter, in considering Ruskin’s idea that Burne-Jones ‘harmonised’ his art with ‘the Christian legend’, argues that theological questions underpinned the two men’s ideas, specifically, how art could be shaped by the cross of Jesus. Focusing first on Burne-Jones’ early education and subsequent reception of Ruskin’s writing, Hinzman explores Ruskin’s and Burne-Jones’ respective reactions to William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World (1851–1853). Hinzman examines how the two men imagined the role of the cross, not only in Christian theology but in art. The image of Christ, as imagined by Burne-Jones, illustrates how he used the cross as his pattern for a supernatural art. Arguably, Ruskin’s religious imagination provides an insight into his dialogue with Burne-Jones and illuminates Burne-Jones’ wider vision for his art. In ‘Crystal Balls: Visions of Creation in the Art of Burne-Jones’, Suzanne Fagence Cooper examines the series of images of The Days of Creation made by Burne-Jones from 1859 to 1895. These included stained glass designs, book illustrations, presentation drawings and watercolours. It offers a range of historical and contemporary sources for these designs, including medieval manuscripts that were accessible via the Bodleian Library collections, and the new work of John Hungerford Pollen for the University Museum, Oxford. The chapter cites Burne-­ Jones’ work within the Darwinian debates of the 1860s. It also looks at

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

41

John Ruskin’s commentary on some of these works by Burne-Jones, in particular, in his The Art of England lectures and his 1877 review of the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition. The chapter raises the question of Ruskin’s antipathy towards the use of microscopes to study natural material and argues that Burne-Jones’ treatment of the Creation theme presented the process within the concept of a lens, crystal ball, or other distortions and amplifications of the visual experience. In doing so, he challenged both Ruskin and the evidence-based scientific discussions that emerged in response to the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859).

Part 3: Reinvigorating Sacred Spaces In the final section, we begin to examine the visual renewal of religious imagery, through illustrations, publications, and exhibitions. The renewal is not just cast as pictorial but as a broader social responsibility for artists and Christians alike. The cultural significance of the Church and Christian thought is allied with aesthetic reforms and societal concerns. Madeline Hewitson examines Old Testament engravings in ‘Victorian Exodus: Visualising the Old Testament in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881)’. Hewitson introduces the Dalziel Brothers who were important associates of the Pre-Raphaelites. The Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881) remains one of the most significant compendiums of Victorian illustration, even allowing for the fact it was incomplete, twenty years overdue, and a commercial flop. This chapter concentrates not on the story of Christ, such as we have seen elsewhere in this volume and which dominated British religious art during the nineteenth century, but it turns instead to the Old Testament. The Dalziels’ published illustrations were drawn exclusively from the Old Testament making it a wholly unique iteration of the Victorian illustrated Bible genre. This chapter considers its use of Old Testament source material, previously marginalised in British Protestant visual culture, and explores the ways the illustrations answer Ruskin’s call to stimulate religious art in a new direction. The Exodus narrative—which is central to the Abrahamic faiths—and its patriarch and prophet, Moses, are given centre-­stage in this chapter. Through the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery version of the Exodus, Hewitson reveals the ways in which the Old Testament represented a distinct category of religious art for artists with renewed social relevance in the nineteenth century. In ‘Heaven on Earth: Evelyn De Morgan’s Rejection of Materialism’, by Sarah Hardy, we meet a female artist whose work crosses over into the

42 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

twentieth century: Evelyn De Morgan. De Morgan’s artworks are subject to increasing critical interest, and Hardy introduces a concentrated and illuminating piece on works that are rarely discussed (e.g. one that was lost due to a fire and another which is hidden away in a private collection). Where De Morgan’s paintings draw inspiration from the Bible, they have previously been understood in the tradition of history painting. Moreover, her allegorical depictions of hope for salvation are well-established in the literature as a visual manifestation of her own Spiritualism. Hardy argues that neither of these classifications can account for De Morgan’s engagement with the Christian virtue, charity. Charity is here understood as the pictorial rejection of material wealth and the embracing of poverty, which De Morgan depicted between 1896 and 1909. The rejection of material wealth and the embracing of poverty can be seen in her The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty (1905), a theme which became an important motif for her. Through Ruskin and other commentators, Hardy notes the religious tensions De Morgan was responding to, examining how she visually represented her hopes for their resolution via her Christian Socialist tendencies. Our final chapter takes us into an exhibition space. Through examination of its curatorial practices, we see further female-driven attempts to improve society. Lucy Hartley’s ‘Art on Sundays: Henrietta Barnett and the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions’ offers an account of popular exhibitions held in the East End of London between 1881 and 1898. Hartley introduces Henrietta Barnett, a figure who is generally overlooked in critical literature, but was crucial to the success of the Exhibitions. Hartley asks how were artworks, primarily contemporary paintings and principally those by Pre-Raphaelite artists, used to teach the poor. What kind of knowledge was disseminated from the pictures, and by whom? And which pictures proved the most popular, and why? She argues that what Barnett publicised as ‘pictures for the people’ constituted an ideal and a morally edifying practice. It was an ideal that art could proffer a solution to the problem of poverty in the metropolis in the 1880s and 1890s, with implications for the nation, and it was a practice that rested on the object lessons in (and of) pictures, with consequences for the Church of England. Interspersed within the three sections of this volume, we offer a reflective space where these ideas can be explored more contemplatively. We have done this by including two visual theology interludes, pieces with short-form text and several images of one subject. Mark Dean and Sheona

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

43

Beaumont’s ‘Sounds and Visions at The Chapel of St. Michael and All Angels’ presents Marlborough College’s Chapel in a new light. We, the editors, commissioned Dean to produce a video series for a Service of Rededication held in the Chapel in 2019, as part of our contribution to the Ruskin bicentenary. In our second interlude by Lucy Ella Rose, we visit ‘A World Without Ceiling: Mary Watts’ “Language of Symbols” at Limnerslease’ which stems from conversations between ourselves and Rose about the syncretic world that Watts created. The first interlude, which acts as a pause between the more concentratedly Ruskin chapters and the Pre-Raphaelite ones, focuses on the form and symbol of the angel in a specific place of worship. Dean’s video art is found to be illuminated by the bright Pre-Raphaelites works of artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829–1908). Together, they create a conversation of holy echoes in what is a Neo-Gothic space built for a school for sons of the clergy. Dean and Beaumont worked with nineteenth-­ century liturgy to deliberately solicit audience participation during the service and Dean encouraged contemplative and symbolic use of electronic equipment. The encounter was not an isolating contemplative process but rather an invitation to commune, to be part of a collective visual theology of angels, in keeping with the Chapel’s dedication. Such a multi-­sensory consideration allies modern thinking with High-Anglican architecture and Renaissance-inspired Pre-Raphaelitism. In another evocation of changing historical periods and figures, Rose’s piece ‘A World Without Ceiling’ contemplates exchanges between symbols of different faiths. She focuses on Mary Watts’ gesso ceiling designs at her Surrey studio-home, Limnerslease, showing how she developed a unique symbolic iconography that celebrates cultural diversity and divinity in its widest sense. It uses her largely unpublished diaries to shed light on her views on Ruskin, religion, spirituality, and aesthetics, offering insight into an understudied Arts and Crafts masterpiece that in 1891 preceded her celebrated Watts Chapel (1898). This is an important threshold piece: it seeks to disentangle Watts’ achievements from those of her husband, allowing her to cross both visual and scholarly boundaries through the perceptive scholarly eye of Rose. We hope these alternative short-form pieces set within a volume of critical essays offer a more intimate approach towards Christian thought in the visual arts today. Moreover, these types of interludes help situate the themes running through the overall book. They also generate fresh

44 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

conversations about artists who, academically speaking, are still being brought out from under the shadow of other better-known PreRaphaelites—as has been the case for both Stanhope and Watts. From the spring of new encounters experienced in the physical sites of church and home, these interludes point finally to the material realisation of ideas about art and theology. Here, indeed, is where the threshold of understanding, which so many of our contributors explore, becomes a living and transformative one. * * * Ruskin imagined heaven and notions of divinity by looking in detail at the paintings he encountered throughout the Western world. His skill as part teacher and part preacher encourages his readers, both then and now, to embrace the sacred through the smallest of textures, leaves, and stones. He demanded the act of looking itself be considered one of work. The labour of looking was an integral element of respecting, and ultimately safeguarding, the ecology and divinity of the natural world, however flawed and imperfect a bruised apple or a curled leaf may be: for Ruskin, the praise was in the doing. The Pre-Raphaelites also taught the world a new way of looking. They concentrated on the smallest of details, filling their canvases with leaves, flowers, petals, trees, and ivy. They brought words and text into their images and even placed poems and passages of Scripture on their frames. This unique way of looking collapsed old conventions and brought out a new way of presenting the religious imagination: merging word and image; merging old and new; and making new jewel tones and colours to rattle the establishment. Their combined religious imagination meant audiences and critics alike were having to work hard to understand Pre-Raphaelite art which seemed to personify Ruskin’s maxim: ‘All great art is praise’ (xv.351). By encouraging our contributors to explore their wealth of knowledge on Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, we believe this volume confirms the value of religious imagery, then and now. Furthermore, we believe the religious imagination continues to be an important psychological and social function because it allows humanity to explore ideas of faith, beauty, ecology, charity, and even the importance of hard work. These traits are fundamental to the well-being of a society. The arts, as born from the religious

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

45

imagination, provide a way of both seeing and looking: we would be poorer without it. Ruskin’s writing is one important means by which we can reengage with aspects of faith in nineteenth-century literature and art, but we can also reapply his lessons to pressing issues in our own time. Ruskin’s voice can and should be placed into today’s conversations about faith, aesthetics, and matters sacred—however, we define them. His writing is a form of hectoring at its worst and an enlivening sermon at its best. There is something in Ruskin’s writing—and his contemplation of art, especially— that seeks to liberate us from our own constrained way of viewing the world. His writing also has value for what we preserve and protect: such as the art in our cities and even our cities themselves. There is no requirement to agree with Ruskin, but we hope you will at least agree that he has much to teach us. His lifetime’s work is a lifetime’s reading. He is, as O’Gorman says, ‘a writer of hope, even out of ruins, even out of Calvary’; even at his lowest point, Ruskin still manages to offer us hope and intellectual succour.86 Similarly, the Pre-Raphaelites’ visual sermons bring to life, in bright gemlike colours, visions of the immaterial, of a world beyond words. They may have painted the tiniest of flowers, but they left us with the brightest sincerity. We, in turn, offer this volume as a way of encouraging you to reconsider the value of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites and their conversations sacred. There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals. —John Ruskin

Bibliography Arnold, Matthew. St. Paul and Protestantism: With an Essay on Puritanism & the Church of England; and Last Essays on Church & Religion. London: Smith and Elder, 1870. Barringer, Tim. Reading the Pre-Raphaelites. USA: Yale University Press, 1999. Beaumont, Sheona, and Madeleine Emerald Thiele, ed., Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts Theology, Aesthetics, and Practice. London: Routledge, 2021. Berger, Peter, ed., The Desecularization of the World. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999.

 O’Gorman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin (2015), p. 13.

86

46 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Berger, Peter. The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Brazier, Paul, ed., C.  S. Lewis Revelation, Conversion, and Apologetics. Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2012. Brown, Callum G. The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000. London: Routledge, 2001. Burne-Jones, Georgiana. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones. 2 vols. London: Chiswick Press, 1904. Caine, Thomas Hall. Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Eliot Stock, 1882. Carlyle, Thomas. “Signs of the Times,” Edinburgh Review 49 (June 1829): 441. Chadwick, Owen. The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Cheeke, Stephen. Transfiguration: The Religion of Art in Nineteenth-Century Literature Before Aestheticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Collingwood, W.G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin. Boston and New  York: Riverside Press, 1893. Dickens, Charles. ‘Old Lamps for New Ones’, Household Words 1 (15 June 1850), pp. 265–267. Downes, David Anthony. Ruskin’s Landscape of Beatitude. California: California State University, 1980. Gibbs, Mary and Ellen. The Bible References of John Ruskin. London: George Allen, 1898. Gibson, Richard Hughes and James Edward Beitler III. Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020. Hewison, Robert, ed. Ruskin’s Artists. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2000. Hilton, Tim. John Ruskin: The Early Years 1819–1859. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Hodkinson, James and Silke Horstkotte. ‘Introducing the Postsecular: From Conceptual Beginnings to Cultural Theory’, Poetics Today 41:3 (2020), pp. 317–326. Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Volume I. New York: Macmillan, 1905. Jacobi, Carole. William Holman Hunt, Painter, Painting, Painter. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Knight, Mark and Emma Mason, ed., Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Lago, Mary. Burne-Jones Talking; His Conversations 1895–1898 Preserved by His Studio Assistant Thomas Rooke. London: John Murray, 1982. Landow, P. George. The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971.

1  INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE’ JOHN RUSKIN 

47

———. Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. ———. ‘William Holman Hunt’s “The Shadow of Death”’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 55:1 (1972), pp. 212–215. ———. Replete with Meaning: William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979. Landow, George P., ed. ‘“Your good influence on me”: The correspondence of John Ruskin and William Holman Hunt’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 59 (1976–1977), pp. 95–126, and 367–396. Mason, Emma. Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. McGrath, Alister E. The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008). Middlemiss, John T. A Modern Prophet and His Message: John Ruskin. Sunderland: Smith and Taylor, 1896. Millais, John Guille. The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy. 2 vols. London: Methuen and Co., 1899. Newman, John Henry. Apologia Pro Vita Sua, first published 1864. Glasgow: Fontana, 1965. O’Gorman, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pattison, George. Art, Modernity and Faith. London: SCM Press, 1998. Prettejohn, Elizabeth. The Art of Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Publishing, 2000. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Rossetti, William Michael. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family Letters, with a Memoir, 2 vols. London: Ellis and Elvey, 1895. ———. Fine Art Chiefly Contemporary. London, Macmillan and Co., 1867. ———. Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti, 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. Sharp, William. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study. London: Macmillan and Co., 1882. Smallwood, Osborn T. ‘John Ruskin and the Oxford Movement’, CLA Journal 3:2, (December 1959), pp. 114–118. Surtees, Virginia. Rossetti’s Portraits of Elizabeth Siddal: A Catalogue of the Drawings and Watercolours. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1991. Steer, John. A Concise History of Venetian Painting. London: Thames and Hudson, 1970. Tate, Andrew. ‘“Sweeter Also Than Honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 39:1/2, Literature and Religion (2009), pp. 114–125. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

48 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. E. THIELE

Taylor, Jesse Oak. ‘Storm-Clouds on the Horizon: John Ruskin and the Emergence of Anthropogenic Climate Change’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, Vol. 26 (2018), n. pag. Wheeler, Michael. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2006. Whitehouse, J.  Howard, ed. Ruskin the Prophet and Other Centenary Studies. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1920. Wood, Christopher. z. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/empi/notes/hcookwed01.htm, accessed June 2022. http://www.maasgallery.co.uk/images/PDFs/Collins_small_file_for_email_1. pdf, accessed June 2022.

PART I

Ruskin’s Sermons on Visual Theology

CHAPTER 2

Earth and Heaven: Ruskin on Dirt, Work, and Beauty Flora Armetta

Ruskin was, for all intents and purposes, obsessed with stone. This is evident in everything from the way he titled volumes of his writing to the subjects he chose to return to again and again in lectures, drawings, and watercolours: The Stones of Venice (1851–1853); the drawing Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas (1853); the watercolour A Weathered, Dressed Stone in a Minimal Landscape (c.1835–1845); a wish expressed in a pamphlet of 1851 for ‘rocks [to be] drawn with such accuracy that the geologist’s diagram [is] no longer necessary’;1 extensive mineral collections, donated to St. David’s boys’ prep school in Surrey in 1883, and at least four other institutions;2 John Everett Millais’ famous portrait of him, silhouetted against more Gneiss rock (at Ruskin’s behest and under his ‘strict supervision’3), as though he could not but lean on it. 1  Quoted in Alastair Grieve, ‘Ruskin and Millais at Glenfinlas’, The Burlington Magazine 138:1117 (Apr. 1996), p. 228. 2  Marikka Trotter, ‘Ruskin’s Rocks’, Architectural Association Files, 73 (2016), p. 138. 3  Grieve, ‘Ruskin and Millais’ (1996), p. 228.

F. Armetta (*) Pennsylvania, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_2

51

52 

F. ARMETTA

There is more. A closer look reveals that Ruskin’s love for rocks and stones becomes, throughout his writings, an extended appreciation of earthy materials, including earth itself—that is, dirt. In 1857, he praised dirt in his handbook The Elements of Drawing, noting its many colours: ‘Give [me] some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit, a whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust’ (xv.149).4 In this passage, Ruskin specifically values in these various kinds of dirt their lack of ‘purity’, a quality that may seem a surprising one on which to focus. Yet this becomes a key issue in many of his writings: earthy, stony, and dirty things reveal Ruskin’s enduring value for the unimportant, the imperfect. Throughout his work, the concept of dirtiness takes on different names—impurity, imperfection, blight—but it is a constant value nevertheless, one radically at odds with those of Ruskin’s time. Earthy material and, more importantly, those who are visibly marked by it are not only precious but literally fundamental to the order of the world, because, Ruskin insists, they paradoxically point us heavenward; stone and dirt function as indices of the God who, after all, ‘formed man of the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2:7). This point regarding the way earthy material points us heavenward is crucial for a Christian reading of Ruskin because, I would contend, it helps show his theology—not merely his morality or a nebulous ‘spirituality’ but a deeply felt recognition of the character of God—in places where we might not otherwise look for it. Much excellent scholarly work has been devoted to tracing and acknowledging Ruskin’s awareness of the Bible throughout his life,5 and, likewise, it is a critical commonplace for scholars to note that Ruskin’s interest in geology was both the impetus for his appreciation of God’s grand design and one means by which he lost faith, as his recognition of scientific advances in geology made him doubt the

4  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xv.149). 5  See, for example, C. Stephen Finley, Nature’s Covenant: Figures of Landscape in Ruskin (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992); Michael Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Andrew Tate, ‘“Sweeter Also Than Honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 39:1/2, Literature and Religion (2009), pp. 114–125.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

53

Bible’s historical truth.6 Here, however, I argue that, even after his famous ‘unconversion’ of 1858, Ruskin was, consciously or not, attentive to dirt because it brought into view for him the relationship between the Maker and those made. And, as I go on to demonstrate, this radical value of Ruskin’s for dirt both reflected and helped shape depictions of earthy work (stone-breaking, ditch-and-trench digging, and dust-sweeping) in Victorian painting in this period. Ultimately, I wish to argue that, as Ruskin prescribes for the viewer a kind of visual labour—call it dirty work—in order to rightly see such paintings, we find him modelling an act of praise; to notice, observe, and value a thing that is imperfect is, in Ruskin’s eyes, to simultaneously understand and reverence the idea of Perfection, and it is artists who reveal this best.

Stone, Earth, Dirt Perhaps the clearest introduction to the concept of stone, dirt, and dirty work is in The Stones of Venice (1851–1853). In the chapter entitled ‘The Nature of Gothic’, in volume two, Ruskin claims with little preamble that Gothic art is superior, aesthetically and morally, to idealised, ‘perfect’ Greek art. Significantly, the illustration Ruskin chooses is the Gothic workman, specifically the anonymous stone-carvers who ornamented cathedrals in the Gothic period. They, he explains, were allowed to be artists in their own right, freely using their imaginations to design and create their work, rather than, as Greek slaves had to do, copying and precisely executing a master-designer’s plan for, say, a temple. Though Gothic cathedral carvings are by no means perfect, for Ruskin they are beautiful and meaningful. Their very imperfections serve as reminders of their potential for perfection: in nature, Ruskin says, the best things are rarely seen in their 6  George P. Landow gives an excellent description of Ruskin’s grappling with contemporary geological discoveries that seemed to cast doubt on the biblical narrative of the flood in George P. Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 265–292. See also Clive Wilmer, ‘“No Such Thing As A Flower, No Such Thing As A Man”: John Ruskin’s Response to Darwin’, in Valerie Purton, ed., Darwin, Tennyson, and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science (London: Anthem Press, 2013), pp.  100–101; and Jonathan Jones, ‘“John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing” Review—Oddball or Visionary?’ The Guardian, 24 January 2019, http:// theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jan/24/john-ruskin-the-power-of-seeing-review-­ critic-­social-reformer-two-temple-place, accessed March 2022. Each of these mentions Ruskin’s famously despairing comment that he could ‘hear the clink’ of the geologists’ hammers ‘at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses’ (quoted in Wilmer).

54 

F. ARMETTA

best form; wheat is better than wild grass and, ‘according to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight’ (ix.190). For Ruskin, then, only lesser things appear to be perfect, while greater, nobler things are often recognisable as such by virtue of their evident imperfection. The same point arises in Ruskin’s irritated critique, from the same period, of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks (c.1491–1508); Ruskin complains that Leonardo’s rocks conform to an ‘ideal’ or a ‘convention’, as opposed to ‘reality’7—that is, they appear in one sense to conform to an idea of perfection, and thus fail to speak to anything greater than themselves.8 In each of these examples, the stony material (the carved cathedral, the rocky crag) is a space where the human and divine meet, whether spiritually, as in the cathedral, or physically, as in the person of the Christ child; it’s where worship may take place as humans encounter their God; and it’s where we may perceive that, as Ruskin puts it, ‘Christianity ha[s] recognised, in small things as well as great, […] individual value’ (emphasis added) (ix.189–190). In this case, there is individual value in the soul of the stone carver; likewise, however, we might infer the same value in the particularity of real, unidealised rocks. In seeing the carvings, or the painted image of rocks, we the viewers must seek this highness out, looking into and through what is before us. From the thing that seems hardly worthy of notice in one sense (rocks in the background of a painting, a carved capital in an enormous cathedral, even mud from a city crossing), we are to determine what is behind or beyond it. This, in fact, is the crux of the matter; it is not enough to understand or appreciate something less than perfect. Ruskin suggests throughout the chapter—and elsewhere— that the act of looking itself, if one is to do justice to the thing looked at, is a kind of visual work or labour, a way of seeing that essentially mirrors 7  “Engraving of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Virgin of the Rocks’”, The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection at Oxford, Ashmolean Museum (2013), http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/object/WA.RS.STD.011, accessed May 2022. 8  This point of Ruskin’s stands in startlingly direct contrast to a statement by the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Ruskin, disapproving of Whistler’s work in an exhibition, had written dismissively of Whistler’s ‘cockney impudence’ in asking ‘two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint into the public’s face’. In response, Whistler brought a suit of libel against Ruskin, and, during the trial, stated, ‘For me a picture is a problem to solve, and I use any incident or object in nature to bring about a symmetrical result’. This idea of the ‘use’ of nature as a symmetrical element is surely part of what so infuriated Ruskin that he felt justified in defaming the younger painter. Quoted in Robert Aitken, ‘Whistler v. Ruskin’, Litigation 27:2, MILLENNIUM (Winter 2001), pp. 65–66.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

55

the labour of the stone carver, depending both on thought and effort, to identify these values.9 The requirement in these examples is that anyone who sees these images engage with the work of art; the implication is that, in so doing, we meditate on the fact that what we see is a created thing, recognising in the fact of its creation the ones who are creators, and then the One who is the Creator. Thus, the high inheres in the low. What, however, is the significance of this point within Ruskin’s own experience, or for that matter of his readers? In the broadest sense, connecting art to work, labour, or labourers, is not, of course, particular to Ruskin; we find it everywhere in the greater context of Victorian culture.10 The ‘Nature of Gothic’ portion of The Stones of Venice was published within about a year of the hugely influential opening of the Crystal Palace in 1851, which began partly as the pet project of Prince Albert, an aspiring art connoisseur, and ended by being dedicated to ‘The Workers of the World’ and exhibiting industrial as well as fine art creations. And work was, for many Victorians, a word that helped explain what it meant to be human. As T. J. Barringer has demonstrated, the two main Victorian theories of work—termed ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’—defined work as a mode of being that was either punitive or redemptive.11 Instrumental work, as evident in the writings of political economists like J. S. Mill and Adam Smith, made labour a negative necessity, ‘an onerous burden that must be carried only because of its end results’, with ‘no intrinsic moral value in itself’.12 The expressive theory, on the other hand, derived from 9  ‘But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care […to] prize and honour them in their imperfection [.]… And this is what we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the thoughtful part of them’ (ix.191) (emphasis added). Significantly, this point is comparable to Ruskin’s argument regarding the process of viewing something in nature that might seem uninteresting: ‘Now this power of enjoyment [in looking at a twig] is worth working for, not merely for enjoyment, but because it renders you less imperfect as one of God’s creatures—more what He would have you…’ (emphasis added). Letter to Edward Clayton, 1841, quoted in ‘Natural Fragments’, The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection at Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/ collection/9006/9037/9358, accessed May 2022. 10  The point here regarding Victorian attitudes towards work, and parts of the discussions of paintings of workers that appear below, were first raised in an article of mine on the novelist Anthony Trollope, ‘Dirty Work: Trollope and the Labour of the Artist’, Victorian Network 6:2 (Winter 2015), pp. 7–28, and are included here with kind permission of the magazine. 11  T. J. Barringer, Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (Hartford, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 27. 12  Ibid., p. 28.

56 

F. ARMETTA

John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, and the Christian Socialist movement, and it made work a positive necessity, ‘a step on the road to salvation’ and therefore the only real means by which humanity could reach its highest and best self.13 But where Ruskin differed from his contemporaries and fellow-­believers was in his constant suggestions as to what good work could look like. The vast majority of Victorians, perhaps even especially Christian Victorians, tended to suggest that expressive work (the good kind) was clean, no matter what particular set of physical actions it involved. Ruskin allowed for it to be dirty. Rocks and stony material were, in fact, only the beginning. In order to fully understand Ruskin’s radical re-envisioning of the literal stuff of the earth, dirt, we must first consider his overall advice to painters to focus on it, and then, briefly, survey how Victorian literature of all kinds overwhelmingly urged that dust, dirt, and anything or anyone associated with them should be seen as little as possible.

Clean and Unclean In Modern Painters volume one, published in 1843, Ruskin first raises the subject of depicting dirt (as opposed to merely valuing it), offering a general critique of the painter Clarkson Stanfield for failing to show imperfections: Mr. Stanfield’s boats […] always look new painted and clean […] even his fishermen have always clean jackets and unsoiled caps, and his very rocks are lichenless. And, by the way, this ought to be noted respecting modern painters in general, that they have not a proper sense of the value of dirt; cottage children never appear but in fresh got-up caps and aprons, and white-handed beggars excite compassion in unexceptionable rags. In reality, almost all the colours of things associated with human life derive something of their expression and value from the tones of impurity, and so enhance the value of the entirely pure tints of nature herself. (iii.228) (Emphasis added)

Using the word value three times in a single, short paragraph, Ruskin argues here not only that human life is actually only recognisably human through dirtiness (its ‘tones of impurity’), but, more fundamentally, that dirt itself has worth—value—such that it deserves the attention of painters  Ibid.

13

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

57

and their viewers, because of the way it draws attention to nature and creation. There is even an implication that compassion for a beggar would be misplaced, or essentially false, if aroused through a depicted ‘white-handed beggar’. The import of this is only evident when we consider the general Victorian resistance to such a claim. Critics as diverse as Victoria Kelley, Stephen Halliday, Laura Foster, Christopher Herbert, Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, and Natalka Freeland, to name only a few,14 have highlighted a chain of Victorian associations connecting poverty, dirt, and moral impurity to each other as social problems that could be identified and isolated visually. Most notably, the frequent claim that cleanliness was next to godliness carried special weight. This concept may have originated in ancient rabbinical texts, but its popularity increased exponentially in the nineteenth century after it was quoted in a late-eighteenth-century sermon by John Wesley. By the 1880s, it was so well known as to be used in a successful series of soap advertisements.15 The natural corollary to the phrase is, of course, that dirtiness signifies moral impurity. Workhouse rules, for example, ‘associate[d] bodily cleanliness with “decent and orderly” behaviour and dr[ew] attention to the assumed link between cleanly habits and moral character’.16 The equation between dirt and immorality was pervasive in medical opinions, police reports, and such Victorian reformers and reform-minded figures as George Sims and Edwin Chadwick, who claimed that ‘the fever nests and seats of physical depravity are also the seats of moral depravity, disorder and crime’.17 14  See Kirsten Leng, review of Soap and Water: Cleanliness, Dirt and the Working Classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, by Victoria Kelley in Gender & History 23 (July 2011), pp. 462–463; Victoria Kelley, ‘“The Virtues of a Drop of Cleansing Water”: Domestic Work and Cleanliness in the British Working Classes, 1880–1914’, Women’s History Review 18:5 (November 2009), pp. 719–735; Stephen Halliday, The Great Filth: Disease, Death and the Victorian City (New York: The History Press, 2011); Laura Foster, ‘Dirt, Dust, and Devilment: Uncovering Filth in the Workhouse and Casual Wards’, Victorian Network 6:2 (Winter 2015), pp. 29–58; Christopher Herbert, ‘Filthy Lucre: Victorian Ideas of Money’, Victorian Studies (Winter 2002), pp.  185–213; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Natalka Freeland, ‘The Politics of Dirt in Mary Barton and Ruth’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 42:4 (The Nineteenth Century, Autumn 2002), pp. 799–818. 15  Nigel Rees, Brewer’s Famous Quotations (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009), p. 489. 16  Foster, ‘Dirt, Dust, and Devilment’ (2015), p. 30. 17  Freeland, ‘The Politics of Dirt…’ (2002), p. 804.

58 

F. ARMETTA

This tremendous cultural resistance to the presence of dirt, and dirty people, in the period is only really evident to the fullest extent, however, when we begin to examine Victorian paintings of workers, particularly those whose work revolves around dust, dirt, and stone. A survey of such paintings from the 1850s and 1860s, a decade or two after Ruskin first complained of a lack of dirt in contemporary painting in Modern Painters, reveals so much reverence for cleanliness that we ultimately find, as I will show, a way to visually identify mid-Victorian images of any work considered expressive as clean, no matter how dirty the occupation represented might have been in everyday life. Such imagery made possible an ideological embrace of many kinds of work—and workers—that could, in reality, only be carried out from a distance, away from the muck. Some key examples demonstrate what a viewer from this period would have seen in these images; we must attend to them before we can reconsider Ruskin’s argument. The clearest example is by Ford Madox Brown’s (1821–1893), whose celebratory and celebrated painting Work (Fig. 2.1), completed between

Fig. 2.1  Ford Madox Brown, Work, 1852–65, oil on canvas

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

59

1852 and 1865, in which the artist presents an idealised gathering of classes and occupations in a busy thoroughfare, suggesting that the life of the city is dependent upon the co-labouring of those who would ordinarily be separated from each other by habit and station. The scene is looked upon approvingly by the benign gaze of the Christian Socialist F. D. Maurice at the far right, and his more directly confrontational companion, Thomas Carlyle. At a major focal point just to the left of the painting’s centre, Brown daringly places the English navvy as a figure of the greatness of English industry. ‘Navvy’ is short for ‘navigator’, and describes a person who dug ditches and trenches and built roads.18 In his diaries, Brown underscored his admiration for these workers by implicitly comparing his own research, and his elaborate physical exertions in preparing for and executing the painting, to the labour of the navvies. And though navvies were often morally suspect in the popular mind—generally seen as ‘reckless’ and known for ‘fighting and rowdiness’19—Brown vindicates their image by representing his working navvy without a speck of dust or dirt on him, in spite of the fact that he is literally in a hole in the middle of a dirt road, shovelling up earth. Instead, the navvy’s spotless white shirt sparkles in the sunlight, and his ruddy skin glows as though he has just taken a bath. These details in his appearance signal the goodness of the man and his labour, and allow him to be the central focal point (though not literal centre) of this enormous composition. In the same period that Brown was completing Work, William Powell Frith (1819–1909) produced The Crossing Sweeper (1858), in which a young boy with a broom stands, barefoot, in the middle of a busy street, making way for an elegantly dressed young woman who seems to ignore him as she lifts her skirts slightly to keep them from brushing the ground (Fig. 2.2). Though the boy’s clothing is ragged, he, too, has a guileless expression, a spotless and pink-­cheeked face, and clean hands. Here, in fact, is the embodiment of Ruskin’s poster child for the de-valuing of dirt, a ‘white-handed beggar’ (though not merely a beggar, as he has work of a sort, sweeping dirt) in ‘unexceptionable rags’. When we contrast the details in the painting with what we know about the reality of London’s filthy streets in this period, it’s clear that any such cleanliness 18  Dick Sullivan, ‘In Brief’, Navvyman, Victorian Web, http://victorianweb.org/victorian/history/work/sullivan/2.html, accessed May 2022. 19  Sally Mitchell, Daily Life in Victorian England (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 60.

60 

F. ARMETTA

Fig. 2.2  William Powell Frith, The Crossing Sweeper, 1858, oil on canvas

would have been impossible to maintain.20 Frith is said to have commented on his subject dismissively, describing his sweeper as ‘besieging

20  See for example Peter Hounsell, London’s Rubbish: Two Centuries of Dirt, Dust and Disease in the Metropolis (Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2013); and for a literary evocation of the dirt a crossing sweep might live in, consider Charles Dickens’ description in Bleak House (1853) of the young orphaned sweep Jo, who was ‘very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged’, and lived in a ‘black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people […] among the mud and wheels […] passing deftly, with his bare feet, over the hard stones, and through the mud and mire’ (London: Penguin Books, 1996), pp. 176, 256–257.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

61

[the lady] in the usual fashion’,21 and certainly crossing sweeps, whose vagrancy and begging plagued middle- and upper-class Londoners, were generally seen as nuisances, common enough to be the subject of numerous cartoons in Punch.22 In one sense, then, Frith’s work here is more akin to a genre painting, which simply references daily life, than a socially oriented one that evokes a viewer’s concern for the sweep.23 Yet the painting’s composition creates a positive, even sympathetic, image, in which the boy and the lady mirror each other. Compositionally, they are a pair, each carrying the value and weight of being focal figures within the painting, so that their equality and inequity are simultaneously highlighted. Each one’s face is set off by a roughly triangular space of white— he wears a white shirt, she has silky ribbons cascading from her bonnet—and each has a bow tied below the collar or chin. The two inhabit the space they share in similar ways, yet this visual unity stresses differences as well: the woman reads as more privileged and protected (she has clothing covering her from head to toe, and can afford to look where she pleases) while the boy is eminently vulnerable, not only barefoot but looking up to her and thus less aware—less shielded, for example, from the passing wheels of the carriage behind them. One further point, because cleanliness is at stake here: though the child’s white shirt has elements of yellow and brown that may read as stains, several later versions of the same image (by an engraver and by Frith himself) show the shirt as bright white. This suggests that the top layer of the painting has, with time, thinned to reveal Frith’s underpainting; light shadows of the bow and the jacket’s lapels have darkened and seeped through the

 According to the Museum of London’s collections entry for this painting, Frith made these comments in his autobiography. See ‘The Crossing Sweeper’, Museum of London, http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/726177.html, accessed May 2022. 22  See for example George P. Landow, ‘The Crossing-Sweeper Nuisance’, Victorian Web, http://victorianweb.org/victorian/periodicals/punch/17.html, accessed March 2022. 23  In fact, Frith began as a popular genre painter but, as a young artist at the Royal Academy, became dissatisfied with its general conservatism and the rigidity of its sanctioned themes and subjects; he helped form a rebellious group called ‘The Clique’, and set out to paint what he called ‘modern life’ (emphasis added), as opposed to more ‘elevated’ subjects. See Graham Reynolds, Victorian Painting (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 29. 21

62 

F. ARMETTA

white surface of the work as the painting ages.24 Thus, we see here a child who must, in everyday life, have been utterly covered in dust and grime, presented on canvas as a completely clean worker in the service of the painting’s being pleasing. It is the white dirt-­less-­ness of face, hands, and shirt, above everything else, that enables him, as Ruskin had put it, to ‘excite compassion’ in the viewer. One last example of impossibly clean labourers is by William Bell Scott (1811–1890), in his 1861 composition Iron and Coal (Fig. 2.3: the artist’s watercolour version appears here; he also completed one in oil). The painting depicts what Scott described as ‘the active life of our own day in the north […] Labour, Commerce, and […] Railway and Telegraph’.25 Here, at the centre of an extremely busy scene featuring multiple smokestacks spewing out dark smoke, four men cluster around a forge near a shipyard, sledgehammers raised above white flames and faces frowning in concentration as they prepare to strike an unseen anvil. Nearby, a little girl of perhaps ten, evidently the daughter of one of the forge workers and here to deliver his lunch,26 sits at ease, gazing sweetly out at the viewer. In strong contrast to Frith’s painting of the boy sweeper, it’s this child who clearly represents middle-­class security and propriety; her neatness, dress, and ringleted hair (in addition to her small dog and the book she holds) all speak to this and, like the lady crossing the street in the Frith painting, she is also extremely clean, having just arrived on the scene. Yet, tied as she is to the workers, she helps signal the worth of the men at work over the forge’s coal fire, and their connection with her is emphasised by their equal cleanliness, their hands and faces completely unmarred by dirt, like hers. Though their clothing is somewhat rumpled, and one is perhaps sweating 24  Such darkening is a common occurrence with older paintings; for a detailed technical description of how it takes place, see Segal, Sam, and Klara Alen, Dutch and Flemish Flower Pieces: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints Up to the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1, trans. Judith Deitch (Boston: Brill, 2020), p. 90. And for information on other versions of this particular Frith image, see, for example, an engraved copy of the painting by Charles William Sharpe, created in 1864, that is faithful to each of Frith’s details except that there is no stain, but rather a shadow under the boy’s bow, on his white shirt (‘The Crossing Sweeper’, The British Museum, http://britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1872-1012-6172, accessed March 2022); similarly, later versions by Frith (after the painting proved popular and he decided to copy and update it, even as late as 1893) also present the boy’s shirt as purely white—see ‘Art in the Christian Tradition: Crossing Sweeper’, Jean and Alexander Heard Divinity Library, https:// diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu//act-imagelink.pl?RC=55350, accessed May 2022. 25   Quoted in Dianne Sachko Macleod, ‘Private and Public Patronage in Victorian Newcastle’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 52 (1989), p. 190. 26  Ibid., p. 191.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

63

Fig. 2.3  William Bell Scott, Iron and Coal: The Industry of the Tyne, 1861, watercolour

through the back of his shirt, the figures show none of the industrial grime of a forge.27 Forges, however, were in reality filthy; a contemporary 27  This painting does show sketching underneath the paint surface that leaves some areas unclear (a chain and gear, e.g. are visible through the apron of the man second from left), but the painter’s effort to essentially ‘wash’ the men is certainly clear. Significantly, though Ruskin and Bell Scott were well acquainted with each other, an anonymous reviewer of Bell Scott’s autobiography, while commenting that Bell Scott was ‘a much less able artist than several of his eminent friends confirmed’, describes how Ruskin once slighted Bell Scott, at the presentation a large cycle of paintings that included the oil version of Iron and Coal; Bell Scott did not forget it, complaining later that ‘He [Ruskin] took no notice of me’. Quoted in The Academy and Literature, Vol. 42. London: Alexander & Shepheard, 1892, p. 500.

64 

F. ARMETTA

description appears, for example, in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, also from the year 1861, where Pip, ashamed, describes his emergence from the forge in which he works with Joe Gargery: ‘dusty with the dust of small-coal’ and appearing ‘with a black face and hands, doing the coarsest part of my work’.28

Beauty We turn now to one outstanding English image of genuinely dirty work from this period, an anomaly among its contemporaries. In 1857, Henry Wallis (1830–1916) produced The Stonebreaker (Fig.  2.4), in which an exhausted labourer, lacking all the vigour and strength so celebrated in the

Fig. 2.4  Henry Wallis, The Stonebreaker, 1857, oil on canvas

28  Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. 1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 97–98.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

65

other works, rests at the foot of a tree at the end of a long day’s hard work. Stonebreaking, which was the task of breaking up large rocks into smaller ones with a hammer for the purpose of paving roads, was a notoriously difficult and painful Victorian occupation, usually given to paupers from the workhouse or to convicts.29 This image depicts the pain of such a life. The man is difficult to read within the picture, as his face, hands, boots, and clothing are all darkened with dirt, and his posture is confusing. In fact, Wallis’ painting is famously indeterminate as to whether its subject is merely deeply asleep or has actually died from his work. A stoat or ermine, nearly invisible in the gloomy shadows, sits, evidently unnoticed, on the man’s right foot, and the bent of the man’s hanging head and awkwardly sprawled legs look so painful that it is hard to imagine their positions being sustained by anyone who is alive. Wallis, however, resisted giving a direct answer when questioned on this subject, and the ambiguity of his painting adds to its disturbing effect. The painting, which is done mostly in browns and other muted colours, and thus looks as though its own actual surface is somewhat dirty, is a powerful view of what labour may result in. English painters did not regularly begin to depict working figures this way—that is, in ways that made dirty labour look difficult and degrading—until the very end of the nineteenth century, under the direct influence of the French Naturalists, mainly Jules Bastien-Lepage.30 Wallis’ Stonebreaker was critically acclaimed for its undeniable mimetic skill, but it apparently made both critics and the general public uncomfortable. The Athenaeum, for example, referred to it incorrectly as the painter’s ‘Dead Stonebreaker painting’ and dismissed it as overwrought: ‘[it] may be a protest against the Poor-law, but it is still somewhat repulsive and

29  Philip Priestly, Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography, 1830–1914 (New York: Routledge, 1985), pp. 133–134. 30  Gabriel P.  Weisberg, Beyond Impressionism: The Naturalist Impulse (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), pp. 9–23. In fact, about a year after Wallis’ painting appeared, Ruskin noted another image of a stonebreaker, by the painter John Brett, that more closely followed the expected vision of worthy labour, showing a spotless, pink-cheeked child, about 10 years old, holding a hammer atop a pile of stones. Evidently, Ruskin liked the painting’s geological and botanical accuracy, but he did not comment on its prettiness, and it is clearly in a very fundamental sense ‘unnatural’, given its utter lack of dust or dirt. See Christopher Newall, ‘John Brett: the Pre-Raphaelite Years’, in David Cordingly, et al., John Brett: A Pre-Raphaelite on the Shores of Wales (Cardiff: National Museum Wales, 2001), pp. 18–19.

66 

F. ARMETTA

unaccounted for […], an attempt to excite and to startle by the poetically horrible’.31 Ruskin, however, referred to it as ‘the picture of the year’.32 What, we must ask, did Ruskin see? The painting, when displayed in the Royal Academy, appeared with a quotation from Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus: ‘For in thee too lay a God-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labour’.33 This demonstrates the idea that too much dirt—the ‘thick adhesions and defacements of labour’—was specifically seen as the mark of work that was instrumental (painful and degrading) rather than being expressive. But perhaps Ruskin would have seen it instead as an accurate depiction of the ‘bitterer blight’ to which the great nobility of this man, because he was human, had been subject. Certainly, Ruskin found that it was a pinnacle of artistic work. It seems to be a particularly appropriate lens whereby a viewer is called upon to labour, visually, to see the labourer himself, rather than merely the ‘thick adhesions and defacements’ of his labour. If for Carlyle the ‘adhesions’ were obscuring, for Ruskin they were revealing. Where, then, is the ‘beauty’ of my title in all of this? I would argue that it is in this stonebreaker, given the way, for Ruskin, the high inheres in the low. This is a departure from other critical readings of what Ruskin sees in imperfection. Caroline Levine, analysing ‘The Nature of Gothic’, has noted Ruskin’s value for imperfection and brilliantly argued that his efforts towards what I am calling ‘visual labour’ connect his devotion to painterly realism—the difficult work of recognising and representing nature’s variety—to his socialist tendencies. For Levine, Ruskin’s realism and socialism both promote labour in order to bring about a desired result: thoughtful appreciation and understanding of individual details and particularities, rather than a mindless acceptance of preconceived ideas that tend to obliterate individuality and reinforce stereotyped generalities.34 Clive Wilmer puts this another way: ‘[Ruskin’s] is not an argument for servile c­ onformity

 The Athenaeum: London, British Periodicals Ltd., no. 1592 (May 1, 1858), p. 567.  Quoted in Mike Hickox, ‘The Stonebreaker by Henry Wallis’, Victorian Web, http:// victorianweb.org/painting/wallis/paintings/hickox3.html, accessed May 2022. 33  Ibid. 34  Caroline Levine, ‘Visual Labor: Ruskin’s Radical Realism’, Victorian Literature and Culture Vol. 28, No. 1 (2000), pp. 73–86. 31 32

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

67

[…] That distinctiveness of the individual human is for Ruskin the grandest fact of life’.35 Yet each of these analyses, while accurate to a point, misses the mark somewhat in that it stops short with the human. The broader vision in Ruskin—his urgent project—is to see the human as a part of creation, such that humanity—especially humanity that is physically linked with dirt, with earthy matter, as we have seen—always shows the mark of its Maker. This vision held true even when Ruskin was distancing himself from the faith of his parents, making such gestures, in numerous different writings, as rejecting the Bible as the Word of God, disavowing the worth of the clergy, doubting the possibility of afterlife, turning his focus more to the glories of humanity than to God.36 Even at a peak of his disillusionment with Christianity, Ruskin wrote in volume five of Modern Painters (1860) that ‘the soul of man is still a mirror, wherein may be seen, darkly, the image of the mind of God’ (vii.199–203).37 This is not merely Bible-­ quoting; the key here for Ruskin, I would suggest, is the word ‘darkly’. It is the process of labouring to see through the dark—through layers of dirt, say—that brings those who care to look closer to God. This point of his is, of course, a partial echo of 1 Corinthians 13:12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known’. Though Ruskin chooses in this quotation to focus on the present (the little that we see now) rather than completing his point with any vision of the future, he seems unable to help pointing through the human, towards God. Thus far I have been arguing for an assumption, in Ruskin’s thought, of a kind of potential—we are ‘pointed’ towards the maker, as, in the Christian story, we are tending towards glory: redemption and resurrection. But consider The Ethics of the Dust, Ruskin’s 1866 imagined series of lectures to young schoolgirls. Using the concept of dust as a chemical and geological example of changefulness, arguing that ‘through all the phases of its transition and dissolution, there seems to be a continual effort to raise itself into a higher state’ (xviii.358), Ruskin exhorts his listeners, at length, to labour towards their own betterment (becoming more than 35  Clive Wilmer, ‘“No Such Thing As A Flower…”: John Ruskin’s Response to Darwin’, in Purton (2013), pp. 100–101. 36  See Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin, pp. 265–292. 37  Significantly, within a few pages of this biblical echo Ruskin returns to the theme of work, connecting the Maker and the made by remarking that ‘[Man] is himself precisely the most wonderful piece of God’s workmanship extant’ (vii.199–203).

68 

F. ARMETTA

housewives, e.g.). And in one passage, Ruskin makes a startling turn to the present tense: ‘Dust finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength’ (xviii.358) (emphasis added). This passage seems strangely under-discussed in recent scholarship, and it merits far greater attention than it has thus far been given. Ella Mershon has argued that Ruskin is here referencing, at least partly, the Victorian theory of vitalism, ‘the idea that “life” inheres in a superadded principle that cannot be reduced to physical and chemical forces’.38 But this is reductive of Ruskin’s rich metaphysics; there is no need to turn to the ‘principles’ and ‘forces’ of vitalism when the whole history of Ruskin’s work on dirt and labour suggests that this imagery speaks specifically to the idea of expressive work, to a process that, though it seems unclean, is not only good in and of itself but also has purpose and meaning beyond itself, such that an element and a person may each rise to what Ruskin calls a ‘higher state’. Furthermore, Mershon’s argument is misinformed about the Christian vision of humanity. Focusing on Ruskin’s young students, Mershon offers a reading of the dust as a figure of feminine passivity and self-sacrifice, settling on Ruskin’s use of the word ‘weakness’ to describe the dust. But Ruskin’s fuller point, I think, is only entirely clear in a biblical context: he is, here, still defining what is valuable in the human—be it a young, unformed student or a filthy, worn-out shell of a man—by invoking a creature’s recognition of the Creator’s presence. And the point about passivity only carries if we ignore Christ. Ruskin’s description of the dust directly echoes a passage in 2 Corinthians 12:9, where St. Paul writes, of Christ, ‘And he said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness”. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on me’. Two things are noteworthy about this correspondence between Ruskin’s dust and St. Paul’s letter. In the first place, both the dust and the voice of God are given the present tense: ‘dust finds in its weakness’ and ‘my strength is made perfect’. The dust is, grammatically speaking, active, while God’s power is passive, requiring the agency of human weakness to be revealed. This suggests more than the kind of ‘potential’ that vitalism offers (an idea that life inheres ‘somewhere’, and may come to rest in something). Yet it also suggests more than biblical visions of past and future. It is not the meeting between the human and the divine that once 38  ‘Ruskin’s Dust’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Spring 2016), p. 472. http://jstor. org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.58.3.03, accessed May 2022.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

69

was, in the Garden of Eden, when God ‘formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul’ (Genesis 2:7). It is also not that which is promised of Christ’s expected return: ‘Beloved […] we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2). Instead, very specifically, the verse in Corinthians insists that the holy presence of God is able to be perceived now, in all moments that make up the present for each of us, because the power of the risen Christ rests on the humanity before us, even in the moment where we also perceive human failings. In the second place, this picture of the meeting of man and God, the weak one and the perfect one, returns us to the Gothic stone carver, whose individual creations not only reflect the creation of God but whose material forms the very meeting place for the human and the divine; it is the cathedral, in all its artistic imperfection, whose stones doubly embody the relationship between Creator and created. What we see in Ruskin’s insistence on the fundamental value of stone, rock, and earthy matter is a connecting line of Christian expectation, where we are not only tending towards glory—in a state of what Ruskin called ‘progress and change’— but also, already, in the presence of the divine.

Bibliography Aitken, Robert. ‘Whistler v. Ruskin’, Litigation 27:2, MILLENNIUM (Winter 2001), pp.  65–70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29760200, accessed 31 October 2021. Armetta, Flora. ‘Dirty Work: Trollope and the Labor of the Artist’, Victorian Network 6:2 (Winter 2015), pp. 7–28. Barringer, T.J. Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain. Hartford, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Cordingly, David et al. John Brett: A Pre-Raphaelite on the Shores of Wales. Cardiff: National Museum Wales, 2001. Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1853. London: Penguin Books, 1996. ———. Great Expectations. 1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Finley, C. Stephen. Nature’s Covenant: Figures of Landscape in Ruskin. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Foster, Laura. ‘Dirt, Dust, and Devilment: Uncovering Filth in the Workhouse and Casual Wards’, Victorian Network 6:2 (Winter 2015), pp. 29–58.

70 

F. ARMETTA

Freeland, Natalka. ‘The Politics of Dirt in Mary Barton and Ruth’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 42:4, The Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 2002), pp. 799–818. Grieve, Alastair. ‘Ruskin and Millais at Glenfinlas’, The Burlington Magazine 138:1117 (Apr. 1996), pp. 228–234. Halliday, Stephen. The Great Filth: Disease, Death and the Victorian City. New York: The History Press, 2011. Hickox, Mike. ‘The Stonebreaker by Henry Wallis’, Victorian Web, http://victorianweb.org/painting/wallis/paintings/hickox3.html, accessed March 2022. Hounsell, Peter. London’s Rubbish: Two Centuries of Dirt, Dust and Disease in the Metropolis. Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2013. Jones, Jonathan. ‘“John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing” Review—Oddball or Visionary?’ The Guardian, Thurs. 24 Jan. 2019, http://theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2019/jan/24/john-­r uskin-­the-­power-­of-­seeing-­review-­critic-­ social-­reformer-­two-­temple-­place, accessed May 2022. Kelley, Victoria. ‘“The Virtues of a Drop of Cleansing Water”: Domestic Work and Cleanliness in the British Working Classes, 1880–1914’, Women’s History Review 18:5 (November 2009), pp. 719–735. Landow, George P. The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971. ———. ‘The Crossing-Sweeper Nuisance’, Victorian Web, http://victorianweb. org/victorian/periodicals/punch/17.html, accessed March 2022. Leng, Kirsten. Review of Soap and Water: Cleanliness, Dirt and the Working Classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, by Victoria Kelley, in Gender & History 23 (July 2011), pp. 462–463. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­0424.2011. 01648_12.x. Levine, Caroline. ‘Visual Labor: Ruskin’s Radical Realism’, Victorian Literature and Culture 28:1 (2000), pp. 73–86. Macleod, Dianne Sachko. ‘Private and Public Patronage in Victorian Newcastle’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52 (1989), pp. 188–208. Mershon, Ella. ‘Ruskin’s Dust’, Victorian Studies 58:3 (Spring 2016), pp. 464–492. http://jstor.org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.58.3.03, accessed March 2022. Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1996. Priestly, Philip. Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography, 1830–1914. New York: Routledge, 1985. Rees, Nigel. Brewer’s Famous Quotations. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009. Reynolds, Graham. Victorian Painting. New York: Macmillan, 1966.

2  EARTH AND HEAVEN: RUSKIN ON DIRT, WORK, AND BEAUTY 

71

Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). ———. ‘The Crystal Rest’, Lecture 10, The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallization, http://gutenberg.org/ files/4701/4701-­h/4701-­h.htm, accessed March 2022. ———. ‘Ruskin on Colour’, The Ruskin Museum, http://ruskinmuseum.com/ content/john-­ruskin/ruskin-­on-­colour.php, accessed May 2022. Segal, Sam, and Klara Alen. Dutch and Flemish Flower Pieces: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints Up to the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1, trans. Judith Deitch. Boston: Brill, 2020. Sullivan, Dick. ‘In Brief’, Navvyman, The Victorian Web, http://victorianweb. org/victorian/history/work/sullivan/2.html, accessed March 2022. Tate, Andrew. ‘“Sweeter Also Than Honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 39:1/2, Literature and Religion (2009), pp. 114–125. Trotter, Marrikka. ‘Ruskin’s Rocks’, Architectural Association Files 73 (2016), pp. 138–144. Weisberg, Gabriel P. Beyond Impressionism: The Naturalist Impulse. New  York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992. Wheeler, Michael. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Wilmer, Clive. ‘“No Such Thing as a Flower, No Such Thing as a Man”: John Ruskin’s Response to Darwin’, in Valerie Purton, ed., Darwin, Tennyson, and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science, http://jstor. org/stable/j.ctt1gxpbw0.10, accessed May 2022.

CHAPTER 3

Ruskin’s Venice: Embracing Sacred Fragments of Imperfect Beauty Madeleine Emerald Thiele

On arriving in Venice for the first time, in 1835, John Ruskin (1819–1900) exclaimed ‘Thank God I am here! It is the Paradise of cities’ (xxxv.296).1 Over the next fifty years, he would visit a further ten times and became intimately acquainted with every aspect of the watery paradise, its canals,

1  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xxxv.296).

M. E. Thiele (*) Bath, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_3

73

74 

M. E. THIELE

and enchanting lagoon.2 A present, given to him on his thirteenth birthday, had introduced him to the city’s treasures in detail. The book, Samuel Rogers’ Italy: A Poem (1830), painted a mysterious almost improbable world, full of palaces, gondolas, and canals.3 In those pages, St. Mark’s Basilica was unveiled in an imaginative and poetic way that captured Ruskin’s juvenile sensibilities. At around the same time, J.M.W. Turner’s (1775–1851) ethereal paintings of Venice and the poetry of Lord Byron (1788–1824) further shaped Ruskin’s wistful sentiment for the city. When he finally made that first visit, Ruskin was so overwhelmed by the charms of Venice that he wept when he had to leave.4 He later attributed to Rogers’ book the shaping of ‘the entire direction of my life’s energies’ (xxxv.29): Venice. In turn, she became fundamental to Ruskin’s career, providing inspiration for his The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and the three illustrated volumes of The Stones of Venice (1851–1853). Ruskin’s initial enchantment waned in the 1840s, when he realised that Venice was being neglected to a point that went far beyond the romantic-ruin sentiment of the eighteenth century. He became increasingly concerned about the city’s buildings and monuments, suspecting their neglect and decay would likely lead to the permanent destruction of many of the city’s jewels. As Ruskin saw it, Venice was under threat from two distinct sources: the Austrian occupation and the Venetians.5 If one did not destroy the city’s beautiful buildings through the firing of cannonballs, Ruskin thought the other would, through their ill-conceived 2  His first visit to Venice was in 1835, when he was just sixteen; his second visit was in 1841, when he was twenty-two; and his third—the first without his parents—was in 1845. He went there for an extended honeymoon trip in 1849–1850, and his last trip to the city was in 1888, when he was aged sixty-nine and in declining health. For commentary on Ruskin’s early trips to Venice, see John Ruskin, Harold I.  Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy: Letters to his Parents 1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) and Jeanne Clegg, Ruskin and Venice (London: Junction Books, 1981). Robert Hewison’s Ruskin’s Venice (London: Pilkington Press, 2000) and Ruskin and Venice: ‘Paradise of Cities’ (London: Yale University Press, 2009) are important references about Ruskin’s long-term relationship with Venice, and John Unrau’s Ruskin and St. Mark’s (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984) is a detailed examination of Ruskin’s record of St. Mark’s architecture. 3  See (xxxv.79). Ruskin’s copy of Italy is currently on loan to Brantwood, Ruskin’s Cumbrian home. 4  See (x.453) and Clegg, Ruskin and Venice (1981), p. 37. 5  Ruskin met many members of the Austrian military who stayed at the Hotel Danieli in Venice (also impacted by restorations) which Ruskin made his base (ix.xxiv). When the Republic capitulated it was to Austrian Field-Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, someone with whom Ruskin also became personally familiar (xii.lvi) (xxxvi.xx, 136).

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

75

restoration projects. He fretted: ‘The rate at which Venice is going is about that of a lump of sugar in hot tea’.6 Before Venice had the chance to dissolve into the lagoon, Ruskin set about capturing it. He did this by collating vast amounts of detailed information about the state of her buildings, determined to document the chronology of the mediaeval city and to understand the system of pure Venetian Gothic. His notebooks, sketches, watercolours, and daguerreotypes studiously document the architectural styles, condition, measurements, and proportions of the major civic and religious buildings throughout the city and the surrounding islands. They amount to hours of extensive labour, and pages and pages of content, out of which emerged The Stones of Venice. There Ruskin mused upon Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture, and expanded on his theories of beauty and the importance of craftsmanship, particularly that of the Gothic stonemason. Ruskin’s output remains one of the most extensive and careful bodies of work on any city, and as Dinah Birch argues, ‘it was in his studies of Venice that he came of age’.7 Ruskin witnessed the destruction of some of the city’s finest ornamentation, including the removal of marbles and mosaics from St. Mark’s Basilica. This philistinism emboldened Ruskin to map Venice’s architectural landscape. He enlisted friends, followers, and fellow artists to support him in his documentary endeavours. He campaigned, gave lectures, wrote letters, and photographed the city, in the hopes of convincing the Italian authorities of the merits of preservation, as opposed to restoration. This chapter considers Ruskin’s mission to map the city, through close analysis of watercolours and daguerreotypes—including those taken in collaboration with or by, his valet John ‘George’ Hobbs (1852–1892).8 Images by John Wharlton Bunney (1828–1882) and Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896) are presented in contrast. The images, particularly the daguerreotypes, are a sympathetic record of the city’s crumbling beauty. It is my contention that through Ruskin’s images, we see him

 Hewison, Ruskin’s Venice (2000), p. 25.  See Birch, ‘The Lamp of Memory’: Ruskin and Venice, in Michael O’Neill, ed., Venice and the Cultural Imagination (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 95. 8  For the sake of propriety, Ruskin addressed John Hobbs as ‘George’, thus differentiating him from John Ruskin senior on the principle that a Victorian gentleman should not have to share his name with a servant. See Kite’s Building Ruskin’s Italy: Watching Architecture (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 36. 6 7

76 

M. E. THIELE

consider the inevitability of organic decline as a form of vivifying and, to paraphrase Ruskin, imperfect beauty. Ruskin’s mission had an evangelical zeal to it, born out of a childhood schooled in Christian morality and Bible study. He sought to illuminate others about the value of Christian truth through his work, and he deeply esteemed the creations born from the religious imagination; for Ruskin, Italy was ‘the Holy Land’ and Venice was its most holy of temples.9 His analysis of Venetian architecture is synonymous with his extensive knowledge of the Bible; and although he battled with his Christian faith, it remained foundational to his spiritual and intellectual cognition. The city of Venice was to Ruskin a glorious outdoor church: ‘a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation’ (Isaiah 28:16). The title of The Stones of Venice is not just an indicator of subject matter but also a testament to the faith that made Venice. Venice: a cornerstone, a touchstone, a jewel of all our libraries, beautiful even in her imperfect, yet golden decay.10

‘Nothing Can Be Beautiful Which is Not True’ Ruskin’s life-long meditation upon the natural world helped shape his concept of beauty in all its visual forms. His conceptualisation of beauty, as an ideal, echoes the lessons of his Christian upbringing which had taught him the world around him was beautiful because it was ultimately ordered according to the divine. He spent hours drawing and looking at stones, leaves, mountains, and waterfalls. Through his deeply rooted sense of natural theology, Ruskin’s concept of beauty became intrinsically bound to ecology: growth and decay. He devoted whole chapters to the beauty of ecological elements, whether that be ‘Of Leaf Beauty’ or ‘Cloud Beauty’ as found in volume five of Modern Painters (1860).11 Ruskin’s leaf studies, for example, show how alive he was to a leaf’s impermanence and imperfection: Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent… And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty… All things  Unrau, Ruskin and St. Mark’s (1984), p. 194.  See (ix.xxii) for further discussion about the title’s meaning. 11  The concept of ‘Leaf Beauty’ is further explored in Alison Milbank’s chapter in this volume, ‘Those are Leaves’: Ruskin’s Analogical Imagination and the Pre-Raphaelite Theology of Nature’. 9

10

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

77

are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed. (x.204)

In ecological terms, beauty can be said to manifest itself as a changing cloud, waterfall, or thunderstorm. In volume four of Modern Painters, Ruskin’s description of a storm further elucidates his view of the natural world as symbiotic with beauty and when at its most sublime, divinity. The passage itself is wild, like the storm. It is one of his ‘word-paintings’ (xxxvii.136). His language is tempestuous, energetic, and fast-paced: mirroring the storm. The passage describes the ‘crash of thunder’, before vividly telling the reader how the prolonged storm ‘writhed and moaned beneath them, the forests wailed and waved in the evening wind, the steep river flashed and leaped along the valley’. Ruskin’s words ‘paint’ his spiritual epiphany, and as the storm passed, he too, became ‘filled with the light and clothed with the Peace of God’. It was during this epiphanic experience, Ruskin wrote, that he learned ‘the real meaning of the word Beautiful.’ This profound and revelatory experience taught Ruskin that beauty was interconnected within the sublimity of the natural world which, when contemplated, could act as conduit to the divinity. This truth, as revealed to him that day through theophanous beauty, called for a subjugation of the self. In order to stop ‘the human soul from gazing upon itself’, he thought one had to fix the spirit by feeding it honest ‘food for eternity;—this and this only is in the pure and right sense of the word beautiful’ (ix.364–365). Beauty then, in Ruskin’s conceptualisation, is sustaining but forever changing, like the seasons. This contemplation of the theophanous natural world was one way Ruskin sought to understand the value and form of beauty, but architecture was another. In The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) published just prior to The Stones, he set out what we could call a codex of religion through his chapters ‘Beauty’, ‘Truth’, and ‘Memory’, amongst others.12 It was in The Seven Lamps that Ruskin discussed beauty as coming second only to truth and where he claimed Gothic architecture to be the ‘truest’ of forms. He argued the skill of the Gothic craftsman edified not only the life of the worker but all that he helped make (and, in turn, those who looked on that which had been made). Any increase in the labourer’s craftsmanship would correlate with an increase in a building’s beauty, 12  Ruskin uses this phrase himself when describing the syncretic nature of St. Mark’s Basilica’s architecture. See (xxiv.414–415).

78 

M. E. THIELE

because the labour given was a form of veritable sacrifice (sacrifice being the first ‘Lamp’). The Gothic craftsman, then, could create a manifestly true form of beauty through his quasi-liturgical labour. The physical act of handling stone or marble was a participation in the material reality of the divine design. It mattered not that the quality of an individual carving might differ from another because it was only in the combination of all the individual elements that an ‘unaccusable whole’ (x.190) was made. As Birch notes, Gothic stonemasons ‘were disorderly and imperfect, certainly, but in that vital imperfection lay the value of their imaginative legacies’.13 The eccentricity of Gothic architecture reveals not error of design but ‘exquisite symmetry running through… apparent confusion’ (x.148). This form of beauty is perfectly imperfect (x.148). This stems from what Francis O’Gorman calls Ruskin’s ‘acceptance of imperfection’ and is in keeping with Ruskin’s theological understanding of God’s acceptance of the imperfection of humanity.14 Beauty is a form of aesthetic and spiritual nourishment: like the passing of a thunderstorm or the changing colours of a leaf. It must then be understood that beauty is always in decay, always imperfect. It is what Ruskin called this ‘fleeting beauty’ that is worthy of contemplation, if its truth is to be fully comprehended. And that truth, Ruskin emphasised, could be found through architecture when studying the ‘irregularities and deficiencies’ of its sculpted forms. If we choose to overlook or neglect the architectural jewels that history entrusted to us, as in the case of Venice in the 1840s, then we are at risk of losing much more than a building. We may lose our sympathy for one another and our sense of shared history. Ruskin’s careful studies of the city’s weathered buildings and their ornamentation were his attempt to capture the imperfect beauty of what he described as ‘the golden stain of time’ (viii.234). Imperfect beauty, as seen in (Gothic) architecture, is a form of sacra conversazione between souls here now living and those long since past. This is as Ruskin understood it: Let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, “See! this our fathers did for us”. For, indeed, the greatest glory of a build Birch, ‘The Lamp of Memory’ (2012), p. 104.  Francis O’Gorman, ‘Ruskin’s Aesthetic Failure in The Stones of Venice’, Review of English Studies. 55 (2004), pp. 387–388. 13 14

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

79

ing is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men. (viii.233)

Restoration: ‘A Lie from Beginning to End’ The Habsburg Empire of Austria occupied Venice for nearly fifty years.15 During those decades, many Venetian buildings had been ravaged. For example, in 1848, the Tintoretto paintings in the Scuola di San Rocco were damaged by cannonballs (and fragments of the paintings were left still hanging from the walls three years later). The Austrian’s shells had reached to within a hundred yards of St. Mark’s Basilica and Ruskin wrote how angry he got ‘every time I pass the guns in St. Mark’s Place’ (x.422). Stability was slow in coming. Tensions and military manoeuvres continued to cause Ruskin great concern: not least because the Austrians kept their weaponry at major cultural sites. In Fig. 3.1 you can see the intrusive Austrian soldiers underneath the arches of the Ducal Palace.16 ‘It is exactly as if the tumults in Paris could be settled no otherwise than by fighting them out in the Gallery of the Louvre’ (xi.255). Finally, in 1849, after a fifteen-month siege, the Venetian Republic capitulated to the Habsburg Empire. Further to the damage caused by the Austrians, to Casa Grimani for instance, the restoration projects of Venice (as observed by Ruskin during 1845 and 1846, and again in the winters of 1849 and 1850) were beginning to accelerate. These were prompted by the exchange(s) of power, by obvious dilapidation of the city, and by growing tourism. They were given both Imperial (Austrian) and municipal (Venetian) support.17 The lead architect on many of the restorations was the Italian, Giovanni 15  The Venetian Republic had, through a series of invasions, rebellions, failed neutrality and diplomatic actions, been under the control of both France and Austria, and back again, since 1797. Venice and the Veneto Region were finally ceded to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866. 16  See Venice. The Ducal Palace south-west angle with Austrian soldiers (c1849–1852) which is Number 61 of the Jacobson Collection in Ken and Jenny Jacobson, Carrying off the Palaces: John Ruskin’s Lost Daguerreotypes (London: Quaritch, 2015), p. 23 and pp. 260–261. 17  A fund set up for restoration works at St. Mark’s Basilica in 1856, managed by Meduna, was given imperial support by Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I.  Pietro Selvatico Estense (1803–80) was provided proposals for the ‘care’ of the building in 1859. See, R.J.B. Bosworth, Italian Venice: A History (London: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 14. In 1877, Ruskin’s campaign to ‘save’ St. Mark’s began in earnest when he established a fund for it (xxx.lvi).

80 

M. E. THIELE

Fig. 3.1  John Ruskin, Venice: the Ducal Palace South-West Angle with Austrian Soldiers, c.1849–1852, daguerreotype

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

81

Battista Meduna (1800–1880), who demonstrated a complete disregard for the achievements of Gothic or Byzantine stonemasons. For several decades, Meduna worked on Venice’s palaces, theatres, and churches, including St. Mark’s Basilica. He became a source of great agitation to Ruskin, for he was reckless and unrelenting in his approach. Ruskin reported his frustrations at the white washing of the Ducal Palace ‘splashing the capitals all over, breaking most of them, and of course, attracting the eye in a forcible manner to the black & yellow sentry boxes now in bright relief’.18 They were also washing St. Mark’s with acid and replacing missing (sold / broken / repurposed / stolen) marbles with painted stucco (to imitate alabaster). Ruskin declared these acts were architecturally ‘dishonest’, an act of deception which tarnished the building’s nobility and beauty.19 The Italians were washing away the ages, both literally and metaphorically. In order to preserve the beauty of places such as Ca’ d’Oro or St. Mark’s, Ruskin argued that you should not wash away the stains time stamps upon them, nor attempt to cure an ailing building, but tend it as best you can. Once decrepitude descends upon a building, whether through neglect or restoration, Ruskin said you should ‘throw its stones into neglected corners … [rather than] set up a Lie in their place’ (viii.244). Adding a wooden crutch or an iron girder to stop buildings from falling down around us was eminently sensible he thought, but in respect to restoring buildings, he was very clear: ‘We have no right whatever to touch them. They are not ours.’ He went so far as calling restoration ‘the most total destruction which a building can suffer’ before concluding it was ‘as impossible as to raise the dead, [as it was] to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture’ (viii.242–245).

 Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), pp. 199–200.  ‘Honest’ architecture meant no machine-made mouldings, veneers, or finishes: stucco or ‘the marbling of wood’ was a flagrant deceit; and any excess of dishonesty, such as the employment of metal, would ‘derogate from the dignity of the work’ and the beauty of the building (iii.60, 69). 18 19

82 

M. E. THIELE

He bitterly complained when he saw they were ‘scraping St. Mark’s clean’ (emphasis original).20 What time and weather had taken ‘ten centuries to bestow’ was reduced from having been ‘dyed in gold’ ‘to the colour of magnesia’.21 He wrote, ‘Venice itself is now nothing’ and ‘I must do what I can to save a little’.22 A city stripped bare of its past, its stains, even its cannonball shots, would not be the same city. ‘We can build models of St. Mark’s for ourselves, in England, or in America. We came to Venice to see that St. Mark’s’ (xxiv.410) (emphasis original), not a second-rate replica. It is for these reasons, that restoration, in Ruskin’s view, is ‘a Lie from beginning to end’ (viii.244). In contrast, Ruskin found truth in imperfection which he declared was ‘essential to all that we know of life’. Imperfection, when truthfully and honestly embraced, liberated expressive originality and vital beauty.

‘Unhappy Days’: Ca’ d’Oro The building which seems to have set Ruskin on his mission to map the city was the private palace Ca’ d’Oro (the Golden House). It dates from around 1420 and still stands proudly on the Grand Canal (Fig.  3.2). During the 1840s the owner, famous ballerina Marie Taglioni (1804–1884) commissioned Meduna to undertake restorations on both the exterior and the interior of the house.23 He added new windows to Ca’ d’Oro’s façade (with a seemingly casual disregard for symmetry or complementarity of 20  This quote comes from a letter to Ruskin’s father, dated 14th September 1845, in which Ruskin also laments the loss of the ornate canal bridges. Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), pp. 201–202. In 1877, in light of much that took place in Venice, the Pre-Raphaelite associate William Morris (1834–1896), established SPAB: the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. It was informally known as ‘Anti-Scrape’ because of Ruskin’s complaint about St. Mark’s being scraped clean. The initiative was aimed at saving St. Mark’s which began in earnest in 1879. The project came alongside Ruskin’s endeavours, and Bunney became SPAB’s correspondent. The joint pressure initiated by Ruskin and furthered by SPAB was successful: in 1880, the Italian government announced the works on the west front of St. Mark’s would cease. See: https://www.spab.org.uk/news/spabs-early-campaigning-venice, accessed May 2022. 21  Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), pp. 201–202. 22  Ibid., pp. 207–208. 23  In fact, was Meduna’s reputation was so poor that there was gossip and speculation that he ended up in jail for the damaged caused by his ‘restorations’. The daguerreotype showing the palace under restoration was produced by the ‘Frenchman’ whom the Jacobsons have convincingly argued was in fact, Le Cavalier Iller, see Jacobsons, Carrying off the Palaces (2015), pp. 35–40.

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

83

Fig. 3.2  John Ruskin, Ca’ d’Oro, 1845, pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper

architectural styles) and destroyed much of its original character and features. Ruskin even lamented that ‘one of the windows [was] destroyed before my eyes’.24 Meduna also seems to have had a complete disregard for the interior of the building: I saw the beautiful slabs of red marble, which formed the bases of its balconies, and were carved into noble spiral mouldings of strange sections, half a foot deep, dashed to pieces when I was last in Venice [1851–1852]; its glorious interior staircase, by far the most interesting Gothic monument of the kind in Venice, had been carried away, piece by piece, and sold for waste marble, two years before. (xi.370)

In a letter Ruskin wrote to his father in 1845, he voiced his fears for the palace and its fabled traceries and cornices: ‘I am sorry that you are expecting me to leave Venice so soon, & far more sorry that I cannot do so …  Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), p. 229.

24

84 

M. E. THIELE

every hour is destructive of what I most value’.25 Produced around the time of this letter, Ruskin’s watercolour of Ca’ d’Oro shows the upper portion of its façade. Rather than depicting the busy canal-side loggia, Ruskin carefully focuses instead on the Byzantine details along the rooftop; the ogee arches and ornamentation; and the tracery with the quatrefoils, that echo those of the Ducal Palace (which dates from 1340 and was iconic even at the time of Ca’ d’Oro’s construction). Ruskin’s close examination of the palace’s ornamentation highlights the craftsmanship of the stonemasons he was evaluating; in this way, he was trying to come close to the original builders. He studiously highlights those aspects that are of particular interest to his eye, even going so far as to annotate the paper on the bottom right with precise architectural details—as if providing instruction to builders. The painting’s style is somewhere between an architect’s plan and an artist’s impression. And even though most of the paper is left unannotated, we are given enough information about the palace’s ornamentation for our eyes to fill in the empty space with what we expect to see, as if we were reading a page of text. (Ruskin encouraged people to read ‘a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas’ (x.206)). Ruskin’s watercolour is distinct in its construction: it has purpose behind it. In comparison, Leighton’s watercolour Ca’ d’Oro (1856), painted from the same vantage point, has a different tonal quality and effect altogether (Fig. 3.3). Leighton, like his friend Ruskin, often visited Venice and his correspondence shows he enjoyed his leisure time there. His letters drip with poetic descriptions (‘golden’ ‘graceful’ ‘moonlit’ ‘glorious’ ‘sparkles’).26 Leighton’s numerous sketches of the city were often just for pleasure, with no finished work following thereafter; so, it is no surprise that Leighton’s watercolour is much looser in style and its atmosphere more inviting. Leighton’s painting feels more poetic, perhaps capturing the lightness of how he felt ‘as soon as ever I arrived in Venice; 25  This letter of 21st September, 1845, also records’ I can find no architectural drawings of anything here’: a difficulty which, although later overcome to some extent, was in part a catalyst for his own ‘architectural’ drawing and photographic work. Shapiro, p. 208. 26  Mrs Russell Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Two Vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1906), Vol. 1, pp. 78–79. As per Ruskin, Leighton later lamented the restorations that Venice was being subjected to, and collaborated with Morris in the SPAB initiative. Punch mocked Leighton and Morris in a cartoon of the same year. See: https://www.spab.org.uk/news/spabs-early-campaigning-venice, accessed May 2022.

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

85

Fig. 3.3  Frederic Leighton, Ca’ d’Oro, 1856, pencil and watercolour on paper

I felt a heavy cloud roll away from over me, the sun burst forth and shone on my path’.27 In Leighton’s hands, even the weathering of the building feels decorative, rather than analytical or studious. Ruskin’s painting was a means by which he channelled the beginnings of his thoughts about the Venice’s buildings in and through time, whereas Leighton’s painting seems to reveal an enjoyment of the scenery and experience of being in-­ the-­moment in Venice.

 Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton (1906), p. 137.

27

86 

M. E. THIELE

‘A Most Blessed Invention’: Photographing the Campanile Just two weeks after Ruskin despaired at what the restorations were doing to Ca’ d’Oro, a solution seemed to present itself: the daguerreotype. This photographic technology, in the ascendant since 1839, offered Ruskin new opportunities in his mission to capture the ruinous beauty of Venice.28 As Scottish physicist Sir John Robison remarked at the time: daguerreotypes offered the chance to capture details ‘which are not perceivable to the naked eye … a crack in plaster, a withered leaf lying on a projecting cornice, or an accumulation of dust in a hollow moulding [sic] of a distant building’.29 They were a reliable record of a building’s state of decay at a point in time (and thereby, its comparative state and any observable deterioration later) which could complement Ruskin’s painstaking painted observations. His initial Venetian purchases of these ‘little gems’ made at that time were from a Frenchman ‘in distress’ and, tellingly, they were of Ca’ d’Oro and of St. Mark’s Basilica.30 It is only once we know this that the blank loggia sections of Ruskin’s watercolour take on a different meaning: they were evidence of, as the pendant daguerreotype confirms, Meduna’s offending restoration works.31 In contrast to much of Ruskin’s attitude to modernisation, daguerreotypy seemed to him ‘a blessed invention’ which would allow one to see ‘the thing he has been trying to do so long in vain, done perfectly & 28  The one hundred and eighty-eight ‘lost’ Ruskin daguerreotypes were put up for auction in 2006 in Cumbria, where Ruskin’s final resting place is. The Jacobsons saw an innocuous wooden box with many daguerreotypes in the auction lots, and on a reasoned hunch they were Ruskin’s, determined to win the auction. It cost them £75,000 in the end, but they were proved right. At one time Ruskin owned two hundred daguerreotypes, and ninety-five were of Venice, see Hewison, Ruskin’s Venice (2000), p. 22. See also Jacobsons, Carrying off the Palaces (2015), pp. x–xxi. 29  Helmut Gernsheim, L.J.M.  Daguerre the history of the diorama and the daguerreotype (New York: Dover Publications, 1968), p. 88. 30  The particular daguerreotype being referred to here is The ‘Frenchman’. Venice. The Grand Canal. The Casa d’Oro under restoration. c.1845. Jacobson Collection: P79. Ruskin first owned two daguerreotypes in 1840. Jacobsons, p. 17, p. 233, and p. 274. Whilst Ruskin was wealthy, his father made remark about the large sums of money he was spending on daguerreotypy. See Jacobsons, Carrying off the Palaces (2015), p. 55 and p. 64. 31  Despite recognising the restorations taking place at the time Ruskin created this watercolour, and noting the blank section, Stephen Kite overlooks its significance. See Kite’s Building Ruskin’s Italy: Watching Architecture (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 69.

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

87

faultlessly in half a minute’.32 They were quick and fairly easy to produce but difficult to reproduce, and this made their distribution limited and expensive.33 Fortunately, Ruskin’s comfortable financial position meant it wasn’t long before he had his own equipment sourced and was able to set about producing his own plates, a task often given over to Hobbs. Ruskin was ecstatic at the results: ‘every chip of stone and stain is there’.34 Both men would become increasingly sophisticated and confident in their composition and handling of the equipment, and should be considered, as Crystal Medler suggests, photography pioneers.35 Although Ruskin had an obvious affection for daguerreotypes it should be remarked that his relationship with photography in general became more ambiguous over time.36 He neither had any inclination towards joining any photographic society, nor any ambition to exhibit the daguerreotypes he (or Hobbs) made. With one telling exception: in 1879, Ruskin loaned ten photographs to an exhibition held at the Society of Painters of Water Colours which showed ‘before’ and ‘after’ images of St. Mark’s restorations (xxiv.416). Bunney also had daguerreotypes of the southwest portico, from 1877 to compare with those taken in 1882, which show a shocking deterioration.37 The results Ruskin and Hobbs created, enabled Ruskin in his ambition to create an ‘up, down, and round about’ record of the city.38 As with Ruskin’s sketches, his daguerreotypes often capture carefully curated aspects of a building and he used them to verify his understanding of the city’s monuments: ‘I have been walking all over St. Mark’s place today, and found a lot of things in the Daguerreotype that I never had noticed in the place itself’.39 His plates became increasingly sophisticated, yet subtle in their composition and were more than just an aide memoire. In their  Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), p. 220, p. 225.   For comments about Ruskin’s expenses, see Jacobsons, Carrying off the Palaces (2015), p. 121. 34  Ibid., p. 220. 35  Crystal Leah Medler, ‘Certainty in the Uncertainty of Venice: John Ruskin and the Daguerreotype Photographic Process’ (Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2010), p. 59. 36  Unrau, Ruskin and St. Mark’s (1984), p. 32. 37  Ibid., p. 114. Bunney’s own collection included photographs of restorations as taken by others. For example, this image of St. Mark’s: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/ O1488860/st-marks-basilica-facade-with-photograph-unknown/, accessed May 2022. 38  Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), p. 225. 39  Ibid., p. 220. 32 33

88 

M. E. THIELE

totality, they illustrate Ruskin’s general fascination for the organic imperfect qualities of what he saw before him: marble, stone, waterfalls, rocks, and landscapes.40 One particularly interesting image is of the Campanile, which stands in St. Mark’s Square next to the Basilica (Fig. 3.4). Ruskin had little regard for the tower condemning it as ‘Renaissance, but as good Renaissance as there is in Venice’ (ix.247). Though other views show the Campanile from across the lagoon looking back towards the Ducal Palace, this is more radical in its composition. It is possible that Ruskin alone took this image: Hobbs’ involvement remains undetermined. It is a half-plate, slightly tarnished daguerreotype, with blackened edges that may suggest the plate was over-exposed or the result of light leaking into the camera. It has, however, a ‘bold Rembrandtism’ (xi.311) to it, which creates an almost supernatural atmosphere: part in, part out of this world. Whilst its sensibility is modern, it likely also owes a debt to mezzotints.41 Ruskin must have positioned himself roughly opposite the Caffé Florian, nearing the Gran Caffè Quadri when taking this daguerreotype. The close-cropped angle of the image sweeps our eye up the priapic Campanile which lurches left from its very edge. Perhaps it seems obvious to say that the tower towers over St. Mark’s Basilica, but it seems to do so actively, in a way that pulls our eye down from the top of the Campanile to the Basilica. The daguerreotype’s perpetual return to the Gothic (coupled with the Byzantine and Romanesque as found in St. Mark’s) is in keeping with Ruskin’s criticism of Renaissance society and the art it produced. In direct contrast to the societal and artistic decline represented by the architectural thumbprint of the Renaissance, and its associated reintroduction of Paganism, St. Mark’s personified the rich expressiveness of the Gothic Christian spirit.42 Ruskin points us towards the Gothic, via St. Mark’s, for it is this building which pre-occupied him the most and it was 40  Ruskin’s daguerreotypes of Switzerland are particularly fascinating in this regard, e.g. Jacobson Collection: P156, RF75, and P164 to name but three. 41  Medler, ‘Certainty in the Uncertainty of Venice’ (2010), p. 3. 42  The reader should be reminded that Ruskin’s opinions alter throughout his long career and voluminous writing. His condemnations do wax and wane at points, and there are many examples of his being contradictory. For example, Unrau points out that the beauty of some of his most successful passages of writing undermines the blow he was aiming at Renaissance architecture. See Unrau, Ruskin and St. Mark’s (1984), pp. 12–13. For his changing opinions of the value of daguerreotype, see: Michael Harvey, ‘Ruskin and Photography’, Oxford Art Journal 7:2 (1985), pp. 25–33.

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

89

Fig. 3.4  John Ruskin (and John ‘George’ Hobbs?), Venice. St. Mark’s and the Campanile, c.1850–1852, daguerreotype

90 

M. E. THIELE

the one being most poorly treated by Meduna. ‘The Gothic had fellowship with all hearts’ said Ruskin, it ‘was universal, like nature; it could frame a temple for the prayer of nations’ (xi.75).

Into the ‘Treasure heap’: St. Mark’s Basilica One of Ruskin’s lesser-known passages about St. Mark’s Basilica is a literary attempt to frame that prayer: For indeed, without and within, St. Mark’s is not, in the real nature of it, a piece of architecture, but a jewelled casket and painted reliquary, chief of the treasures in what were once the world’s treasuries of sacred things, the kingdoms of Christendom. A jewelled casket, every jewel of which was itself sacred … beyond all measure of value as a treasury of art, it is also, beyond all other volumes, venerable as a codex of religion.43 (xxiv.414–415)

This beautiful passage recalls the rich jewels found in Revelation 21 (the sapphires, topaz, opals, and gold), as well as Ruskin’s geometric and mathematical recording of proportions: suggesting it was a deliberate literary device. His Turneresque watercolour of St. Mark’s ‘after the rain’ (Fig. 3.5) is a pictorial version that recreates part of the ‘treasure heap’ that is St. Mark’s.44 Recalling the watery quality of Ca’ d’Oro, its expressive play with light and shade makes its shadows appear almost to drip down the page. The building becomes as liquid as the lagoonal water the city floats upon; St. Mark’s becomes, like Venice herself, ‘this strange Dream upon the water.’45 As with Ca’ d’Oro, Ruskin highlights areas of importance: in this instance, he gives attention to the organic leaf detail on one of the Pillars of Acre. Ruskin’s descriptions of St. Mark’s are scattered throughout with organic terms, ranging from the changing gradations of light, passing thunder clouds, and even mountains and trees. By concentrating on the ecology of the scene—the leaves, rain, and stone—Ruskin’s watercolour is encouraging fellowship with the natural world through Byzantine design.

43  The most famous of passage is also littered with references to opals and light and treasure heaps of gold. It is one of Ruskin’s most impressive, lyrical, and beautifully written. See (xii.82). 44  This image was also the first plate in Ruskin’s St. Mark’s Rest (xxiii). 45  Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1841), p. 119.

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

91

Fig. 3.5  John Ruskin, Part of St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice: Sketch after Rain. 27th May, 1846, watercolour

92 

M. E. THIELE

The painting’s liquid form blurs the boundaries between the ecological elements and is, to borrow Roger Scruton’s phrase, a way of expressing ‘the indecipherable edge of our being’.46 Something besides the facts is being presented to us—something beyond our quotidian experience. This is part of Ruskin’s attempt to visually ‘enlighten what is incomprehensible’ (xi.62), to decipher on our behalf. Perhaps, most revealingly, in an area void of colour and detail, the viewer encounters an unblemished cross which supports the Byzantine pillar. The cross represents the Christian foundation of Venice’s most unique building: it is the cornerstone of faith, supporting a world which is dissolving around it.47 While the restorers were ‘scraping’ St. Mark’s clean and physically removing much of its history, Ruskin was contemplating the cornerstone of faith as fundamental to the city and its achievements. So, while this expressive watercolour initially seems to be documentary, without sermon, Ruskin’s pictorial alliance of the elemental, architectural, and symbolic consolidates the values he would later set out in his ‘Lamps’. We are reminded once more of (Isaiah 28:16), a piece of Scripture Ruskin often made reference to, but we are also seeing Ruskin’s evaluation of form and beauty as found in Gothic and Byzantine design, unveiling.48 A not dissimilar painting by Ruskin is The South-Side of the Basilica of St. Mark’s, from the loggia of the Doge’s Palace (1850–1852, Private Collection). It has the same mirror-like brilliance that Ruskin captures in ‘After the Rain’ and that he sought in his daguerreotypes. It is based on two daguerreotypes in the Jacobson Collection.49 Were it not for the difference in the carvings half-way down the pillars, one could think they were a reflection from a building rising from the water. Ruskin, once again, omits certain details that disquieted him: he overlooks the modern gas lamps that had been installed c.1843 in a manner not dissimilar to his  Roger Scruton, The Face of God: the Gifford Lectures (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 37.  Similarly, in Ruskin’s writing about Tintoretto’s The Annunciation (1582–7, Scuola di San Rocco, Venice), he discusses the cornerstone of the building as representing Christianity ‘arising in the dawning of the sky’ (iv.265). 48  Ruskin also considered the painting to have instructional value, as demonstrated by his presenting it to Oxford University in 1875, to be used in the teaching of undergraduates http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/collection/8979/object/14142, accessed May 2022. 49  The painting was to be used as an illustration for Examples of Architecture of Venice. The daguerreotypes are numbers 30 and 31 (31 is laterally reversed but taken at a similar time). See Jacobsons, Carrying off the Palaces (2015), p. 61 and p. 254, and Hewison, Ruskin’s Venice (2000), pp. 70–71. 46 47

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

93

omitting the loggia in Ca’ d’Oro.50 The gas lamps do, of course, appear in the daguerreotypes, but where possible, Ruskin attempted to remove ‘modern’ or present-day intrusions, for example, drain pipes or scaffolding.51 He was steadfast in his ambition to record Venice through the ages, however, his elision of ugly modern-day objects and offensive restorations suggests, as James Phillips argues, that within Ruskin’s ‘factual account of beauty is the urgency of protecting beauty against the depredations of industrial capitalism’.52 Ruskin’s opposition to industrialisation followed in the footsteps of his good friend and ‘papa’ Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). Carlyle blamed industrialism for creating men who are ‘grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand…have lost faith in individual endeavour… Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.’53 Despite Ruskin’s claims he could see ‘every chip and stain’ in his daguerreotypes, it is clear that he was not trying to capture Venice in a merely mechanical manner (nor was he producing works just for pleasure, in his leisure time, like Leighton). Ruskin’s radically composed daguerreotypes and dissipating watercolours reflect Carlyle’s opposition to soulless mechanics. In a daguerreotype of the principal façade of St. Mark’s, we are once again, being given something beyond the facts of the building alone (Fig. 3.6). The daguerreotype has a similar liquid aspect to the watercolours. Its spectral nature and lack of colour makes the Basilica seem mysterious and strangely exotic. The Basilica’s peculiarity comes, in part, from the Eastern inspired domes which were designed ‘to concentrate light upon their orbed surfaces’ (ix.183) and reflect the golden light throughout the civic square. This is in keeping with the purpose of the building which is, after all, a place of Christian worship and a source of revelatory light. Accordingly, 50  https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/old-master-drawings­n10006/lot.162.html, accessed May 2022. The Austrians were responsible for much of the modernisation (gas lighting) and the restorations in the city, see Medler, pp. 29–30. 51  On one occasion, he complained to a friend about an obtrusive water pipe in an image, the man in question returned to the ‘obnoxious gutter, cut a foot of it clear’ and retook the image much to the impress of Ruskin (xxxii.100). A letter of 1845 shows Ruskin complaining about the presence of a gas pipe thrusting him, reluctantly, back into the nineteenth century. See Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), pp. 201–202. 52  James Phillips, ‘Beauty is a Fact under Siege: John Ruskin as Critic in a State of Ecological Emergency’, Journal of Victorian Culture, Vol. 25, Issue 1, January 2020, pp. 63–76. 53  Thomas Carlyle, ‘Signs of the Times’, Edinburgh Review 49 (June 1829), p. 441.

94 

M. E. THIELE

Fig. 3.6  John Ruskin (and John ‘George’ Hobbs), Venice. St. Mark’s. Principal Façade, c.1852, daguerreotype

Ruskin’s response to the building is distinct from that of Ca’ d’Oro in as much as the Basilica is part of the ‘treasure heap’ of Christianity: a sacred place for prayer, where all imperfections will be endured and forgiven. The daguerreotype captures what Ken Jacobson has described as a soaring celestial vision.54 However imperfect the Basilica was materially speaking, for Ruskin its beauty came from the religious imagination which first created it and would, ultimately, help sustain it. The radical compositions and the shallow depth-of-field often found in Ruskin’s daguerreotypes suggest they had a value other than mere representation; they seem to aspire to a more essentialist mode of representation, perhaps following Turner’s painterly example. When Ruskin wanted facts alone, he seemed to rely on his notebooks or drawings more. In contrast, the daguerreotypes were an essential part of Ruskin’s ‘individual

 In private correspondence between the author and Ken Jacobson dated 24th May 2022.

54

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

95

endeavour’ to evangelise the Venetian response in preserving, not restoring, the buildings whether religious or otherwise. This would help the church’s ‘treasure’ endure for years to come, and thus, the city’s also. As part of this mission, driven by the ‘urgency of protecting beauty’, Ruskin commissioned Bunney to paint the western façade of the Basilica in its entirety: the same vista Hobbs had already ‘daged’ at least twice. He duly spent six hundred mornings sitting in St. Mark’s Square, producing a seven and a half foot-long painting which remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1882 (Fig. 3.7).55 Ruskin declared the painting’s purpose was ‘catching’ the Basilica’s architectural detail (xxii.476). But Bunney’s oil fails in two important respects: it creates neither the ‘golden stain’ of the ages that Ruskin spent so many hours pursuing (Ruskin himself criticised its colour), nor did it have sufficient focus upon the visual facts for a viewer to be able to analyse them easily. It is overwrought: neither informative nor contemplative. It tells us far less about the personality, restorations, or beauty of the Basilica, than the pendant daguerreotype.56 Ruskin’s daguerreotypes are distinct from Bunney’s oil because they have something of Venice’s light in them, brought about through his intimacy with the subtle shadows of architectural fragments and their golden ageing. They are an evocation of Venice itself, one which Unrau describes as having a ‘vagueness and mystery…fashioned from precisely focused observation’.57 Impressive and precisely focused as it is, Bunney’s oil is more documentary than mystery. Ruskin’s concerns about St. Mark’s are absent: Bunney removes the imperfections, thus denying its transient beauty.

55  Bunney first encountered Ruskin in the 1850s, as a student at the Working Men’s College. See ‘Recollections of Ruskin’ The Working Men’s College Journal, June 1908, x, p. 345, and also (xxxvi.lxiv). 56  On the one hand, Ruskin celebrated Bunney’s achievements, considering the painting to be his ‘principal record’ of the Basilica, and on the other, Ruskin criticised it for its colour. It became an important part of the Guild of St. George, but was variously loaned out for long periods of time, as if Ruskin was undecided (xxx.lvi). North-West Angle of St. Mark’s by Bunney was also gently criticised by Ruskin, despite it showing the Byzantine architecture as directed (by Ruskin). ‘The varieties of colour represented in this painting as existing in the ancient marbles, are slightly, though unintentionally exaggerated by the earnestness of the artist’s attention to them’ (xxx.2020). 57  Unrau, Ruskin and St. Mark’s (1984), p. 145.

96 

M. E. THIELE

Fig. 3.7  John Wharlton Bunney. Western Façade of the Basilica of San Mark, 1877–1882, oil on canvas

Daguerreotype technology offered Ruskin a half-way house between an artist’s inevitably limited capacity (to capture every minute detail and characteristic of a building,) and technology’s gift to speed up the recording of any given moment (even allowing for equipment that was cumbersome to manoeuvre). For Ruskin, daguerreotypy created a bridge between man’s ambition and limitations: its realisations were not too perfect, nor too mechanical. More than the detailed labours of Bunney or the soft evocation of Leighton, Ruskin’s daguerreotypes and watercolours reveal the visual truth of the city. They capture Ruskin’s expressive sympathy for the beauty of the ages. Likely, they also reveal the love Ruskin had for the city: a city which to him was imperfect, beautiful, and at times coupled with ‘shade[s] of melancholy’ (iii.544). As Ruskin said: in decoration or beauty, it is less the actual loveliness of the thing produced than the choice and invention concerned in the production, which are to delight us; the love and the thoughts of the workman more than his work; his work must always be imperfect, but his thoughts and affections may be true and deep. (ix.64)

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

97

‘Those stones will be held sacred…’ In the late 1860s, Bunney presented Ruskin with a small pill-box of mosaic tesserae from the floor of St. Mark’s. The old mosaic had been replaced as far back as 1838 by contemporary work but in 1857, the restorations gathered pace first on the north side of the church, followed by the south side in 1865. In 1872, the floor of the north aisle was levelled. Once more, the hand of Meduna was felt; he had squandered Byzantine mosaics, marbles, and even staircases. He had failed in his trusteeship of Ca’ d’Oro and St. Mark’s, and ultimately, he failed Venice.58 Ruskin launched a direct written attack, replete with daguerreotype prints, on Meduna via his circular Respecting Memorial Studies of St. Mark’s (1879) (xxiv.414–424).59 But Meduna was unrepentant: he ‘gloried in the new work which he had substituted, because it was more precise and regular than the old’ (xxiv.lxi–lxii). Meduna’s pursuit of clean regularity was the antithesis of Ruskin’s imperfect beauty. In 1880, after much publicity and pressure from Ruskin, the Italian government announced the works on the west front of St. Mark’s would cease.60 Ruskin’s small pill-box contained one of the eyes of the peacock’s tail from the old mosaic pavement. His interest in an animal he called ‘purely Byzantine’ in design (ix.429) was such that he made several watercolours of their feathers and pondered about them in various passages: thinking about their significance, their colour, even down to the most effective way to sculpt their tails. The ‘whole spirit and power of [the] peacock is in those eyes of the tail’ he said, which makes the giving of the tesserae by Bunney a touching and personal gesture (ix.288). They represent more than antiquarian sympathy; those tiny fragments were ‘literally the stones of Venice’.61 Ruskin tells us peacocks, a potent Christian symbol of the Resurrection, were favoured because of their incorruptibility (x.171). Somehow then, those little tesserae pieces in a pot not even seven centimetres across,  Unrau, Ruskin and St. Mark’s (1984), p. 191.  Ibid., p. 126 and p. 207. 60  See: https://www.spab.org.uk/news/spabs-early-campaigning-venice, accessed May 2022. Ruskin’s own measurements of the south portico show columns were still moved and even upended after this time. See Unrau, Ruskin and St. Mark’s (1984), p. 55 and Hewison, Ruskin’s Venice (2000), p. 54. 61  Michael Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 243. See also: Hewison, Ruskin’s Venice (2000), p. 52. 58 59

98 

M. E. THIELE

encapsulate the eternality of St. Mark’s, or more precisely, of Christianity. Those fragments came from one of the most enigmatic churches in Christendom and from one of the most improbable cities ever created. They represented the labour of the craftsman and of Ruskin—who had found in St. Mark’s Basilica ideas of faith, architecture, and aesthetic theory. In turn, those fragments validated all the time, money, and attention that Ruskin had lavished on the city. This may explain why the little pot was still at Brantwood at the time of his death.62 Ruskin’s daguerreotypes, words, and paintings are a gift through which, as we have seen in this chapter, we can come to know the imperfect city through his eyes. I have argued they were part of his mission to preserve a city, to bond us through ‘mysterious sympathy’, ‘to enlighten what is incomprehensible’ (xi.62) and to reveal the value of imperfect beauty to all. Through imperfections, we can find revelatory truths and sustaining beauty. The act of creation brings incomprehensible and indecipherable ideas nearer to us, for our contemplation. And if, to paraphrase Ruskin, we rest our gaze upon the beautiful fragments of the city, large or small, we shall inherit the essence of all that has gone before us (x.117). This way, we can come to ‘feel what the old builder wanted to say to us, and how much he desired us to follow him with our understanding as he laid stone above stone’ (xi.450).

Bibliography Barrington, Mrs. Russell. The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1906. Bunney, Sarah. ‘John W. Bunney’s “big picture” of St. Mark’s, and the Ruskin-­ Bunney relationship’, Ruskin Review and Bulletin 4 (2007), pp. 18–47. Bunney, Sarah. ‘J.  W. Bunney’s “big picture”: an update’, Ruskin Review and Bulletin 4 (2008), pp. 13–15. Bunney, Sarah. ‘Mementoes of 19th century Italy: American patronage of John Wharlton Bunney (1828–82)’, The British Art Journal 10 (2009/10), pp. 108–124. 62  It is unclear where the peacock pieces are now currently, but they are no longer at Brantwood. There are various references to St. Mark’s Basilica incorporated into the design of Ruskin’s gravestone in Cumbria, by W.G. Collingwood; the most important symbol is the Lion which was included to memorialise the great achievement that was The Stones of Venice.

3  RUSKIN’S VENICE: EMBRACING SACRED FRAGMENTS OF IMPERFECT… 

99

Bosworth, R.J.B. Italian Venice: A History. London: Yale University Press, 2014. Birchall, Heather. ‘Contrasting Visions: Ruskin—The Daguerreotype and the Photograph,’ Living Visions: The Journal of the Popular and Projected Image before 1914 1:2 (2003), pp. 2–20. Clegg, Jeanne. Ruskin and Venice. London: Junction Books, 1981. Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1841. Gernsheim, Helmut. L.J.M. Daguerre the history of the diorama and the daguerreotype. New York: Dover Publications, 1968. Hewison, Robert. Ruskin’s Venice. London: Pilkington Press, 2000. ———. Ruskin and Venice: ‘Paradise of Cities’. London: Yale University Press, 2009. Jacobson, Ken and Jenny. Carrying off the Palaces: John Ruskin’s Lost Daguerreotypes. London: Quaritch, 2015. Kite, Stephen. Building Ruskin’s Italy: Watching Architecture. London: Routledge, 2012. Harvey, Michael, ‘Ruskin and Photography’, Oxford Art Journal 7:2 (1985), pp. 25–33. O’Gorman, Francis. ‘Ruskin’s Aesthetic Failure in The Stones of Venice’, Review of English Studies 55 (2004), pp. 387–388. O’Neill, Michael, ed. Venice and the Cultural Imagination. London: Routledge, 2012. James Phillips, ‘Beauty is a Fact under Siege: John Ruskin as Critic in a State of Ecological Emergency’, Journal of Victorian Culture 25:1 (January 2020), pp. 63–76. Rogers, Samuel. Italy: A Poem. London: Cadell, Jennings & Chaplin, Moxon, 1830. Ruskin, John, Harold I.  Shapiro ed. Ruskin in Italy Letters to his Parents 1845. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Scruton, Roger. The Face of God: The Gifford Lectures. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Settis, Salvatore. If Venice Dies. London: New Vessel Press, 2016. Unrau, John. Ruskin and St. Mark’s. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. Wheeler, Michael. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Internet Sources All internet sources were accessed in May 2022 Burman, Peter. A Question of Ethics. https://www.buildingconservation.com/ articles/ethics/conservation_ethics.htm https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1488860/st-­marks-­basilica-­facade-­with­photograph-­unknown/ Donoghue, Steve. https://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/donoghue.html

100 

M. E. THIELE

http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/collection/8979/object/14142 https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/old-­m aster-­ drawings-­n10006/lot.162.html https://www.spab.org.uk/news/spabs-­early-­campaigning-­venice

CHAPTER 4

‘Those Are Leaves’: Ruskin’s Analogical Imagination and the Pre-Raphaelite Theology of Nature Alison Milbank

John Ruskin has left us a range of beautifully realised drawings and watercolours of leaves and branches, some of which illustrated volume five of Modern Painters (1860), while others formed part of his teaching materials when he was Slade Professor at Oxford (1869–1878). His intense interest in foliage is witnessed by a long section of Modern Painters devoted to ‘Leaf Beauty’ and by the prominence of leafy examples in The Elements of Drawing (1857). While Ruskin was working on these volumes in the 1850s, he was also closely involved with the artists in the Pre-Raphaelite circle. This involvement began with Ruskin’s defence of the Pre-Raphaelites in two letters to The Times in May 1851 (xii.319–327) and would develop into support and patronage but also criticism of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and others in their circle.

A. Milbank (*) Nottingham, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_4

101

102 

A. MILBANK

In this chapter, I shall argue that Ruskin’s writings about leaves, and his mixed responses to the painted foliage of the Pre-Raphaelites, reveal something of the metaphysical basis of Ruskin’s aesthetic theory. While the moral and religious import of Ruskin’s use of symbolic typology has long been recognised, there has been little attention to the theology which informed his use of this medieval mode of biblical exegesis.1 It came to Ruskin not directly from study of Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism but mediated through Dante and through the Reformation period Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker. Ruskin’s tutor at Oxford, Osborne Gordon, had presented him with an edition of Hooker, as edited by John Keble.2 It was in Dante and Hooker that Ruskin found the doctrine of analogy and theology of participation that would enable him to develop the germ of an ecological theology in which agency could be restored to the natural world. For Hooker ‘all things in this world are said in some sort to seek the might, to covet more or less the participation of God himself’, while from the divine end, the Holy Spirit ‘useth every particular nature, every mere natural agent’, to enable its active sharing in the divine life and perfections.3 Ruskin calls this a ‘creative spirit’ in natural things or an ‘inner rapture’ (xix.360–361). Ruskin praised the Pre-Raphaelites for their respect for nature and their faithfulness in its representation, yet could quickly decide that Millais, whom he lauded for Autumn Leaves in 1856 (Fig. 4.1), was also ‘slovenly’ in its details and guilty of ‘warped feeling’ and ‘irregularity in the 1  See George P. Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows; Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) and Landow’s earlier The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972). 2  See Modern Painters Volume II, in John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xxxv.14,414). Hooker was central to the Tractarians’ construction of a ‘via media’ theology between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. See Kevin Fraser Curnow, ‘Richard Hooker, John Henry Newman: A Via Media Theology of the Eucharist’. Pacifica: Australasia Theological Studies 30, no.3 (2017): 214–239 and Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation’, in Torrance Kirby, ed. A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 563–612. 3  Richard Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr Richard Hooker, with an Account of his Life and Death by Isaac Walton, 2 Vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1841), 1, pp. 162, 157.

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

Fig. 4.1  John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1856, oil on canvas

103

104 

A. MILBANK

conception of facts’ (xiv.109). Through a comparison between the portrayal of leaves in artworks by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, in particular those by Millais, I shall try to make sense of Ruskin’s unease and suggest that it lies in his awareness of the implicit metaphysics behind the Pre-­ Raphaelites’ artistic representation, which sometimes differs from the theology of participation found in Hooker. Pre-Raphaelite work can lack a sense of analogy, in the sense of an active sharing in God’s natural perfections, which then makes it more difficult for it to unite what Ruskin terms ‘vital’ with ‘typical’ beauty (iv.210).

Ruskin’s Use of Analogy Ruskin’s metaphysics, which allows him to view the natural world as having its own participation in the life of God, is developed during the first two volumes of Modern Painters and is decisively influenced by his reading of Hooker’s The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (c.1597). For Hooker creation is suspended from God through a series of laws by which it shares in the eternal law of God. A law here is ‘a directive rule unto goodness of operation’, which lies in each creature and guides it to its perfection.4 There is a telos or goal for every natural form, but paradoxically, this direction is the result of the indwelling presence of God within the form, which gives it freedom and potential.5 Humans can observe a pattern and intelligibility in nature because, as Ruskin points out, quoting Hooker, ‘the very being of God is a law to His working’ (iv.139).6 This means that God gives His own perfection and order to the creation so that it reveals His character. The transcendentals or properties of being, such as oneness, truth and beauty, are ways in which creatures participate in this divine life and order. One can see this element of Hooker in Ruskin’s employment of participated divine qualities such as unity, repose and moderation in Modern Painters as well as in the ‘types’ of the first volume. Quoting Hooker directly, Ruskin writes: ‘All things,’ says Hooker, ‘God only excepted, besides the nature that they have in themselves, receive externally some perfection from other things.’ Hence the appearance of separation or isolation in anything, or of self-­  Ibid., p. 148.  Ibid., p. 156. 6  Ibid., p. 173. 4 5

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

105

dependence, is an appearance of imperfection; and all appearances of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both as significative of perfection in the things united, and as typical of that Unity which we attribute to God. (iv.92)

Here Hooker allows Ruskin to conceive of multiplicity of natural forms and unite the one and the many through hierarchical exchange of qualities, in which forms mediate divine qualities to others: ‘passing upwards and downwards of beneficent effects’ (iv.94). Indeed, this passage implies strongly that the diversity of forms only increases the perfection of the whole natural order. As Malcolm Mackenzie Ross rightly noted, this view of creation depends upon the doctrine of analogy. In medieval thought analogy was to be distinguished from univocity, in which God and the created order would be on some continuum of being, and from equivocity, in which there would be two dissimilar modes of being.7 Analogy was the way in which medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas sought to find ways to make statements of comparison between God and humankind, while keeping them ontologically distinct. ‘God possesses in himself all the perfections of creatures, being Himself simply and universally perfect. Hence every creature represents Him, and is like Him so far as it possesses some perfection’.8 Although one can use the word ‘beautiful’ of a leaf and of God, the nature of the word beauty describes certain ways in which they are both alike and unlike. Moreover, the good qualities that we perceive in the leaf depend upon its participation in life, given it by God. Beauty belongs properly to God and by His attribution, to the leaf. Even contemplation of beauty, Ruskin writes, is ‘a gift of God’, elevating our nature (iv.47). Central to this way of thinking is the analogy of being, whereby true being belongs to God and creatures only by participation in Him. By being created ex nihilo, from nothing, the leaves’ cause is God and they are related

7  Malcolm Mackenzie Ross, ‘Ruskin, Hooker and “the Christian Theoria”’, in Millar MacLure and F.  W. Watt, eds., Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age Presented to A. S. P. Woodhouse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), pp. 289–290. 8  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 22 Vols. (London: Burns and Oates, 1922), 1.13.2.

106 

A. MILBANK

to him as objects of his making.9 Herein lies the difference between Creator and what is created: whilst not in competition or comparable hierarchically speaking, what is created is intimately related to the maker through the participatory act of being made.10 That which is created— leaves, creatures, mankind—is thereby freely enabled to be, and any particularity and life comes only from God. Moreover, as we have seen in Ruskin’s quotation from Hooker, the individual life form, such as a leaf, receives its divine analogy via its relation to other forms; the leaf, for example, is directly created with God’s signature upon it as its cause of being and also exists in relations of complex interdependence with other forms, which are themselves revelatory of the divine unity. Hooker, as has been mentioned, understands the enactment of this participation in God to be mediated by an inner law and Ruskin shares this view, stating ‘the true happiness of every creature is in this very discharge of its function, and in those efforts by which its strength and inherent energy are developed’ (iv.173). This quotation comes from the section of Modern Painters Volume II on vital beauty, where Ruskin turns his attention to the inner life of natural forms. Analogy is not left behind because what enables this life is the ‘holding in being’ by God. As Paul Dominiak has argued,11 Hooker combines law-bound hierarchical participation with the creation and subsequent holding in being, of every created being. The creature’s participation and labour to ‘discharge of its function’ mirrors the creative activity of Christ as the Wisdom shaper: All things are therefore partakers of God, they are his offspring, his influence is in them, and the personal wisdom of God is for that very cause said to excel in nimbleness and agility to pierce into all intellectual, pure and subtle spirits, to go through all, and reach unto every thing which is.12

Vital beauty as defined by Ruskin is quasi-liturgical so that the ‘work’ of the plant, for example, in growth and curvature is participatory in the cosmic worship. In humans and ‘subtle spirits’ or angels, this worshipful response is rational as the creatures are ‘aimiablie drawn’, as Hooker puts 9  On the analogy of being and participation, see Andrew Davison, Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 10  Ibid., pp. 228–235. 11  Paul Anthony Dominiak, Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation (London: Bloomsbury/T & T Clark, 2020), pp. 36–38. 12  Hooker, The Works, 1, p. 623.

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

107

it, to God.13 Ruskin embraces the language of worship when he claims that creatures like bees work to heap up riches, whereas other creatures are ‘employed like angels, in endless offices of love and praise’ (iv.156). Yet while stressing the active subjecthood of the plants and their liturgical agency, Ruskin encourages his readers to be equally active, rather than passive, when contemplating natural forms and creatures. He calls this attentive contemplation and recognition of vital beauty a ‘joyfulness in breathless things’, which we can exercise through ‘unselfish sympathy with its happiness’ (iv.151–152). Ruskin is insistent that we acknowledge the particularity and otherness of every bird or plant, and in so doing, we are participating in both worship and the furtherance of divine beauty: such as ‘cannot be heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly tuned, or whose mind is clearly and surely sighted’ (iv.147). Ruskin’s Hookerian awareness of nature, as a pleroma of divine unity and participation in natural law, informs the pathetic fallacy discussion in volume three of Modern Painters. Turning to Dante, Ruskin seeks a corrective to the tendency of the Romantic poets to project the subject’s feelings on to a natural object: Thus when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron ‘as dead leaves flutter from a bough,’ he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. (v.206)

The analogy here, of course, is horizontal, between two different forms, the spirits and the leaves, and they are related by the analogy of proportion so that the spirits fall lightly and inexorably to the pit of Hell as leaves fall to the ground in Autumn. In the same way, however, as we have seen in Hooker, the Dantean trope creates a distinction between the spirits and leaves while acknowledging their distinctions are part of the splendid array of hierarchically ordered plants, creatures, rocks, humans and angels. Dante’s image also enacts the typology that Ruskin himself valued and adumbrated in response to Holman Hunt’s symbolic details in The Light 13  Quoted from Hooker’s Dublin Fragments 2 in Dominiak, Architecture of Participation (2020), p. 87.

108 

A. MILBANK

of the World. The legend beneath Hunt’s painting ‘is the beautiful verse, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”’ (Revelation 3:20) (xii.329). Ruskin describes the foliage as ‘overgrown’, ‘creeping’ and ‘soft’. But he also noted the scene is lit by ‘the hope of salvation’ that ‘melts into the glow of it the forms of the leaves and boughs’ (xii.330). In such a reading, the feebleness and passivity of the melting leaves mirror the failure of the will to hold to the good by the damned souls in Inferno. Dante’s world, hierarchically ordered, has a reciprocal dynamic whereby the lower form is raised by the higher, just as the protagonist is drawn into ever deeper understanding of Paradise by Beatrice, his spiritual superior. It is similarly the difference between leaves and souls, as between Dante and Beatrice, which enables the relation and, thereby, the unity between them. It is not, of course, the ontological chasm between God and creation, but a certain analogy of attribution, by which God’s perfection enables the comparison between two created forms. The difference between souls and leaves is also metaphysically important. Losing their hold on a true vision of the good, the souls have lost their humanity and become more like leaves than they should, given their gift of intellect. As a narrator, viewing Hell with the eyes of one on his way to salvation, Dante keeps a clear preception that they are not the same.

Leaves in All Their Forms The analogical imagination by which the human viewer is made aware of a kinship as created beings with the natural world is also evident in Ruskin’s artistic practice. He loved leaves in all their forms, as is evident from the chapters devoted to them in volume five of Modern Painters, in a section entitled ‘Of Leaf Beauty’, and from the many lovely leaf studies he drew and painted. Ruskin rarely paints a landscape but rather records it, as he does also a building, a branch or a leaf as akin to a specimen in some Linnaean collection: the difference being that Ruskin accords a dynamism and life to his image, an effect rendered all the more vital by the way in which he often leaves part of a drawing unfinished. In the three branch and leaf drawings for ‘Of Leaf Beauty’, for example, this vitality is particularly evident. In the watercolour drawing of an oak spray, The Dryad’s Waywardness (Fig. 4.2), Ruskin animates the branch’s double action: its ‘tendency to

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

109

Fig. 4.2  John Ruskin, The Dryad’s Waywardness: Oak Spray in Winter, seen in front, 1875, watercolour and bodycolour over graphite on blue wove paper

throw its sprays to its own right (or your left), which it does to avoid the branch next to it, while the forward action is a sweeping curve which it takes to recover position after its first concession’ (vii.94). The face-on position of the branch is given a strong foreshortening, which is emphasised delicately by the touches of white, while the effect of the whole is that of a branch leaning out of the paper. Even when Ruskin draws dead foliage, he imbues it with this same sense of dynamism, as in the watercolour from the Guild of St. George’s collection in Sheffield (Fig. 4.3). The rough bright blue background, which he painted first, causes the tossing oak leaves to resemble a ship at sea, even though the stiffness of the crackling orange leaf is maintained. Ruskin’s botanical knowledge means he does not see purely synchronically but ecologically, providing us with a visual sense of the inner tension and history of growth, as would be

110 

A. MILBANK

Fig. 4.3  John Ruskin, Study of a Spray of Dead Oak Leaves, 1879, watercolour and bodycolour on paper

evident in a living oak spray. In a simple drawing of chestnut leaves (Fig. 4.4) there is a tenderness of touch, even a reverence, which is utterly different from a conventional botanical drawing. Ruskin writes, indeed, that we should ‘learn from the leaf reverence’ (vii.100). The leaf emerges from the shading into being, with the light catching its stem, and revealing its curve, about which Ruskin writes so fully in ‘Of Leaf Beauty’ and also in ‘Of Infinity’ (iv.87). The shadow makes one aware of the moment of the drawing’s creation and the hand of the artist. There is never any sense in Ruskin’s drawings of a pretence at a realism that would hide the making of the image. In The Elements of Drawing, for example, he commends copying Albrecht Dürer’s ‘intricacy and glittering confusion’ in leaf drawing before attempting it from nature (xv.89). And yet, Ruskin believes that the artist should submit himself to what he sees and represents: ‘the artist has done nothing till he has

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

111

Fig. 4.4  John Ruskin, Chestnut Leaves, c.1870, watercolour, pen and ink on paper

concealed himself’ (iii.22) and the eye focuses on the subject. This ethical form of participation, whereby the artist subordinates himself to allow the vitality of the natural form, to be freely displayed, is unifying. The artist as the describer and, in this case, the leaf become a unified part of the overflowing richness and diversity of the created order.

112 

A. MILBANK

In an epiphanic experience of beauty in the valley of the Chamonix, Ruskin learned the true nature of the beautiful for the first time because ‘with all that I had ever seen before … the image of self had not been effaced … without sense even of existence … the immortal soul might be held forever … wrapt in the one contemplation of the infinite God’ (iv.364–365). Malcolm Ross sees here the germ of the sacramental poetics of volume three of Modern Painters and stresses that the glory of God is ‘declared not by things as windows but by things-in-themselves’.14 For Hooker there would be no difference because things-in-themselves are all revelatory of the divine law, but it is good to be aware of the importance of allowing other natural forms to manifest themselves; as J. R. R. Tolkien puts it, ‘I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness’.15 Just as God sets natural forms free by creating them ex nihilo, so the artist, made in God’s image, gives freedom and life to the form portrayed: ‘those are leaves’. Ruskin’s leaf drawings submit themselves to the natural form and liberate it from possessiveness through an attentive participatory gaze, which Ruskin in turn shares with us. He would have agreed with philosopher Iris Murdoch that ‘the word “attention”, which I borrow from Simone Weil…express[es] the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the moral agent’.16 Just as for Tolkien, this contemplation of art or nature is a participation in the Good through a decentring of the self. For Murdoch, as for Ruskin, this is a gaze of love which ‘shifts the centre of the world from ourselves to another place’.17 The word ‘love’ here gestures to the relationality enabled by this ascesis and is—analogically—akin to the intimacy of the divine making.

 Ross, ‘Ruskin, Hooker and “the Christian Theoria”’ (1964), p. 287.  J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories (London: Harper Collins, 2014), pp. 27–84. 16  Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 34. 17  Ibid., p. 18. 14 15

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

113

Analogy in Pre-Raphaelite Painting As Ruskin recognised, the Pre-Raphaelite painters also submitted themselves to the labour of a ‘just and loving gaze’ on natural forms in their work. After nine years of engagement with Pre-Raphaelite painting, Ruskin referred to the artists as those who showed ‘whatever men drew at all, ought to be drawn accurately and knowingly, not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other things)’ (vii.52). The Pre-Raphaelite devotion to such labour is not easy: ‘“Paint the leaves as they grow!” If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world’ (v.52). In this section we shall see how several of the paintings Ruskin admired can be seen to share his analogical perspective. In a letter to The Times from 1851, which was later expanded into a pamphlet called ‘Pre-Raphaelitism’ (xii.321–393), Ruskin drew admiring attention to Charles Collins’ Convent Thoughts (Fig. 4.5). In particular he noted the beauty and accuracy of its representation of particular species: ‘as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and several other flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine’ (xii. 321). Ruskin’s memory in the days before easy reproduction for consultation failed him on this occasion, so that he instead recalled alisma plantago, a plant he often used for analogy in his architectural and botanical studies, rather than the arrow-head, sagittaria sagittifolia, which Collins painted alongside the water lily.18 Anne Neale has suggested in a careful study of the complex religious symbolism of the flora in the painting that the inclusion of the sagittifolia is odd because it is normally viewed as a weed (so one would have expected the more usual alisma plantago) but argues that its arrow-head acts as a pointer to the Trinity, which is shown in the arrangement of the water lilies.19 Ruskin probably made the error because Alisma plantago was discussed and illustrated in volume three of Modern Painters in the medieval landscape section, where it was part of an analysis of leaf growth. Typically, Ruskin describes a leaf not so much as a thing as an action: a ‘sudden 18  Elizabeth Deas noted the error in Ruskin’s observation but perhaps unfairly she does not point out that both plants belong to the same family of Alismataceae. See Elizabeth Deas, ‘The Missing Alisma: Ruskin’s Botanical Error’, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 10 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 4–13. 19  Anne Neale, ‘Consider the Lilies: Symbolism and Revelation in “Convent Thoughts” (1851) by Charles Allston Collins (1828–1873)’, The British Art Journal 11:1 (2010), p. 96.

114 

A. MILBANK

Fig. 4.5  Charles Collins, Convent Thoughts, 1851, oil on canvas

expansion of the stem that bore it; an uncontrollable expression of delight, on the part of the twig, that Spring had come’ (v.264). An aquatic plant, alisma is less dynamic than more aerial plants, but still ‘expand[s] in soft currents, as the liberated stream does at its mouth into the ocean’ (v.265).

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

115

Ruskin’s most extensive discussion of alisma plantago, however, is in the ‘Lamp of Beauty’ section of Seven Lamps of Architecture. There, like the sagittifolia, it has an association with the number three, for Ruskin argues that all proportion requires at least three rather than two parts to compare (viii.168). Alisma plantago is an example of this principle: ‘it seems to be the plan of the plant that three major and three minor branches should again spring, bearing the flowers’ (viii.169). In his Hookerian chapter in volume two of Modern Painters, Ruskin had made the same point about two things requiring a third term to unite them, which he derives from Plato’s tripartite conception of the soul, and it is another exercise of the analogical principle (iii.53). The natural world was placed at the forefront of Ruskin’s interest in this painting, in part as a way to avoid dealing with the strongly Tractarian nature of the subject of the nun: for Ruskin was opposed to its ‘Romanist tendencies’ (xii.320, 327).20 Collins was himself a strongly devout Anglo-­ Catholic, much influenced by the Combe family whose garden in Oxford offers the setting for the painting, and his treatment of the leaves has much of the reverence that Ruskin’s own foliage drawings demonstrate. He would take a whole day to paint one flower and that flower was always from a living specimen.21 Ruskin was quite dismissive of the nun in the painting in his letter to The Times (xii.320) but, and this has not been noticed hitherto, she bears many similarities with Matelda, who contemplates flowering boughs in Dante’s Earthly Paradise in Purgatorio 28 and who would be a central figure in volume three of Modern Painters (v.279–283). Collins appended a verse from Psalm 143 to the painting: ‘I meditate on all Thy works; I muse on the works of Thy hands’.22 Matelda is found singing from another Psalm with an identical sentiment: ‘For thou Lord hast made me glad through thy work; I will triumph in the works of thy hands’.23 The nun holds God’s two books in her hands: that 20  Michael Wheeler has explored the background of debate following not only the Tractarian movement but the establishment of Roman Catholic sees in Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 104–106. 21  Neale, ‘Consider the Lilies’ (2010), p. 93. 22  The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, the Eighty Third (London: W. Clowes for the Royal Academy, 1851), no. 493, 26. The quotation is from the Authorised Version of Psalm 143.5. 23  Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio 1 Text, translated by Charles Singleton, Bollingen Series LXXX (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), Purgatorio 28.80–81: ‘ma luce rende il salmo Delectasti’ (‘but the psalm Delectasti gives light’). Dante names the Psalm from the fourth verse: ‘you have delighted me’ or ‘made me glad’ in the Authorised Version.

116 

A. MILBANK

of Revelation in her illuminated Bible or missal, and the book of nature in the passionflower upon which she meditates, musing upon a flower that is taken as an emblem of Christ’s passion, illustrated in the missal. Ruskin made Matelda and her woodland setting central to his discussion of the medieval understanding of nature and drew attention to her Psalm, giving the Vulgate version (v.277). He stresses that she takes pleasure in the works of God unlike the figure of Leah in Dante’s prophetic dream of the night before, who ‘delights in Her Own labour’ (v.278). Interestingly, the discussion about alisma plantago’s liberation belongs in this same chapter, which further indicates that Ruskin may have still had Convent Thoughts and its leaves in mind. In terms of my argument, Collins’ nun and Matelda demonstrate the worshipful act of self-subjugation which Ruskin encouraged when participating in the contemplation of natural forms, as well as their analogical relation to the creator. Ruskin also affirms the Christological element in this participation when he writes that whereas the Greek ‘contemplated his own beauty and the workings of his own mind’, the Medieval, ‘primarily and on principle, contemplated Christ’s beauty and the workings of the mind of Christ’ (v.280). The Christ here is the one who taught his disciples to ‘consider the lilies’ (Luke 12:27) and who is himself often viewed as the lily among the thorns of Song of Songs 2:2, which motto—‘sicut lilium’—was written above Collins’ Convent Thoughts on the gilded frame. In 1856, the same year in which Matelda made her appearance in volume three of Modern Painters, Millais exhibited Autumn Leaves, which Ruskin admired (at least at first), describing it as ‘the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight’ (xiv.67). Millais aimed at an open poetic work evoking multiple ideas about transience, death and the Fall, which he achieved through an almost hallucinatory realism. The leaves seem to fall out of the frame of the work, with more held out by one of the two sisters, whose arms reach out towards us, as she offers the leaves to the bonfire like some priestess of a melancholic cult. This is in keeping with the hieratic nature of Millais’ observation to Holman Hunt: that burning leaves are ‘incense offered by the departing summer to the sky’.24 Millais includes the tiny figure of a reaper and has one child eat an apple, each a symbol both of the harvest and of the Fall, but the overall mood is one of suggestion rather than theology or allegory; this allows the natural forms 24  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 Vols. (New York: Dutton, 1914 [1905]), 1, p. 204.

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

117

themselves to do the analogical work, in contrast to the heavy-handed typology of another Millais painting, Mariana (1851) (which Ruskin mentioned in the same letter as Convent Thoughts (xi.322)). Again, ‘those are leaves’ and there is an implicit analogy of proportion, with the dark mourning of the girls’ dresses aligning them with the dying leaves. Millais’ autumnal scattered leaves also ally with Ruskin’s later writing about leaf monuments in volume five of Modern Painters, where he dramatises the telos of tree life. Even when fallen from their bough, leaves ‘combine to carry out this first and last heart law; receiving, and seeming to desire for themselves and for each other, only life which they may communicate, and loveliness which they may reflect’ (vii.50). The blaze of colour in the Millais leaves similarly speaks of hope in death, and although elegiac, the atmosphere is not purely melancholic. Indeed, Millais wrote that he hoped to convey a mood of ‘deepest religious reflection’ through the painting.25 Behind stand the tall stems of the poplars from which the leaves came and which are now, in Ruskin’s terms, the ‘leaf monuments’: If ever, in autumn, a pensiveness falls upon us as the leaves drift by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the avenues of the valleys; the fringes of the hills! … Let them not pass, without our understanding that their last counsel and example: that we also, careless of monument by the grave, may build it in the world—monument by which men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived. (vii. 100)

Ruskin particularly praised the twilight background of Millais’ painting with its poplars and seems to have it in mind in this quotation. Furthermore, Ruskin used his own artistic practice as a means of exploring these ideas of beauty, divine laws, and theophany, as can be seen in this description from when he was drawing of an aspen tree in Praeterita (1885): Languidly, but not idly, I began to draw it; and as I drew, the languor passed away: the beautiful lines insisted on being traced,—without weariness. More and more beautiful they became, as each rose out of the rest, and took its place in the air. With wonder increasing every instant, I saw they ‘composed’ 25  Quoted by Malcolm Warner, ‘John Everett Millais’s Autumn Leaves: “A Picture Full of Beauty and Without Subject”’, in Leslie Parris, ed., Pre-Raphaelite Papers (London: Tate Publishing, 1984), p. 127.

118 

A. MILBANK

themselves by finer laws than any known of men. At last, the tree was there, and everything that I had thought before about trees, nowhere. (xxxv. 314)

In a similar vein, in volume five of Modern Painters, Ruskin uses his botanical knowledge to suggest we can better learn social and political lessons from the leaves and their monuments, in order to understand our own participatory telos and the ‘finer laws’ of the world.

Ruskin’s Theology of Participation The phrase ‘leaf monuments’ is indicative of Ruskin’s analogical imagination and enabled him to elucidate a theology of nature, which remained relatively stable even through his various stages of belief and unbelief and which balanced his concepts of idealism and metaphysical realism. This theology is one in which humankind is but one among many life forms which share a common source in the divine. All natural forms manifest the transcendentals—the properties of being—and the human role is one of active/passive attention and care: ‘theoria’ is the term he gives to this activity in Modern Painters (iv.35–36). It is not just seeing morally but acknowledging the ontological distance between human and divine at the same time as acknowledging the mark of the divine perfections in the world. ‘All great art’, he writes, ‘is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work not his own’ (vii.214), echoing the words of Dante’s Matelda and Collins’ nun. Such a theology, as we have seen, Ruskin found in Hooker, who wrote: All other things that are of God have God in them and he them in himself. Yet because their substance and his wholly differeth, their coherence and communion either with him or amongst themselves is in no sort like unto that before-mentioned.26

Hooker believed it is not right to say that there is no way of speaking of God and creatures as akin, but they are different, since God differs in substance. Creatures are analogically related to God having come from Him: as mentioned earlier, ‘all things are partakers of God, they are his offspring, his influence is in them’.27 It is paradoxically the difference which  Hooker, The Works, 1, p. 623.  Ibid.

26 27

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

119

enables the relational language. It is this familial theology which allows Ruskin to write about leaves in terms analogous to the human without falling into the pathetic fallacy. Analogy allows every natural object as well as humans to have a participation in the divine and to have an entelechy. Hooker’s Thomistic application of natural law allows a positive construal of nature in which animals, for example, follow the Good by being themselves and following their nature. They are teleologically directed, as David Craig points out in his John Ruskin and the Ethics of Consumption (2006) in which he refutes George Landow’s charge of Romantic emotionalism in which anyone who attributes ‘love, exultation and happiness to a plant or animal must be projecting his or her emotions onto it’ by arguing that an Aristotelian entelechy is at play.28 In such a moral cosmology the barrier between nature and culture disappears, as it does notoriously in Ruskin so that creatures and societies have purposes and ends. Hence Ruskin can compare a leaf cluster to ‘a little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged to get their living by various shifts’ and ‘under all the members of it, whether in sickness or health … combine to carry out this first and last heart law; receiving, and seeming to desire for themselves and for each other, only life which they may communicate, and loveliness which they may reflect’ (vii.48,50). This is Hooker’s natural law but equally reflects contemporary botanical thought represented by Georges Cuvier, well-liked by Ruskin, who emphasised the organic development and context of growth.29 It even has analogies with the cooperation and interdependence of the entangled bank that concludes Darwin’s Origin of Species.30 Yet where Darwin reads a struggle for life, Ruskin presents a more positive getting of a living, stressing adaptation and mutual cooperation over competition, reflecting his recent critique of political economy and contemporary capitalism in Unto This Last (1860). In the latter text he asserts that ‘there is no wealth but life’ and in nature also the aim or telos is to have and to give life (xvii.105). Critics such as Mark Frost miss the point when they look askance at Ruskin’s assertion in The Queen of the Air (1869) that the seed 28  David Melville Craig, John Ruskin and the Ethics of Consumption (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), p.  49. Craig shares my positive evaluation of the Hookerian basis of Ruskin’s metaphysics. 29  Ruskin makes frequent reference to Cuvier, though occasionally notes his ‘uselessness’ (xxvi.308). 30  Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection … (London: Murray, 1859), p. 489.

120 

A. MILBANK

is there for the flower rather than vice versa as in orthodox Darwinism.31 If the aim of the plant is life, then the seed is latent potential life and the flower is a full expression of that potential: ‘the reason for seeds is that flowers may be … it is the part of the plant’s form developed at the moment of its intensest life’ (19.358). Ruskin’s theology of nature critiques the teleology of Darwinism as akin to that of political economy, and a more cooperative polity.32 Furthermore, the plant reflects loveliness and even has the agency to enjoy ‘inner rapture’ (xix.358) in its flush of colour. The process of leaf formation is described in volume five of Modern Painters in sexual and ecstatic terms as a leaving of the self to give life, and this is justified by a careful explanation of the organic development of a bud into a stem, unfolding into leaves. Again, this is analogical rather than importing an inappropriate humanity to the plant. To write, for example, of the leaf as shielding the bud is an accurate description of its function, not an importation of anthropomorphism (vii.35). The reader, too, is called into participation to measure proportions of leaf tracery and growth patterns, to compare artistic representations of branches, and asked to move the book sideways and to perform experiments. In this way Ruskin calls the reader to share in an understanding of creation, working out analogies of attribution and proportion, engaging in ‘theoria’, by which observation was raised ‘to the full comprehension and contemplation of the Beautiful as a gift from God’ (iv.47). Here by observing the ecstatic transformation of foliate life, the human too shares in its rapture. Ruskin is often accused of holding to an outmoded ‘golden chain’ view of creation, but his vision by contrast privileges natural forms, so that it is they which raise the human into participation and divinise them. ‘Theoria’ depends upon this natural theurgy, as the human exercises attention and de-centres to allow the natural form its full expression. This giving up of the self before the mystery of the object is another reason why Ruskin so detested the pathetic fallacy because it asserted the power of the human over the object, which is subsumed into his or her own experience and denied its own life. Again, like Dante and Hooker, Ruskin seeks a 31  Mark Frost, ‘“The Circles of Vitality:” Ruskin, Science and Dynamic Materiality’, Victorian Literature and Culture 39:2 (2011): p. 376. 32  See Clive Wilmer, ‘“No Such Thing as a Flower … No Such Thing as a Man:” John Ruskin’s Response to Darwin’, in Valerie Purton, ed., Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers (London: Anthem Press, 2013), pp. 97–108.

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

121

moderate philosophical realism—in which leaves are truly leaves—with an epistemology whereby to observe and know is to unite with an object, in a communion only possible through an awareness that ‘those are leaves’.33 It is a communion of creatures within the divine fullness of creation here activated by perception of divine composition in the tree’s structure. Ruskin’s nature writing of his later period is often criticised as static and mythological, refusing to engage with contemporary science. I would argue, to the contrary, that it is an attempt to present an alternative entelechy, which empowers natural forms, turning objects into subjects and allowing them some degree of agency. The Queen of the Air (1869), for example, seeks to find a vital spirit in nature as cause of its differentiation and particular feeling. This is already apparent in Hooker and was an idea developed by the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century as they sought to question the mechanical philosophy of Descartes, which treated the natural world as a series of automata. Henry More and Ralph Cudworth had recourse to what was variously termed a ‘spirit of nature’, ‘plastic nature’ or ‘the hylarchic principle’ by which life was infused into dead matter.34 More describes it thus: A substance incorporeal, but without Sense and Animadversion, pervading the whole Matter of the Universe, and exercising a Plastical power therein according to the sundry dispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising such phenomena in the World, by directing the parts of the Matter and their Motion, as cannot be resolved into mere Mechanical powers.35

Perhaps drawing inspiration from Henry More, Ruskin writes in The Queen of the Air: First there is a power which gives their several shapes to things, or capacities of shape; and secondly, a power which gives them their several feelings, or capacities of feeling; and that we can increase or destroy at our will. By care and tenderness we can extend the range of lovely life in plants and animals; by our neglect and cruelty, we can arrest it and bring pestilence in its stead. (xix.354)

33  Dante’s epistemology is derived from Aquinas. See the classic article by Martin D’Arcy, ‘Knowledge According to Aquinas’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 28 (1927–28), pp. 177–202, and the Summa Theologica 1a, q. 85. 34  Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul So Far as it is Demonstrable from the Light of Nature, ed. A. Jacob (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p. 193. 35  More, The Immortality of the Soul, p. 450.

122 

A. MILBANK

Ruskin accords this formative power to all natural forms, animate or inanimate. Yet unlike earlier writers, such as More and Cudworth, who insist on the irrationality of the spirit of nature so as to maintain a spirit/ matter dualism, Ruskin accords a higher intentionality to it, linking its physical nature to a spiritual: ‘this forming power has been by all nations partly confused with the breath of air through which it acts, and partly understood as a creative wisdom, proceeding from the Supreme Deity; but entering into and inspiring all intelligences that work in harmony with him’ (xix.378). This is both the goddess Athena and Lady Wisdom, the co-worker with God in the creation of the world in Proverbs 8.36 Let us remember that the labelling of the oak spray watercolour in Fig. 4.2, The Dryad’s Waywardness, demonstrates Ruskin alluding to an inner spiritual agency in natural forms.

Conclusion In addition to reaching back to the sixteenth century, Ruskin reaches forward into the ecological theology of our own day, as he questions our anthropocentrism and emphasises the role of human responsibility towards the natural world. Theologically, Ruskin unites an idea of nature’s creative self-engendering (natura naturans of medieval philosophy) with its vulnerability to human power over it (natura naturata). Where Ruskin parted company with Pre-Raphaelitism was when it lacked this theoretic capacity and seemed instead to dissect or microscopically observe objects in isolation. He praised Millais for his technical capacity with details but found the vital spirit ‘concerned not with combining but with the apprehending of things’ (iv.249). The artist should allow natura naturans, rather than dominate his or her subject matter. If you place a Ruskin drawing of leaves next to a Collins’ and Millais’, you can see how despite the Pre-Raphaelite accuracy and care in representation, there is more sense of inner vitality in Ruskin, who draws as it were from the inside out: he unites with the object, the ‘true juice and sap’ is in him (iv.251). The difference is partly, of course, due to Ruskin’s tendency to render one single natural form, and in the delicacy of watercolour, whereas the Pre-Raphaelite painters work in oils and their leaves and flowers contribute to larger compositions. When Collins’ lilies bend towards the light and Millais’ autumn leaves pile forward in an incandescent fall of colour,  Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (1999), especially pp. 186–197 on The Queen of the Air.

36

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

123

they take on something of this same vitality of natura naturans. But paradoxically, it is the metaphysical and ethical weight that lies behind Ruskin’s artistic practice that truly allows leaves to be: to be both subjects and objects. We can understand Ruskin’s theology as an example of what Pope Francis calls integral ecology: ‘Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus, in constant interaction with it’.37 The papal encyclical echoes Ruskin’s teleological view of creation and relation with it as our own fulfilment: ‘Creatures tend towards God, and in turn it is proper to every living being to tend towards other things, so that throughout the universe we can find any number of constant and secretly interwoven relationships. This leads us not only to marvel at the manifold connections existing among creatures, but also to discover a key to our own fulfilment’.38 Ruskin teaches us, through his use of analogy, to see our flourishing as humans as bound up with nature, which we must study and learn from, a study based on analogy, difference and participation, where ‘all things bind and blend themselves together’ (xxxv.561) because, all at once, ‘these are souls and those are leaves’ (v.206).

Bibliography Anon. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, the Eighty Third. London: W. Clowes for the Royal Academy, 1851. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 22 vols. London: Burns and Oates, 1922. Browning, Robert. The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Craig, David Melville. John Ruskin and the Ethics of Consumption. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006. Cudworth, Ralph. The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 3 vols. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995. Curnow, Kevin Fraser. ‘Richard Hooker, John Henry Newman: A Via Media Theology of the Eucharist’, Pacifica: Australasia Theological Studies 30:3 (2017), pp. 214–239. 37  Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home (2015) at http://w2.vatican.va/content/ francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html accessed May 2022, para 139. 38  Ibid., para 240.

124 

A. MILBANK

Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio 1 Text. Translated by Charles Singleton. Bollingen Series LXXX. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. D’Arcy, Martin. ‘Knowledge According to Aquinas’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 28 (1927–28), pp. 177–202. Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London: Murray, 1859. Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Deas, Elizabeth. ‘The Missing Alisma: Ruskin’s Botanical Error’, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 10 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 4–13. Dominiak, Paul Anthony. Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation. London: Bloomsbury/T & T Clark, 2020. Frost, Mark. ‘“The Circles of Vitality:” Ruskin, Science and Dynamic Materiality’, Victorian Literature and Culture 39:2 (2011), pp. 367–383. Holman Hunt, William. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 vols. New York: Dutton, 1914 [1905]. Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr Richard Hooker, with an Account of his Life and Death by Isaac Walton, 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1841. Landow, George. The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. ———. William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism. London: Paul Mellon, 1979. ———. Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows; Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. ‘Richard Hooker’s Reputation,’ in Torrance Kirby, ed. A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 563–612. More, Henry. The Immortality of the Soul, ed. A.  Jacob. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Neale, Anne. ‘Consider the Lilies: Symbolism and Revelation in “Convent Thoughts” (1851) by Charles Allston Collins (1828–1873),’ The British Art Journal 11:1 (2010), pp. 93–98. Ross, Malcolm Mackenzie. ‘Ruskin, Hooker and “the Christian Theoria”’. In Millar MacLure and F.  W. Watt, eds. Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age Presented to A.  S. P.  Woodhouse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), pp. 283–303. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Tolkien, J. R. R. On Fairy-stories. London: HarperCollins, 2014. Warner, Malcolm. ‘John Everett Millais’s Autumn Leaves: “A Picture Full of Beauty and Without Subject”’, in Leslie Parris, ed., Pre-Raphaelite Papers (London, Tate Publishing, 1984), pp. 126–146.

4  ‘THOSE ARE LEAVES’: RUSKIN’S ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION… 

125

Wheeler, Michael. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Wilmer, Clive. ‘“No Such Thing as a Flower … No Such Thing as a Man:” John Ruskin’s Response to Darwin’, in Valerie Purton, ed., Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers (London: Anthem Press, 2013), pp. 97–108.

Internet Sources All internet sources were accessed in May 2022 Jacobi, Carol. ‘Sugar, Salt and Curdled Milk: Millais and the Synthetic Subject,’ Tate Papers 18 (Autumn, 2012) at https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-­p apers/18/sugar-­s alt-­a nd-­c urdled-­m ilk-­m illais-­a nd-­t he­synthetic-­subject Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home (2015) at http://w2.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-­francesco_20150524_ enciclica-­laudato-­si.html Pemberton, William. ‘The Mortal Tree: Reading Leaf Imagery in Dante’s Divina Commedia’. https://www.academia.edu/6893091/The_Mortal_Tree_Reading_ Leaf_Imagery_in_Dantes_Divina_Commedia_

PART II

Visual Interlude i: An Angelic Conversation

CHAPTER 5

Sounds and Visions at the Chapel of St Michael and All Angels Sheona Beaumont and Mark Dean

‘How dreadful is this place! God’s House It is, the Gate of Heaven;’ The Patriarch said to whom a view Of Angel-Hosts was given.1

The Chapel of St. Michael and All Angels, Marlborough College, has been at the heart of the school community since 1886 (Fig.  5.1). An originally smaller building was redesigned by George Frederick Bodley (1827–1907) and Thomas Garner (1839–1906) on a larger scale to accommodate the growing number of scholars. The College was then a 1  Opening hymn from the original Service of Consecration, 1886, in Newton Mant, The New Chapel at Marlborough College (London: W. H. Allen, 1889), p. 80.

S. Beaumont • M. Dean (*) London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_5

129

130 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. DEAN

Fig. 5.1  Marlborough College, Chapel of St. Michael and All Angels (exterior)

school for sons of the clergy (now a co-educational private school) and had required the Chapel to function as a place of worship under the exclusive authority of the College Masters. Part of a Victorian ideal for moral and intellectual learning, it was a building for this particular community alone: and its particular intensity of vision and communion is concentrated in the figure of the angel. ‘St. Michael and All Angels’ refers to the biblical archangel St. Michael from Revelation 12 who, with his army, defeats the dragon in the war of heaven. Hosts of triumphant, praising, or blessing angels spill from the pages of this cacophonous book. Indeed, the angel becomes, in Scripture, a key figure for the precipitation of divine agency. As such, this is a figure whose presence in an educational institution would be embraced with enthusiasm and purpose. At Marlborough, the opening hymn from the original Service of Consecration in 1886 would solicit no fewer than eight expressions of angelic aid, from the voices, faces, and harps of angels looking upon the community to such angels’ ministering presence in the afterlife.

5  SOUNDS AND VISIONS AT THE CHAPEL OF ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS 

131

Angels are part of Marlborough College’s Chapel in a decorative scheme which is dominated by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s (1829–1908) paintings. There are twelve scenes arranged down the length of the Chapel nave, where the pews face each other longitudinally (Fig. 5.2); there are also two at the West end. Of the twelve, there are six scenes on one side from the Old Testament and six on the other from the New Testament, and they are individually framed with biblical inscriptions in Latin. Each of the bright gem-like paintings punctuates the gloom with the illumination of angelic ministration: of the forty-seven figures represented, nearly half are angels. It is evident that Stanhope allows the angels to become the prominent feature of these stories: in The Expulsion, for example, the angels account for over half of the canvas, their profiled array across the canvas marking both a liminal and a historical threshold for humanity (Fig. 5.3). For Ruskin, angels as ‘a conception of superhuman but still creature form’,2 also act as threshold markers and guardians; whether they hover watching over the spiritual threshold as a believer passes under the first dome of St. Mark’s in Venice, or whether they are invoked in painterly descriptions of heaven and the firmament. It is also evident that Stanhope’s tilted angels and glorious colour reference early Florentine Masters, and we can trace his modelling of Botticelli and Masaccio’s linear, graceful forms throughout the series.3 Stanhope had closely copied their style and techniques, following a long period of twentyeight years living in Florence. Yet while the compositions are balanced and contained as such, gestures and limbs in movement alert us to the dynamism of the angels in particular. There are often visual narratives which read from left to right, taking the viewer not just through individual paintings, but across the series (Fig. 5.4)—this encourages a longer look which on circling the Chapel returns the gaze to the main altar at the East end. The air is also full of voices and song, voices that are more than the sum of the earthly figures depicted: from Abram whose voice is that of the ancient fathers or Sarai whose sounds are sharp and full of petty jealousies. 2  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xv.149). 3  See Thiele, Madeleine Emerald. ‘John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and the Aesthetic Male Body: A Pre-Raphaelite Response to Ideas of Victorian Manliness’, in Paul E. Kerry, Albert D.  Pionke, and Megan Dent, eds., Thomas Carlyle and the Idea of Influence (Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018), pp. 81–107.

132 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. DEAN

Fig. 5.2  Marlborough College, Chapel of St. Michael and All Angels (interior)

5  SOUNDS AND VISIONS AT THE CHAPEL OF ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS 

133

Fig. 5.3  John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, The Expulsion, 1875, oil on canvas and gilding

We see, we hear, we feel El Roi in the background noise of angelic chorus—written as script in the example of the appearance to the shepherds, but also implied in other well-known scenes of angelic speech such as the Annunciation and the angel’s appearance to Hagar. This is a sacra conversazione, indeed many layers of sacre conversazioni, with each participant listening as they learn their role in the divine sphere. Ishmael’s very name is about listening, it is revelatory and theophoric: it translates as ‘God (El) has hearkened’ reminding us that Ishmael himself is the personification of a divine promise fulfilled. ‘Listen!’ says the angel, ‘Listen!’ These layers of visual and audible conversation became part of artist Mark Dean’s intervention in the Chapel space in 2019. Commissioned by Visual Theology, Dean was asked to engage with the original Service of Consecration for Marlborough College Chapel, with particular reference

134 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. DEAN

Fig. 5.4  North wall of Marlborough College Chapel, showing John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1875, oil on canvas and gilding

to Stanhope’s cycle of ministering angels. Two video works were presented as part of a reimagined Service of Dedication, which took place a week before Michaelmas on 22 September. Dean took the opportunity to explore the liturgical potential of the space and its congregants as they responded to image and text and sound in new combinations. In this he drew on previous work such as Stations of the Cross and Stations of the Resurrection at St. Stephen Walbrook and St Paul’s Cathedral (2017) and Pastiche Mass (2019, presented within a Eucharist at Chelsea College of Arts).4 Marlborough College’s service incorporated processions and 4   Lucy Newman Cleeve, ‘Stations of the Cross and Stations of the Resurrection: Interdisciplinary Art Practice and its Implications for Visual Theology’, in Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele, eds., Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts: Theology, Aesthetics, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 219–237. See also Mark Dean’s website https://chaplachap.com/art/, accessed January 2023.

5  SOUNDS AND VISIONS AT THE CHAPEL OF ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS 

135

Fig. 5.5  Mark Dean, All Angels, 2019, video still (n.b. the grainy quality of the image represents the original video, as intended)

stationed Bible readings as part of the blessing of the sanctuary in all its aspects—this, too, informed Dean’s response to the angelic, understood as a choral, multi-vocal host (Fig. 5.5). In the videos, Dean’s angels take the form of a dancer and a musician, who minister to writers and scholars. Dean took as a starting point the opening line of the hymn quoted above: ‘How dreadful is this place!’ This archaic use of the term ‘dreadful’ has in general usage gone the way of ‘the fear of God’—demoted from a sense of sacred awe to a secular expression of awfulness. But the tension between the old and the new senses of the word ‘dread’ was used creatively when adopted by Rastafarians, who were considered ‘dreadful’ by polite Jamaican society but turned a term of oppression into one of affirmation, whilst recovering the religious sense of the term. In Dean’s Anthem for All Angels, this is signified by the use of a looped and phased reggae guitar chop.

136 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. DEAN

Fig. 5.6  Mark Dean, Anthem for All Angels, 2019, video still

The tension between old and new is also manifest in the incorporation of the title sequence from a screen version of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. The sermon in the original Service of Consecration, preached by the Dean of Westminster, George Bradley, spoke of ‘upward and onward progress; a stage, we gratefully believe, of quiet, vigorous, and wholesome growth’.5 Yet this late-Victorian optimism was dashed by the time 749 members of the school community lost their lives in the trenches of the Great War—a dreadful place indeed. Such optimism as shown by the preacher then, that we meet ‘on the morrow of no epoch-marking crisis’, is drawn into poignant contrast in Dean’s work (Fig. 5.6). While the first hymn sung in 1886 will be unfamiliar to many today, the second, ‘Holy Holy Holy’, is in many churches now sung more often than the Sanctus whose opening line it mirrors, and which Dean incorporates into Anthem for All Angels via Ludford’s Missa Videte Miraculum. The accompanying Benedictus was then used in the second half of Dean’s commission, All Angels. This work, which features the tattooed wings of bassist Jane Woodgate, was performed by the congregation, via their 5  Newton Mant, The New Chapel at Marlborough College (London: W.  H. Allen, 1889), p. 98.

5  SOUNDS AND VISIONS AT THE CHAPEL OF ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS 

137

various personal devices—phones, tablets, and laptops—to produce a virtual angelic host, within an asynchronously generated musical meditation. The repeated pronouncements of ‘holy’ by the congregation were all-­ encompassing, creating a stream of multi-directional praise. Similar reverberating pronouncements were experienced by Ruskin when standing in the Ascension Cupola in St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice. There the mosaics of four angels offer forth words on tablets to the gathered apostles and the multitude of crowds who responded at Pentecost. In the passage from Revelation 4:8, to which the thrice-repeated wording ‘holy’ refers, the quartet is one of ‘uniting’ and ‘ceaseless’ praise, in ‘which heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory’ (x.136). As with Marlborough’s Italianate Visual Theology, so with St. Mark’s: and as with angels, so with all ‘angels, in endless offices of love and praise’ (iv.156). Indeed the final painting in the Stanhope series is The Vision of the New Jerusalem (Fig. 5.7). It draws out nineteenth century themes of the new: new aesthetic styles, new discoveries, new knowledge, and new empires. The painting is also, in part, a proposition about intelligent faith, a means of affirming that science could co-exist in harmony with religion, and certainly the boys receiving tutelage here could expect a similar aim under the headship of Frederic Farrar. Intellectual studies were increasingly felt to be aspired to, part of the ‘high and ennobling and sanctifying thoughts’ that George Bradley praised in his sermon at the Chapel’s consecration. We notice that the angel’s robe in this painting is trimmed with Kufic script (found also in works by Lippi), an ancient script which, coupled with the telling of an ancient Christian story, helps write a new message of longevity, and of permanence made plain, by the angel, as he extends his hand upward to the city of the future: the New Jerusalem. The old, in the form of a messenger of everlasting service, is necessary to support the development of the new, enquiring minds of the age: it is through angels ‘that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. These are what the artist of highest aim must study’ (iii.345). For all the lateral movements of exchange and encounter through Stanhope’s series and Dean’s shifting references, the height and space of the Chapel raise our gazes upward. Our gaze reaches up to the sky, and beyond to heaven. Ruskin thought the sky a place of mystery: ‘It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky’ (iii.343). He thought the representation of clouds and heavens in painting was yet the most angelic: ‘no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them, but answering each other with their own voices from pole to pole’ (vi.113).

138 

S. BEAUMONT AND M. DEAN

Fig. 5.7  John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, The Vision of the New Jerusalem, 1875, oil on canvas and gilding

When at times he shunned the figurative representation of angels, saying that only those who really saw them should attempt to depict them, he also found the firmament to be alive with their movement, a place vibrating with ‘the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of divers colours, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame’ (vi.113). Dean’s work and Stanhope’s paintings are stories of conversations between the Old and the New Testaments, between one artistic generation and another, between space as immediately visually felt and a liminal angelic space of sounds and mystery. The angels in the videos are contemporary, yet stand testament to earlier art forms. The ministration of angels in the paintings is representative of what Stanhope’s niece A.M.W. Stirling

5  SOUNDS AND VISIONS AT THE CHAPEL OF ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS 

139

called his ‘revivifying enthusiasm’. Whether they are the Cherubim whose knowledge is lit by the flaming sword of Eden, or the dancers and musicians performing modern anthems of Christian faith, these angels are, most certainly, dynamic and powerful messengers. Their message of divine love, and the experience of the same in worship, has been part of the Chapel’s story for nearly 150 years and continues today.

Bibliography Mant, Newton. The New Chapel at Marlborough College. London: W. H. Allen, 1889. Newman Cleeve, Lucy. ‘Stations of the Cross and Stations of the Resurrection: Interdisciplinary Art Practice and its Implications for Visual Theology,’ in Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele, eds., Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts: Theology, Aesthetics, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 219–237. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Stirling, A.M.W. A Painter of Dreams and Other Biographical Studies. London: Lane, 1916. Thiele, Madeleine Emerald. ‘John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and the Aesthetic Male Body: A Pre-Raphaelite Response to Ideas of Victorian Manliness’, in Paul E. Kerry, Albert D. Pionke, and Megan Dent, eds., Thomas Carlyle and the Idea of Influence (Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018), pp. 81–107. The authors wish to thank Madeleine Emerald Thiele for permission to reproduce excerpts from her article about the Stanhope cycle of paintings, ‘John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’, Visual Theology, 2 (Sept 2019), pp. 11–13.

PART III

Pre-Raphaelite Conversations with Ruskinian Truths

CHAPTER 6

Ruskin, Rossetti, and the Sacra Conversazione of Colour Elizabeth Helsinger

In 1845 a young John Ruskin, writing home to his father from Italy on his first trip abroad without his parents, described the tremendous impact on him of the frescoes he encountered in the Campo Santo at Pisa: I never believed the patriarchal history before, but I do now, for I have seen it … Abraham & Adam, & Cain, Rachel & Rebekah, all are there, the very people, real, visible, created, substantial, such as they were, as they must have been—one cannot look at them without being certain that they have lived … one comes away, like the women from the Sepulchre, having seen a vision of angels which said that he was Alive.1

Nearly forty years later, Ruskin singled out the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti for special praise in terms that are surprisingly similar: ‘The 1  Harold I. Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy: Letters to His Parents 1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 67–68.

E. Helsinger (*) Chicago, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_6

143

144 

E. HELSINGER

peculiar value and character of [Rossetti’s] treatment is in what I called its material veracity, compelling the spectator’s belief, if he have the instinct of belief in him at all, in the thing’s having verily happened; and not being a mere poetical fancy’ (xxxiii.287–288).2 ‘Rossetti’s great poetical genius’, he continued, ‘justified my claiming for him total, and, I believe, earliest, originality in the sternly materialistic, though deeply reverent, veracity, with which alone, of all schools of painters, this brotherhood of Englishmen has conceived the circumstances of the life of Christ’. That Ruskin should praise Rossetti as an artist whose ‘material veracity’ could compel belief in the life of Christ might seem surprising. Rossetti, as Ruskin well knew, never really embraced either the scrupulous realism of his fellow Pre-Raphaelites—John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt—or the Protestant evangelical beliefs that guided Hunt particularly to use art to convey the typological truths of Christian history. Rossetti preferred to paint from his imagination; the truths he explored were as much psychological and emotional as scriptural, even or especially when he portrayed religious subjects. What was it, then, about Rossetti’s paintings that recalled to Ruskin the power of those early Italian painters to compel his belief in the reality of biblical story? Rossetti’s power, Ruskin decided, lay in a use of colour that owed less to current or immediate past practice than to other and earlier examples. ‘Rossetti’, he elaborated in 1883, ‘added to the before accepted systems of colour in painting, one based on manuscript illumination, which permits his design to rival the most beautiful qualities of painted glass, without losing either the mystery or the dignity of light and shade. And he was, as I believe is now generally admitted, the chief intellectual force in the establishment of the modern romantic school in England’ (xxxiii.269). What was Rossetti’s system of colour? In the watercolours of the late 1850s to which Ruskin refers, Rossetti applied his colours unusually thickly, not in pale layered washes, the usual practice for English landscape watercolourists, but in dense passages of almost dry pigment. Rossetti, Ruskin saw, relied on juxtapositions of strong colours in maximum saturation in a system derived not from modern academic oil painting (as taught in the schools of the Royal Academy) or from a century of English watercolour 2  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xxxiii.287–288).

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

145

practice, but from older painters, especially Venetian, or, as he here indicates, from the nameless illuminators of medieval manuscripts and makers of stained glass. In these arts, as in Rossetti’s watercolours, colour is not subordinated to linear or three-dimensional form; it seems to exist almost as an end in itself. Rossetti’s work, as I shall argue in this chapter, posed for Ruskin what we might call a test case for the power of colour as an emotional or moral force, conveying facts about the scenes and figures depicted but also possessing a special power to compel belief. Nothing is simple in Ruskin’s words of praise for Rossetti as a master of colour, however. Colour was, in fact, a site of difficulty for English painting in general and for Ruskin in particular.3 Eighteenth-century philosophers like John Locke and Bishop Berkeley considered colour a secondary quality, potentially misleading the mind in its efforts to grasp the more reliable facts of form. Long-standing moral and religious objections to colour because of its dangerously sensual appeal, one element in the English Protestant distrust of visual arts since the fifteenth century, lingered in Sir Joshua Reynold’s influential Discourses on Art (1769–1790). For Reynolds (and in the teachings of the Royal Academy schools based on the Discourses), colour ought to be subordinated to line (and the great Venetian colourists therefore ranked less highly than Florentine masters of line like Raphael) if painting’s claim to be included among the intellectual liberal arts were to be justified in English practice. Yet almost despite himself, Ruskin discovered again and again the power of colour to move him beyond anything he had been led to expect. While ‘Truth of Colour’ was only one of many truths that Ruskin discussed in his defence of J. M. W. Turner’s representations of the natural world (in the first volume of Modern Painters, 1843), that colour should be claimed as a ‘truth’ at all pushed back against religious and philosophical suspicions of its appeal to the baser senses. Ruskin defended Turner’s colour by arguing that he used it to convey facts for which other artists relied on line and chiaroscuro. Turner’s scarlet lines and coloured shadows, Ruskin pointed out, worked with a scale of bright-to-dark that is in its proportions faithful to 3  On the long history of debates over the value and meaning of colour, see John Gage, Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) and Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). On the history of hostility to colour (especially in England), see also David Batchelor, Chromophobia (London: Reaktion, 2000). For a fuller discussion of these issues, see Elizabeth Helsinger, Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 87–109.

146 

E. HELSINGER

nature but that, since it cannot match the strength of natural sunlight, translates light and shade into what can be perceived and represented in paint— into colour. Turner painted the world seen through the animating movement of sunlight and air rendered as colour. (Ruskin was building on Isaac Newton’s discoveries that optical light contained all the colours, visible when light is passed through a prism.) Ruskin’s stunning verbal accounts of colour in the first volume of Modern Painters, however, suggest something more powerful is in fact at stake for him in the truths of colour. His virtuoso description of a hillside outside Rome seen in sunlight after a rainstorm (‘I cannot call it colour, it was conflagration’ (iii.279)), like his descriptive and interpretive tour de force account of Turner’s painting of a bloody sea at sunset after a storm (in which the human cargo of The Slave Ship tosses and ‘incarnadines the multitudinous sea’, the phrase echoing Macbeth to invoke the slavers’ blood guilt (iii.572)), makes clear his belief that colour is more than an active compositional force and a conveyor of visual information.4 In his own experience, colour had a power that he could not easily explain to convey not just intellectual but moral and emotional truths. Rossetti helped Ruskin to understand that power. The story of Ruskin’s susceptibility to colour and his efforts to explain and defend it, however, begins a decade before he met Rossetti. The revelations in the Campo Santo at Pisa were but the first of many discoveries that Ruskin made when he turned to a more careful study of the Old Masters to whose achievements he wished to compare Turner’s. In Venice he was swept away by the glories of the Venetian school. He wrote to his father: ‘I have had a draught of pictures today enough to drown me. I never was so utterly crushed to the earth before any human intellect as I was today, before Tintoret. … As for painting, I think I didn’t know what it meant until today. … I had another very sufficient staggerer in Titian’s large Assumption—which is a complete Turner, only forty feet high.’5 In the Louvre in 1849, after a day spent studying those Venetian masters of ‘intellect’, Titian, Tintoretto, Bellini, and Veronese, he reflected on the inadequacy of any words to convey what the painters expressed in their glorious colour: How feeble are [the poet’s] means of expressing colour, at its best, and if the music of words be thought equivalent to it, yet how little and miserable is the 4  See Elizabeth Helsinger, ‘Ruskin and the Aesthetics of Color’, Nineteenth-Century Prose 35.1 (Spring 2008), pp. 13–36 for a fuller discussion of both these passages. 5  Shapiro, ed., Ruskin in Italy (1972), p. 210.

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

147

art of arranging syllables and rhyme (often at some sacrifice of meaning), compared with that awful self-command, that lordly foresight and advance, by which the great painter gathers together his glory of deep-dyed light. (xii.457)

Disturbed by the violence of his own sensory and affective responses to Venetian colour, Ruskin defended his response against charges of colour’s mindless sensuality by praising the great Venetian colour masters for what he considered their intellectual as well as moral qualities: their ‘lordly foresight’ and ‘awful self-command’. Not only Tintoretto and Titian but Bellini (and he would later add, Giorgione and Carpaccio), Ruskin speculated, conveyed the power of colour to act as what he called the type or figure of redemption by divine love. His typological defence of colour’s intellectual meaning derived from his training in biblical exegesis as a child. As George Landow has explained, Ruskin developed a theory of typological beauty in the second volume of Modern Painters by drawing on long-established modes of biblical interpretation in which persons and actions in the Old Testament were understood as pre-figuring types of Christ in the New Testament.6 He taught his readers not only how to see but also how to interpret such typological and figurative messages in what they saw.7 Ruskin read colour as a type or pre-­ figurement of Christ’s love redeeming mankind. He found typological significance in the bright and pure colour adorning the surfaces of St. Mark’s in Venice with its inlays of coloured marbles and mosaics, in the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and in the work of Fra Angelico covering monks’ cells in Florence. The jewel-like colours of this school of ‘Pure Religious Art’, as he described it to his father in 1845, were applied under the same system found on the illuminated pages of late medieval manuscripts and in the stained glass of northern Gothic cathedrals.8 For artists in the school of ‘Pure Religious Art’, Ruskin believed, colour is always thoughtful; it conveys clear, distinct ideas about things earthly or paradisal; it is an intellectual language of instruction and praise where imagination is firmly guided by shared belief. Ruskin wrote: 6  See George P.  Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), esp. pp. 110–146 and pp. 329–356. 7  Ibid., also Michael Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and C. Stephen Finley, Nature’s Covenant: Figures of Landscape in Ruskin (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). 8  Shapiro, Ruskin in Italy (1972), p. 144.

148 

E. HELSINGER

The principal circumstance which marks the seriousness of the early Venetian mind, is perhaps the last in which the reader would suppose it was traceable;—that love of bright and pure colour. … The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of colour. Nothing is more common than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate beauty,—nay, even as the mere source of a sensual pleasure. … But it is not so. … The fact is, that, of all God’s gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. … All good colour is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour most. (x.172–73)

Why melancholy? By the time he wrote the last three volumes of Modern Painters, Ruskin had also come to recognise an important difference between Turner’s modern, romantic art of light and colour, where moving mists and clouds trouble the heavens literally and figuratively (in an age of industrial pollution and declining faith), and the work of the Venetian artists, whose serene skies and mastery of clear colour reposed, he thought, on the certainties of faith. That note of melancholy enters, Ruskin concluded, when the older arts of colour are seen through modern eyes by those who have no such untroubled trust in the old truths of faith, as he explained in the chapter titled ‘Of Modern Landscape’ in the third volume of Modern Painters (v.317–53). Modern eyes, doubtful of religious verities, see only through a cloud, darkly; in their time colour is dimmed, its truths obscured. Even in Turner’s art, colour is understood as light dissolved in an air whose thickness is visually palpable. In a famous passage in Modern Painters V, as he concluded his long defence of Turner, Ruskin summarised his understanding of colour’s intellectual power: The cloud, or firmament … signifies the ministration of the heavens to man. That ministration may be in judgment or mercy—in the lightning, or the dew. But the bow, or colour of the cloud, signifies always mercy, the sparing of life; such ministry of the heaven as shall feed and prolong life. And as the sunlight, undivided, is the type of the wisdom and righteousness of God, so divided, and softened into colour by means of the firmamental ministry, fitted to every need of man, as to every delight, and becoming one chief source of human beauty, by being made part of the flesh of man;—thus divided, the sunlight is the type of the wisdom of God, becoming sanctification and redemption. (vii.418)

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

149

‘Colour’, he wrote, ‘is the great sanctifying element of visible beauty, inseparably connected with purity and life’; ‘colour is, therefore, in brief terms, the type of love’; ‘colour is the soul of painting’ (vii.415, 419; xiv.290). Colour as purity, life, sanctification, redemption, love: these and similar readings of colour’s meaning are scattered across Ruskin’s writings. The account of the ‘bow, or colour of the cloud’ as ‘mercy’, a ‘ministry of heaven as shall feed and prolong life’, represents Ruskin’s best efforts to incorporate colour’s power, in the old artists and in modern unbelieving artists like Turner, within the system of typological reading in which he had been early trained. He did not always find it easy. Ruskin’s many efforts to explain colour’s power sometimes read as though colour were the great seducer whose power had constantly to be explained, or explained away, in repeated efforts to fix its significance firmly within a great scheme of providential figuration. Colour often troubled and complicated his habits of exegesis, and nowhere more so than in Rossetti’s watercolours. Thus, when Ruskin wrote, in the passage quoted at the start of this essay, that Rossetti was using a system of colour unlike either that taught in the Royal Academy or that found in Turner, he was seizing on what he saw as the promise of Pre-­Raphaelite art, particularly Rossetti’s, to forge a modern romantic art that would marry the older arts of pure, bright colour with the ‘mystery and dignity of light and shade’ to be found in modern work, including Turner’s (xxxiii.269). That new art, he hoped, would do justice to the pleasures of reposing on faith offered by colour in the hands of early painters, but also to the pensive melancholy with which modern viewers regarded those older arts of faith. It would (like Turner’s art in its more serene moments) express the mystery and the dignity not only of light but of light divided into colour, by which means alone light is made bearable to modern minds.9 But that promise was not what Ruskin had first noticed in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His 1851 letter to The Times praised 9  On Ruskin’s theories and responses to colour in the context of nineteenth-century thinking on this subject, see also Helsinger, ‘Ruskin and the Aesthetics of Color’ and Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts, esp. pp. 87–118. For more on Ruskin’s work in relation to his evolving religious views, see Derek Leon, Ruskin: The Great Victorian (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1969); Robert Hewison, Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Elizabeth Helsinger, Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Tim Hilton, John Ruskin: The Early Years, 1819–1859 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); Finley, Nature’s Covenant (1992); and Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (1999).

150 

E. HELSINGER

them for painting ‘either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of picture-making’ (xii.822). These artists, he wrote, painted what they saw before them, depicting from life actually observed persons and things, and composing historical or biblical scenes by assembling real objects and persons whose appearance they could imitate minutely. Facts, truth, honesty, hard work: these are the keynotes of Ruskin’s earliest defence. He praised Hunt and Millais for the unswerving realism of their paintings. Both, Ruskin insisted, had taken his advice in the first volume of Modern Painters literally, going to nature ‘laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, scorning nothing’—a passage Ruskin reprinted at the head of the expanded version of his defence (xii.339). He said nothing of Rossetti, whose work he would not see until April 1853. It was only once Ruskin had seen Rossetti’s watercolours of Dante—realised visions of imagined worlds painted out of the painter’s head—that he expanded his views of Pre-Raphaelite picturing to allow more place for the imagination.10 In his November 1853 Edinburgh lecture on Pre-Raphaelitism, while again insisting (in the main body of his text) that these young artists work always and only according to ‘one principle … of absolute, uncompromising truth’, Ruskin appended a note at the bottom of the page acknowledging their powers of imagination, however cautiously: ‘or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to, by always endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have happened, rather than as it most prettily might have happened’ (xii.157n). In April 1853 Rossetti wrote to another Pre-Raphaelite brother, Thomas Woolner, in great excitement about a possible new patron, Ruskin. Francis McCracken, a collector who had bought from Rossetti, ‘sent me a passage from a letter of Ruskin’s about my Dantesque sketches exhibited this year at the Winter Gallery … R. goes into raptures about the colour & grouping which he says are superior to anything in modern art’.11 A year later, Ruskin wrote Rossetti directly about another of his Dante watercolours: ‘I think it is a thoroughly glorious work. … I shall call on you in a day or two— hoping you will allow me the privilege of knowing you.’12 Ruskin urged his 10  For Ruskin’s excited response to Rossetti in 1853, see William E. Fredeman, ed., The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Formative Years, 1835–1862, 2 Vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), Vol. 1, pp. 335–336. 11  Fredeman, ed., Correspondence of Rossetti (2002), Vol. 1, p. 243. 12  Ibid., p. 335.

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

151

new friend Rossetti to follow Millais’ and Hunt’s careful methods of study from life, combining painstaking realism with typological symbolism. But Rossetti, as Ruskin soon discovered, was allergic to such discipline, preferring when possible to rely simply on his empathetic, highly visual imagination. That imagination was itself both stimulated by and manifested in sensory detail: colour, sound, smell, touch, and sight, mobilising a focalised, affective envisioning of figures like Dante or the Virgin Mary. Although Ruskin could not resist pointing out one or two flaws and Rossetti pretended to be interested only in how Ruskin might advance his career, both men, as Derek Leon and Tim Hilton have pointed out, found in each other a friend with whom they could discuss far more than the techniques of painting.13 There were, of course, constant irritations from their incompatible temperaments: Rossetti was an inveterate procrastinator and his working habits were, in Ruskin’s eyes, unforgivably messy, constantly rubbing out until the paper was quite worn away. Rossetti’s second thoughts, Ruskin complained, usually marred his initial conceptions. Rossetti objected to Ruskin’s assumption of the right to preach and teach, grateful but nonetheless resentful of his patronage and jealous of his own right to decide what succeeded and what did not. But Ruskin appealed to Rossetti’s mind while giving him confidence in his art, while Rossetti impressed Ruskin not only with his intelligence but with his passionate capacity for compelling belief in the reality—psychological and material— of the figures he envisioned, especially Dante or the Virgin Mary, a vision realised through his mastery of colour. We can compare what Ruskin first saw in the early works of Millais and Hunt to what he would later praise in Rossetti’s watercolours if we look at representative works to which Ruskin responded. Millais’ oil painting, Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–1850) (Fig. 6.1), does share similarities with Rossetti’s watercolour of Dante in his workshop, Dante Drawing an Angel on the First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice (1853)—the picture which, when he saw it, awoke Ruskin to Rossetti’s importance (Fig. 6.2). Both pictures are animated by the actions and littered with the material artefacts of, respectively, the holy family at work in Joseph’s 13  See Hilton, John Ruskin: The Early Years (1985), pp. 209–210, and Leon, Ruskin: The Great Victorian (1969), p.  220. On Ruskin’s friendship with Rossetti, see also Elizabeth Helsinger, ‘Pre-Raphaelite Intimacy: Ruskin and Rossetti’, in Ruskin’s Artists, ed. Robert Hewison (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 85–109.

Fig. 6.1  John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’), 1849–1850, oil on canvas

Fig. 6.2  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante Drawing an Angel on the Anniversary of Beatrice’s Death, 1853, watercolour and bodycolour on paper

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

153

carpenter shop and an early Italian poet-craftsman in his workshop. The details of the employments of earthly life in Millais’ painting prefigure later events of the young Jesus’ life: his Baptism at the hands of John and the Passion of his crucifixion. In their mundane realism, however, they also help to compel ‘the spectator’s belief, if he has the instinct of belief in him at all, in the thing’s having verily happened’. Millais assembled models and objects so that he could paint them accurately from life. Millais uses colour, of course, but he uses it realistically and symbolically; it is not there for the sensory pleasure it may offer or to bring us closer to the feelings of the figures in the biblical narrative. Colour instead underlines the realistic harshness of the scene he depicts: Mary and Jesus have red hair (associated by Victorians with an Irish working class) and Joseph’s hands are browned by the sun and deformed by his work. The symbolically predictive wound at the centre of the young Jesus’ palm, which he holds up to the ministrations of Mary and the boy John (rushing in with water to wash it), places red at the focus of an iconographically freighted scene. Ruskin, like other Victorian critics, repeatedly criticised the ‘commonness’ and ‘ugliness’ of feature in Millais’ and Hunt’s early pictures (xii.324, xiv.215), singling out particularly ‘the dwelling perpetually upon the harshest lines of form, and the most painful conditions of expression, both in human feature and in natural objects’ in Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents (xiv.111).14 He may have been made no less uncomfortable by the harsh colours in which they were dressed. As Elizabeth Prettejohn notes, the Pre-Raphaelites not only juxtaposed pure, bright colours like the older medieval painters, a practice of which Ruskin approved. They also used newer, brighter chemical pigments in startling combinations—colours associated by middle-class viewers with over-­ bright, mass-produced clothing that appealed to the working classes. Ruskin’s criticisms register the acute bodily and social discomfort that contemporary middle-class viewers felt viewing these figures. 14  For a useful survey of Victorian reactions to the distorted working-class bodies and facial expressions in Hunt’s and Millais’ early pictures, see J. B. Bullen, ‘The Ugliness of Early PreRaphaelitism’, in The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp.  6–48. As Bullen does not remark but many of his quotations make clear, critics also objected to their harsh colours. On their techniques of juxtaposing pure colours, and on their willingness to experiment with new chemical pigments, see Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. pp. 148–152.

154 

E. HELSINGER

By trying to show events as they might really have happened, Millais had painted unidealised working-class bodies, not what gallery-goers were accustomed to find in depictions of the Holy Family. Should Mary and Jesus really be shown with red hair, scrawny necks, underfed bodies, and awkward twisting gestures? Or Joseph with the gnarled hands and sun-darkened skin of real nineteenth-century labourers? Should spiritual beings be given bodies—or clothing—that to middle-class viewers appeared painfully ugly? Ruskin too sometimes preferred, perhaps against his own strictures, Rossetti’s far less realistic Christs, Marys, and Josephs to the work-, dirt-, and diet-marred bodies in gaudy colours shown in Millais’ and Hunt’s pictures. Rossetti, by contrast, composed directly from his imagination, and colour, Ruskin saw, was one of his major tools. Colour in his Dante Drawing an Angel is a site of painterly pleasure, where that pleasure works less figuratively than formally and emotionally upon the viewer, in ways that moved Ruskin even when he could not explain it (Fig. 6.2). Colour structures the composition by setting up a rhythm of alternating purples and reds, unifying the figures and space and depicting them as almost pure pattern. Colour also works expressively: the rich purples and reds of the interior suggest the richness of the brooding young Dante’s interior imaginative world (he has been interrupted by visitors as he was caught up in a vision of the dead Beatrice as an angel, represented by the sketch he still holds in his hand). Colour suggests the passion that makes possible the envisioning of distant objects as they really might have been— Dante’s angel to Dante, Dante in his workshop to Rossetti. Where Millais’ realistically rendered, harshly coloured, iconographically dense painting of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and John solicits belief through its apparently resolute honesty to what the painter has set before him, Rossetti’s wholly imagined, richly coloured, and rhythmically patterned scene, in which even Dante’s uncomprehending visitors have been absorbed into the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding the vision-rapt Dante, asks viewers to join the poet and the painter in seeing and feeling what it is like to inhabit that intense world of visionary religious imagination. Ruskin was quite right to say, as he would later, that colour is an intellectual architecture in both compositions, but his own responses suggest that colour is also a powerful emotional structure, a means by which Rossetti—and through his pictures, Ruskin, and other viewers—experience Dante’s feelings brought into close contact with their own.

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

155

I can further illustrate what Rossetti offered to Ruskin in the brief decade of their friendship by turning to a poem about a picture. The poem is Rossetti’s sonnet on the central panel of Hans Memling’s fifteenth-­ century St. John Altarpiece, a triptych which Rossetti saw in 1849 on a visit to Bruges (Fig. 6.3). He wrote home to his brother ‘I assure you that the perfection of character and even drawing, the astounding finish, the glory of colour, and above all the pure religious sentiment and ecstatic poetry of these works, is not to be conceived or even described’.15 His sonnet was first published in the Pre-Raphaelite journal, The Germ, in 1850, and slightly revised when it was republished in Rossetti’s 1870 Poems. I give the 1870 version. Mystery: Catherine the bride of Christ. She kneels, and on her hand the holy Child Now sets the ring. Her life is hushed and mild, Laid in God's knowledge—ever unenticed From God, and in the end thus fitly priced. Awe, and the music that is near her, wrought Of angels, have possessed her eyes in thought: Her utter joy is hers, and hath sufficed. There is a pause while Mary Virgin turns The leaf, and reads. With eyes on the spread book, That damsel at her knees reads after her. John whom He loved, and John His harbinger, Listen and watch. Whereon so’er thou look, The light is starred with gems and the gold burns.16

In Memling’s painting, as in other pictures now known as sacra conversazione, the Madonna, child, and four saints (Catherine, Barbara, John the Evangelist, and John the Baptist) occupy the same physical and emotional space, existing together familiarly on terms which the viewer (and the reader of Rossetti’s sonnet) is invited to share.17 Rossetti’s sonnet perfectly understands the heightened emotional atmosphere of such pictures and how it is  Fredeman, ed., Correspondence of Rossetti (2002), Vol. 1, p. 84.  Rossetti in Jerome McGann, ed., Collected Poetry and Prose of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 345. 17  On the genre of the sacra conversazione, see Rona Goffen, ‘Nostra Conversatio in Caelis Est: Observations on the Sacra Conversazione in the Trecento’, The Art Bulletin 61.2 (June 1979), pp. 198–222. 15 16

156 

E. HELSINGER

Fig. 6.3  Hans Memling, Sacra Conversazione. Altarpiece of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, c. 1479, oil on oak panels (centre panel shown)

achieved. The octave focuses on the intimate gesture by which the child symbolically weds Saint Catherine. ‘Hushed’ (in line three) describes the scene experienced from her perspective: the hushed moment when she feels the touch of the child’s ring on her finger. In the sestet we are asked, with Catherine, not only to see but to hear the pause while Mary, reading silently from an illuminated book, ‘turns/The leaf’, (the line break enacting that turn quite literally). The two Johns, like us, ‘listen and watch’. The atmosphere is charged with attention—ours, and theirs. It is only the light ‘starred

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

157

in gems’ and the gold that ‘burns’ that are truly active; they materialise the silent sacred conversation. Colour and light (the gold thread on the hanging and the skirt of Catherine and the tunic of the angel-musician) carry the current of feeling that unites us with Catherine, Christ, Mary, and the saints. Rossetti’s sonnet asks us to realise with all our senses how light and colour put these divine figures into silent conversation with each other and with us. The understanding of colour’s power revealed in Rossetti’s sonnet and exemplified in his watercolours has unexpected sources in an evangelical tradition very unlike Ruskin’s, as we shall see. At a first reading, Ruskin’s praise for Pre-Raphaelite veracity, whether the realism of Millais or the imaginative envisioning-in-colour of Rossetti, sounds surprisingly like the defence George Eliot made of her realistic techniques in her first novel Adam Bede (1859). Both Eliot and Ruskin advocated allegiance to truth over beauty for essentially moral reasons. Eliot compared her writing about late eighteenth-century artisans and farm labourers to that of seventeenth-­ century Dutch genre painters, expressing her ‘delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence’.18 She gently mocked idealistic readers who might squirm at the ‘vulgar details’ or exclaim ‘What a low phase of life!—what clumsy, ugly people!’19 For Eliot, the writer must focus on familiar, ordinary persons with all the ugly details of their lives and persons in order to expand her readers’ capacities for sympathy with even unlovable fellow-creatures. However similar they may sound, Ruskin’s insistence on material veracity and Eliot’s derive from quite different evangelical sources, and Eliot’s can better illuminate the power of colour that Ruskin admired in Rossetti. Unbeliever though he was, Rossetti’s system of expressive colour also descended, however indirectly, from evangelical tradition. Indeed, the conversations between Ruskin and Rossetti that marked their brief and often troubled friendship are also about two strains of evangelical practice offering different ways of understanding colour. One is that inherited by Eliot (and, as we shall see, by Browning and, indirectly, by Rossetti); the other was Ruskin’s. As Erin Nerstad has shown, Eliot was much influenced by the life and writing of William Wilberforce, a leader of the Clapham sect of evangelical clergyman and abolitionists in south London from c. 1770–1830.20  George Eliot, Adam Bede (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 177.  Ibid. 20  Erin Nerstad, ‘George Eliot’s Evangelical Insight: Close Contact and Realizing Views’, Victorian Literature and Culture 45.3 (September 2017), p. 572. 18 19

158 

E. HELSINGER

What struck Eliot was Wilberforce’s argument, in his A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians (1797), for a Christian practice of what he called ‘realizing views’: an effort of passionate, embodied envisioning through which the Christian might realise for herself the person of Christ and the incidents in his life. Acknowledging that this required that one overcome ‘a certain strangeness between the passion and its object’, Wilberforce argued: You must contrive to bring them into close contact; they must be joined and glued together by the particularities of little incidents. …The instance of novel reading proves that we may be extremely affected by what we know to be merely ideal incidents and beings. By thinking or talking of any one; by using our minds to dwell on his excellencies; by placing him in imaginary situations which interest and affect us; we find ourselves becoming insensibly more and more attached to him.21

‘It is these realizing views’, Wilberforce wrote, ‘which give the Christian a relish for the worship and service of the heavenly world’.22 Long after Eliot had herself lost her early evangelical faith, she depicted just such embodied, passionate envisioning as the centre of the Methodist preacher Dinah Morris’ ministry in Adam Bede. But more significantly, following Wilberforce’s hint, Eliot described similar techniques behind her realistic representations of homely or vulgar persons. George Eliot was not the only Victorian writer to take inspiration from such evangelically inspired techniques of embodied envisioning. The poet Robert Browning and the textual scholar Benjamin Jowett (a leading figure in the new biblical criticism and an editor of Plato) both grew up in evangelical homes in south London, heirs to beliefs and practices of realising views like those of Wilberforce. Both men, as Nerstad has convincingly shown, were influenced by exegetical strategies that go back ultimately to German Christian hermeneutics of the previous century, particularly those of Friedrich Schleiermacher.23 Schleiermacher had urged a two-fold 21  Ibid., p.  573, from William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. 2nd ed. (London: T. Cadell, Jr., and W. Davies, 1797), pp. 102–103. 22  Ibid., p. 180. 23  Erin Nerstad, ‘Decomposing but to Recompose: Browning, Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Dramatic Monologue’, Victorian Poetry 50.4 (Winter 2012), pp. 543–561.

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

159

technique of both ‘grammatical’ and ‘psychological’ interpretation. ‘One must put oneself in the place of the author on the objective and the subjective side. On the objective side … via knowledge of the language as he possessed it … On the subjective side in the knowledge of his inner and outer life.’24 Such sympathetic inhabitation of a text could make grammatical and historical facts come alive through a passionate exercise of imagination. It was crucial to Browning’s dramatic monologues, Jowett’s textual criticism, and Eliot’s realist fiction. By such sendings out of the soul (as Browning described them in The Ring and the Book), each of these writers believed he or she could envision from within the material and psychological truths of another’s life, even one that had taken place years ago and in an entirely different culture: The life in me abolished the death of things, Deep calling unto deep: as then and there Acted itself over again once more [the old story.] I saw with my own eyes.25

Rossetti was not an evangelical Christian—indeed he was not much of a Christian at all, as Ruskin came to realise, though his mother and sisters were serious practicing High Anglicans. But Rossetti was a great admirer of Browning’s poetry. He described Browning’s practice of passionate, embodied envisioning as taking up an ‘inner standing point’, using all one’s senses and emotions to put oneself imaginatively in the place of a figure in a picture or a poem so as to sense what they might have sensed, feel what they might have felt.26 Rossetti put such imagining into practice in ekphrastic sonnets for other painters’ pictures and his own, in dramatic monologues, and in pictures and poems in which he explored the thoughts and feelings of the mother of Christ and of the poet, Dante. At Ruskin’s request Rossetti sat down to read with him line by line the poems in Browning’s Men and Women (1855), but Ruskin continued to find them intellectually and prosodically awkward (even though he admired the economy with which Browning had conveyed Renaissance ‘worldliness, inconsistency, 24  Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, ed. Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), p. 24. 25  Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, ed. Thomas J. Collins and Richard D. Altick (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2001), pp. 520–523; emphasis added. 26  See William Michael Rossetti, ed., The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Ellis, 1911), p. 167n.

160 

E. HELSINGER

pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin’ in ‘The Bishop Orders His Tomb’ 34.xx). Browning’s, Eliot’s, and Rossetti’s modes of imaginative composition, sending the mind out in acts of passionate envisioning through the feelings and senses of another, were alien to Ruskin’s habits of reading. Indeed, although Ruskin lived only a few miles away from where Browning and Jowett grew up in equally evangelical homes, he absorbed different influences. The exacting attention to literal meaning in biblical texts enforced on him by his mother, and later, the habits of typological and figural exegesis brilliantly exemplified in the sermons of Henry Melvill (which Ruskin, with his parents, began attending in the early 1840s) were more important to Ruskin’s critical practice than affective attachments to Christ achieved by envisioning the particularities of his life and person. Certainly, he responded passionately and imaginatively to the things he loved, but what he stressed was close attention to visual facts and the figural and typological meanings they might bear. Even with Rossetti’s tutelage, Ruskin was not converted to Browning’s poetic methods. But he did come, with the help of Rossetti’s watercolours, to better understand how colour might at once appeal to the desire of the eyes and bring home the moral and emotional truths of Scripture. In 1849, when Rossetti composed his sonnet on Memling’s Sacra Conversazione, he was already planning a triptych of his own centring on the figure who most intrigued him: the Virgin Mary. As Landow has pointed out, Rossetti was interested in the juxtaposition of two events or moments in time (or out of it) that typological reading offered, but his interest was less in interpreting for Christians a providential temporal order than in asking what human figures like Mary, whose lives at some moment are approached or touched by the divine, could from their earthly perspectives, immersed in the present moment, sense or feel about a future yet to unfold.27 Rossetti planned a series of three pictures that would use Mary as a focalising or inner standing point to explore her sensory and emotional grasp of time past and future as it is embedded in time present. On either side of a central panel— the Girlhood of Virgin Mary, the oil painting he exhibited in 1849—he 27  See George P. Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Literature, Art, and Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), Chapter 4 ‘Typology in the Visual Arts’, pp. 119–142.

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

161

planned pictures of Mary as a girl tending lilies and roses, on the left, and on the right, Mary after the crucifixion sheltering in the house of the evangelist, John.28 In 1856 he returned to his ideas for the two side panels. Mary in the House of St. John, a drawing Ruskin loved when he saw it in 1856, became a watercolour, the first version of which is now lost. In 1859 Rossetti completed two additional versions in watercolour, one now in Tate Britain and the other in the Bancroft Collection at the Delaware Art Museum (Fig. 6.4). Ruskin’s 1883 tribute to Rossetti, quoted at the beginning of my essay, continued: ‘And if I had to choose one picture which represented in purity and completeness this manner of [Pre-Raphaelite] thought, it would be Rossetti’s “Virgin in the House of St. John”’ (xxxiii.270). In that picture, Rossetti brings together a Pre-Raphaelite attention to humble details and ordinary acts and a pre-figuring typological symbolism that Ruskin could read. John holds on his lap the writing tablet and implement with which he will shortly begin to write his gospel, while he strikes a flint to light the lamp in the window that Mary is filling with oil. The lamp hangs at the centre of a cross formed by the window panes, taking the place of Christ’s body and pointing ahead to the light of the resurrection and Christ’s promised return. But Rossetti does something more. The red sunset glow seen through the window and reflected in the calm faces of Mary and John unites them in a current of feeling, a sensed knowledge of the promised life to come. The embodiment of an impassioned, visionary thinking, Rossetti’s colour reaches above and beyond the intellectual architecture revealed through typological exegesis to compel Ruskin’s belief in the reality of biblical story. As I have been arguing, colour appealed to a desire of the eyes with which Ruskin was not wholly comfortable, but which he knew himself to possess. Rossetti’s colour affected him by other means than those he had been taught to value. But it was colour, finally, that brought Ruskin to Rossetti, drawing him, with Rossetti’s help, into fresh conversations with the divine.  Another account suggests that the central panel would have been The Passover in the Holy Family, a design sketched c. 1855 which much impressed Ruskin. See The Rossetti Archive, ed. Jerome J.  McGann, http://www.rossettiarchive.org/, last accessed May 2022; see Scholarly Commentary: Production History for Mary in the House of St. John. 28

162 

E. HELSINGER

Fig. 6.4  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary in the House of St. John, 1859, watercolour on paper

Bibliography Browning, Robert. The Ring and the Book. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2001. Bullen, J.  B. The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

6  RUSKIN, ROSSETTI, AND THE SACRA CONVERSAZIONE OF COLOUR 

163

Eliot, George. Adam Bede. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Finley, C. Stephen. Nature’s Covenant: Figures of Landscape in Ruskin. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Fredeman, William E., ed. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Formative Years, 1835–1862. 2 vols. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002. Gage, John. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ———. Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Goffen, Rona. ‘Nostra Conversatio in Caelis Est: Observations on the Sacra Conversazione in the Trecento’. The Art Bulletin 61:2 (June 1979), pp. 198–222. Helsinger, Elizabeth. Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008a. ———. ‘Pre-Raphaelite Intimacy: Ruskin and Rossetti’, in Robert Hewison, ed., Ruskin’s Artists. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 85–109. ———. ‘Ruskin and the Aesthetics of Color’, Nineteenth-Century Prose 35:1 (Spring 2008b), pp. 13–36. ———. Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982. Hewison, Robert. Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Hilton, Tim. John Ruskin: The Early Years, 1819–1815. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Landow, George P. The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. ———. Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Literature, Art, and Thought. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Leon, Derek. Ruskin: The Great Victorian. 1949; Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1969. McGann, Jerome, ed. Collected Poetry and Prose of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Nerstad, Erin. ‘“Decomposing but to Recompose’: Browning, Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Dramatic Monologue’, Victorian Poetry 50:4 (Winter 2012), pp. 543–561. ———. ‘George Eliot’s Evangelical Insight: Close Contact and Realizing Views’, Victorian Literature and Culture 45:3 (September 2017), pp. 569–591. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Rossetti Archive, ed. Jerome J.  McGann. http:// www.rossettiarchive.org/. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Rossetti, William Michael, ed. The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Ellis, 1911.

164 

E. HELSINGER

Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Shapiro, Harold I., ed. Ruskin in Italy: Letters to His Parents, 1845. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Wheeler, Michael. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

CHAPTER 7

‘The Loveliest Traditions of the Christian Legend’: Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and the Imaging of the Cross Katherine Hinzman

Edward Burne-Jones’ (1833–1898) otherworldly pictures are at once melancholic and fantastically beautiful. Critics in his own day either loved or loathed his work, and even recently, when his vast canvases, sketches, designs, and tapestries were on display at Tate Britain (2018), his paintings could be regarded as but a ‘procession of the living dead’.1 Then, as now, the dismissal of Burne-Jones’ work by some is equally countered by the fascination of others who seem entranced by the mystery embodied in his vast and varied oeuvre. Influenced by, but not a direct member of, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Burne-Jones’ vast body of work ranges in subject and style, context and media, prompting continual reassessment. His complexity of subject matter and the sheer volume of work he 1  Laura Cumming, ‘Edward Burne-Jones Review  – An Endless Procession of the Living Dead’, The Guardian, 22 October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/ oct/28/edward-burne-jones-tate-britain-review-laura-cumming, accessed June 2022.

K. Hinzman (*) Atchison, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_7

165

166 

K. HINZMAN

produced can make his output difficult to understand comprehensively as a whole, but his art sustains its sense of otherworldly unattainability, its sadness, and strange beauty to many who encounter it.2 John Ruskin (1819–1900) was one of Burne-Jones’ earliest artistic inspirations, mentors, and a close friend throughout his career. On Burne-­ Jones’ first visits to Italy with Ruskin starting in the 1860s, he was encouraged to copy Renaissance masters in situ: Ruskin later collected and used these and many more of Burne-Jones’ sketches for his own teaching collection, now housed in the Ashmolean Museum.3 In his 1884 Art of England lectures, Ruskin heralded Burne-Jones as an ‘indefatigable scholar’, proceeding to say: It is impossible for the general public to estimate the quantity of careful and investigatory reading, and the fine tact of literary discrimination, which are signified by the command now possessed by Mr. Burne-Jones over the entire range both of Northern and Greek mythology, or the tenderness at once, and largeness, of sympathy which have enabled him to harmonize these with the loveliest traditions of the Christian legend.4 (xxxiii.296)

With his own distinct religious imagination, Ruskin saw beneath the ‘entire range both of Northern and Greek mythology’, recognising Burne-­ Jones’ ability to harmonise with the ‘traditions of the Christian legend’— in other words, to have and deploy his own religious imagination (xxxiii.296). What is particular to this religious imagination of BurneJones that Ruskin could be pointing to? Arguably, Burne-Jones’ ‘indefatigable’ scholarship could be important for this, and perhaps we can see 2  The online catalogue raisonné of Burne-Jones’ work was launched in 2020 and is considered ‘an ongoing project’ ‘which will take many years to complete’ because of the sheer volume of work he produced. See here: https://www.eb-j.org, accessed June 2022. The academic panel includes Dr Suzanne Fagence Cooper, whose chapter on Burne-Jones can be found on pages: 3  John Christian and Stephen Wildman, Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), p. 84; Georgiana Burne-Jones, The Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones Vol. 1 (London: Chiswick Press, 1905), p. 248; ‘Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection at Oxford’, Ashmolean Museum, http:// ruskin.ashmolean.org/collection/8994, accessed June 2022. 4  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xxxiii.296).

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

167

Burne-Jones’ work—religious or non-religious in subject or context— through the perspective Ruskin offers. We may ask, however, what are the features of Burne-Jones’ religious imagination and how do we consider it in relation to Ruskin’s ideas, which, at times, may seem foreign to Burne-­ Jones’ work? When we think of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, we may well imagine his influence on their love of natural detail, of realism, social commentary, or Italianate brightness and technique but works such as Burne-Jones’ Perseus (c.1875–1898) series, or even The Mirror of Venus (1877), seem dark and are often set in alien landscapes, devoid of much natural detail or clear moral teaching. Ruskin may be saying paintings like these also have their place in Burne-Jones’ religious imagination. He could be even suggesting they are tied up with his religious outlook and his vision for his art as a whole. Ruskin’s recognition of Burne-Jones’ ability to harmonise his art ‘with the loveliest traditions of the Christian legend’ is seldom considered in relation to either man’s artistic or religious outlook, nor the subsequent manifestation and representation of these outlooks. Analysing a few examples of Burne-Jones’ religious imagery in contrast with Ruskin‘s religious commentary, I will focus first on the ‘scholarly’ method behind Burne-­ Jones’ art, asking why Ruskin may have recognised it as such, and why it poses complications or differences in the two men and their religious and artistic ideas. In considering Burne-Jones’ unique approach to sacredness and art, I will initially spend considerable time analysing Ruskin’s and Burne-Jones’ reactions to William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World. Doing so will allow us to see Burne-Jones’ early engagement with Ruskin’s religious imagination and how he reacts and proposes his own perspective on the nature of sacred art—particularly how the cross of Christ can be taken as an imaginative model for not only images of Christ, but a higher and more beautiful idea of art and its meaning. For juxtaposition, I will contrast Burne-Jones’ early writing on Ruskin with an early stained glass design The Good Shepherd (1857), which highlights their first interactions and exchanges on the integrated nature of art and sacredness. I will then compare The Good Shepherd to Burne-Jones’ first exhibited work The Merciful Knight, before turning to his later design for the ‘Tree of Life’ mosaics in the American Church, Rome. Through these comparisons, I elucidate Burne-Jones’ own reflection on art, its purpose, and the thoughts of Ruskin as found in his late non-religious work.

168 

K. HINZMAN

Young Burne-Jones and Tractarian Controversy As a child and young man, Edward Burne-Jones showed little interest in a career in art. Born in Birmingham in 1833, he was son to a widowed middle-class maker of picture frames (though, as he remembered, the pictures themselves had little impact on him as he grew up).5 He was incredibly curious and an avid learner, absorbing all that he could when we went up to King Edward’s Grammar School, Birmingham.6 A visit to Hereford Cathedral in 1849 was pivotal, inspiring him to pursue a theological education—in particular, it exposed Burne-Jones to a theology as espoused by the Oxford Movement and its leader, John Henry Newman.7 By then, Newman had converted to Catholicism and had founded an Oratory in Birmingham, where young Burne-Jones could have even heard him speak.8 Eventually his passion for such controversial theological positions would lead Burne-Jones to study at the University of Oxford, original home to the movement and a vital step in joining the Anglican clergy. The Oxford Movement, or Tractarianism, began the year of Burne-­ Jones’ birth in 1833 when John Keble preached the ‘Assize Sermon’ protesting the government’s interference with the Irish bishoprics—a political move some saw as a threat to the balance of Church and State in Britain.9 The group of theologians that was subsequently formed included E.  B. Pusey, Keble, Isaac Williams, Hurrell Froude, and John Henry Newman, who became the leader of the movement and a hero to Burne-­ Jones years later. The Oxford Movement more broadly sought to re-­ establish and reconnect the Anglican Church to its roots in the early patristic period of the unified Christian church, thereby confirming the validity of its traditions, doctrines, and sacraments (such as the Eucharist).10  Burne-Jones, Memorials, Vol. 1 (1905), pp. 1–6.  Ibid., pp. 15–18. 7  Ibid., p. 62. 8  Newman founded the oratory in Birmingham in 1849—the very year Burne-Jones was at Hereford—the Church of St. Anne in Alcester Street (relocating to the Edgbaston area of the city in 1852). It was said Newman preached his first sermon there to a large and diverse congregation of the poor and displaced on ‘How to Escape the False Worship of the World’. See Penelope Fitzgerald, Edward Burne-Jones (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1997), p.  19; Sheridan Gilley, Newman and His Age (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1990), p. 258. 9  R.W. Church, The Oxford Movement. Twelve Years, 1833–1845 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1900), p. 68. 10  Elisabeth Jay, Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 24. 5 6

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

169

For them, the church was above politics and the dictates of state and secular society, ordained as a ‘supernatural institution’.11 Their love of ‘higher’ forms of ritual, liturgy, and worship and more ‘advanced’ views on the Eucharist led many to perceive them as dangerously close to Roman Catholicism, which seemed to be confirmed when several Tractarian thinkers, including Newman himself, left the Anglican Church and converted to Rome in the 1840s and 1850s.12 As a teenager, Burne-Jones loved the controversy of the movement, its striking rituals, and sense of history and tradition. In Hereford, he had been overcome by the cathedral’s architectural and liturgical beauty. This was only the beginning of an encounter with an intellectual tradition tied to questions of the mystery of the mass and the relationship between the natural and supernatural as proposed in a distinctly Tractarian sacramental outlook on life.13 The ‘indefatigable scholar’ Ruskin later met would be described by fellow students and friends for his incredible studiousness and fiery debating skills at this early point in his life.14 However, in 1854, Burne-Jones was disappointed with his theological curriculum at the University of Oxford.15 The fervour and controversy of the Tractarian Movement that had compelled him to undertake theological study ‘had just gone out’—he could not find that same fire for ancient liturgy and philosophical thinking, the sacramental life and sense of the church’s sacred role that he thought he would find there.16 Nevertheless, it was Ruskin, the successive inspiration for Burne-Jones, who would later 11  Frances Knight, The Church in the Nineteenth Century (London and New  York: I.B. Tauris, 2008), p. 15. 12  Dominic Janes, Victorian Reformation: The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840–1860 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), p. 12. 13  This is exemplified in his readings of Newman and also how he paid attention to and debated fellow students during times of theological controversy, such the Gorham Judgment of 1850. Burne-Jones, Memorials, Vol. 1 (1905), p. 52. 14  School friend Richard (later Canon) Dixon would later remember how ‘For a boy of fifteen the range of information [in the letters] is great, especially as there were much fewer books of that sort that would give it directly on such subjects than there are now—and he was so busy with other things. The classification [distinguishing the different sects and their respective beliefs through time] seems to me his own, and is deliciously original…keen in judgement, and very decided…the striking thing is that in his main divisions, “Objects of Divine Worship” and “Blessings derivable from the Gospel,” he should have touched the two first great successive tendencies of theology, the one being Christology (in the early Fathers,) and the other the nature of grace (in Augustine and after)’. Ibid., p. 27. 15  Ibid., p. 71. 16  Ibid.

170 

K. HINZMAN

recognise the ‘indefatigable scholar’ in Burne-Jones the artist. (xxxiii.296) Though Ruskin quite famously opposed Tractarianism,17 he would recognise this unique scholarly ability in Burne-Jones that stemmed from his theological background. It is at the initial point of recognition—in Burne-­ Jones’ discovery of Ruskin’s texts and Pre-Raphaelitism, and Ruskin’s discovery of Burne-Jones’ own initial writings and artworks—that their dialogue on art and its language for sacred thinking begins.

Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and The Light of the World In May 1854, Ruskin had made a rousing defence of the latest work by William Holman Hunt—The Light of the World (xii.328–332) (Fig. 7.1).18 Shown at the Royal Academy, the painting of Christ knocking at the door was paired with the text from Revelation 3:20: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and sup with him, and he with me’. Though the text was included on the frame and in the exhibition catalogue, the work was not a singular illustration of that particular Scriptural passage. As Holman Hunt would discuss in the meditative reflection of letters and autobiography, the painting was allegorical in nature, bringing together many different biblical references.19 The Light of the World was part of Holman Hunt’s project, which was ‘driven by his desire for both historical fact and meaningful fiction: narrative modes that the historicization of Jesus had enabled’.20 His career and self-fashioning as an artist was repeatedly shaped by his ‘quest for Christ’, and while divulging his own spiritual views he also sought to make the spectator involved as he depicted an open-ended and enigmatic scene in this particular painting.21 Holman Hunt posed ­questions regarding Christ’s physical and transcendent reality, and the

17  Robert Hewison, Ian Warrell, and Stephen Wildman, Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-­ Raphaelites (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2000), p. 14. 18  Ruskin wrote a letter to the Times about The Light of the World, however, it ‘was not inserted; and Ruskin, supposing that its length was the objection, withdrew it and substituted a shorter one’ (xii. xlix) (The letter is reproduced in xii.328–332.) 19  Michaela Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible: Representation and Belief in Mid-Victorian Britain (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 147. 20  Ibid., p. 134. 21  Ibid., p. 128, p. 147.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

Fig. 7.1  William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World, 1886, oil on canvas

171

172 

K. HINZMAN

work became a Protestant icon replicated in print and stained glass for decades to come.22 The painting was disparaged by most critics, but Ruskin’s letter to the editor of The Times sought to rebuff the comments and make a case for its significance for nineteenth century viewers. He appealed to them to spend time appreciating the work, as he believed ‘there are very few persons on whom this picture, thus justly understood, will not produce a deep impression’. (xii.330) In his interpretation, he guided the viewer to look at the various iconographic aspects of light, and what light those shed on the different roles of Christ, biblically and within ‘any human heart’.23 Ruskin particularly emphasised Hunt’s multifold depiction of Christ as the ‘light of conscience, which displays past sin, and afterwards, the light of peace, the hope of salvation’, connecting this first light to the lantern held in Christ’s hand, and the second to the halo around Christ’s head.24 ‘For my own part,’ concluded Ruskin, ‘I think it one of the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced in this or any other age’.25 Inspired by Ruskin, Burne-Jones visited the Royal Academy in 1854 and saw Holman Hunt’s Light of the World and Awakening Conscience (1853) on display.26 Burne-Jones was compelled by Ruskin’s vision of the artist’s ‘priestly imagination’, and these two Holman Hunt pictures of ‘sudden revelation’—one sacred, one secular—made an impact on him.27 Writing for the journal he founded with his life-long friend William Morris, Burne-Jones reflected upon Ruskin’s thinking in Modern Painters, and followed his call to spend time interpreting The Light of the World.28 Indeed, Burne-Jones’ ekphrastic response to Ruskin’s writing and Holman Hunt’s work is the most unique and arguably revealing part of what otherwise may be considered a rather ‘eulogistic’ review.29 ‘So new, but so 22  Graham Howes, The Art of the Sacred: An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Art and Belief (London and New  York: I.B.  Tauris, 2007), p.  123; Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible (2006), p. 187. 23  Ibid. 24  Ibid. 25  Ibid. 26  John Christian, ‘“A Serious Talk”: Ruskin’s Place in Burne-Jones’ Artistic Development’, in Leslie Parris, ed., The Pre-Raphaelite Papers (London: The Tate Gallery, 1984), p. 185. 27  David Peters Corbett, The World in Paint: Modern Art and Visuality in England 1848–1914 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 26–27. 28  Edward Burne-Jones, ‘Mr. Ruskin’s New Volume’, The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (January 1856), pp. 223–224. 29  Christian, ‘“A Serious Talk”’ (1984), p. 188.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

173

familiar’, Burne-Jones begins, ‘those large mournful eyes, set in such sorrowful expectation, till the door shall open, the head slightly bending, seen as it bowed on the cross’.30 Similar to Ruskin, Burne-Jones makes reference to the salvific qualities of the painting, emphasising it as connected to the cross. This, however, is not so much to speak about light, the literal title of the painting, or the scriptural passage of Revelation included in the frame. Instead, it is to continue to string out a succeeding array of paradoxes that is not found in Ruskin’s analysis. He continues: It is the Son of Man standing before us, in all the beauty and sadness of our common humanity: we could call Him Brother, and inexpressively beautiful the thought seems to us: but another look, and it is the Son of God, risen and glorified, the royal crown upon His Head, and the royal robes enfolding Him, starred with jewels: so we are bowed down with awe before the Judge of the quick and the dead; yet there are signs of comfort, making the God whom we worship, and the Brother whom we love, one; and these are the crown of thorns budding with new leaves, and the pierced hands;—the perfect God and Perfect Man, of reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.31

And while Ruskin had indeed spoken of Christ as ‘a prophet, priest, and king’ (xii.329), Burne-Jones does not point to this so succinctly and instead draws it out, repeatedly pointing to these aspects as contrasts, surprises almost, that come with ‘another look’. The viewer looks with Burne-­ Jones and sees these new aspects, pointed to but not particularly described; Christ’s downward head, as if on the cross, is echoed by the downward bow of the painting’s audience. This act of looking is key for him, insofar as looking at the painting, at Christ represented, and becomes a liturgical action in a church setting.32 Thus, a reference to the text of Revelation becomes less important than revelation itself, and art imitating the actual act of revelation in and through the crucified Christ. In fact, instead of Revelation, Burne-Jones makes direct reference to the Athanasian Creed, included in the Book of Common Prayer and routinely discussed by his earlier hero Newman: ‘The perfect God and

 Burne-Jones, ‘Mr. Ruskin’s New Volume’ (1856), p. 223.  Ibid., pp. 223–224. 32  This could be connected to the Tractarian emphasis, and Burne-Jones’ attraction to a more ritualistic form of liturgy and worship. 30 31

174 

K. HINZMAN

Perfect Man, of reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.’33 We may question why Burne-Jones would include this, rather than other potential references more directly related to the image, but the Athanasian Creed, as a key text in the history of the church in a broad sense, arose as a defence of the doctrine of the incarnation against heretics by the Church Father, Athanasius.34 Could Burne-Jones be making this theological connection in an attempt to combine his theological study with his new artistic interest? Further, could he be posing Christ and art in a dialogue about incarnation, what it means to represent, and subsequently, to reveal? Not so much a literal ‘light’, Christ represented in painting could become the revelation of the combined mystery of supernatural and natural realities that could point to a broader vision for art and its purpose that is ultimately fulfilled in the cross. Indeed, in the thinking of Newman, Burne-­Jones’ original inspiration, Christ is repeatedly equated with an ‘image’; Christianity with the philosophical imagination necessary to comprehend that image; imagination with illustration. As an ‘object’, Christ ‘appositely illustrated the words of the text’ for Newman.35 Burne-Jones could be bringing some of these theological principles to bear as he follows Ruskin in his analysis of Christ and art in The Light of the World.

33  ‘The Creed of S. Athanasius’, The Book of Common Prayer and the Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Church of England Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David Pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches 1662 (Cambridge: John Baskerville, 1762), pp. 24–25. 34  Athanasius, ‘On the Incarnation of the Word’, in Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs, eds., Christianity in Late Antiquity 300–450 C.E.: A Reader (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 200. Indeed, Athanasius was a key figure in John Henry Newman and Tractarian thought. See Athanasius, Historical Tracts of St. Athanasius trans. Miles Atkinson with preface and notes by Newman (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1848); John Henry Newman, trans., Select Treatises of S.  Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, In Controversy with the Arians (Oxford, London and Cambridge: James Parker and Co. and Rivingtons, 1877); John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908). 35  John Henry Newman, ‘Sermon II: The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religions Respectively’ preached 13 April 1830, Easter Tuesday, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843 3rd ed. (London, Oxford and Cambridge: Rivingtons, 1872), p. 26.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

175

‘Wild with Joy’: Burne-Jones’ The Good Shepherd These certain artistic and theological references may be included in Burne-­ Jones’ early textual writing, but how could he meaningfully combine them in artistic creations of his own? Arguably, his early works could provide insight into Burne-Jones’ theological frame of mind in images as he responds to his initial contacts with Ruskin, The Light of the World, and the PreRaphaelites as a whole. One of Burne-Jones’ earliest commissions as an artist and designer was an image of Christ for the firm James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars.36 The Good Shepherd design, made for later translation into stained glass at the Congregational Church of Maidstone in Kent in 1861,37 could be seen to develop Burne-Jones’ initial interpretation of Hunt’s painting, as we will see. Overall, his cartoon is sober in tone, with rich and carefully chosen colours piecing together a composition of a humbly adorned Christ. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, also mentoring Burne-Jones at this time, celebrated the design for its sacramental details, saying that Burne-Jones showed Christ ‘as a real Shepherd, in such a dress as is fit for walking the fields and the hills. He carries the lost sheep on His shoulder, and it is chewing some vine leaves which are wound around his hat—a lovely idea, is it not? A loaf and a bottle of wine, the Sacred elements, hang at His girdle; and behind him is a wonderful piece of Gothic landscape’.38 Rossetti even said that Ruskin went ‘wild with joy’ when he saw it (Fig. 7.2).39 We can examine this early work in stained glass as Burne-Jones’ artistic response to Ruskin’s and Holman Hunt’s ideas about Christ as the ‘Light of the World’. Indeed, as a stained glass design, it anticipates its future space within the context of church architecture and the necessities of translation into glass and lead lines. However, he does not do this merely as a craftsman but with incredible intellectual care and knowledge of the significant artistic and theological issues at play. There is a self-­consciousness to the design, absorbing as it does the idea that it will be both an image of Christ and an animator and threshold for light within the church—a literal ‘Light of the World’. The figure as Burne-Jones depicts it is triply 36  A. Charles Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and His Circle – A Catalogue (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 1–2. 37  Destroyed; a second version was produced by Powell and Son’s for the Church of Saint Patrick in Trim, Country Meath, Ireland, 1869 (Christian and Wildman, Edward Burne-­ Jones (1998), p. 57). 38  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, quoted in ibid., pp. 56–57. 39  Ibid., pp. 6–7.

176 

K. HINZMAN

Fig. 7.2  Edward Burne-Jones, design for The Good Shepherd, 1857, watercolour and ink

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

177

haloed—by a hat, the arc of the sheep on his shoulders, and the circular embracing sun behind him. Similar to what Burne-Jones had described in Hunt’s painted Light of the World, in his own design Christ reconciles the ‘common’ and the ‘royal’; the ‘Brother’ and the ‘Judge’—but does so with pre-emptive symbols of sacrament and the echo of a crucifixion. In this initial project for a design, Burne-Jones does not fall here into the pitfalls of traditional religious art. Indeed, Ruskin claimed that ‘in early times art was employed for the display of religious facts; now, religious facts were employed for the display of art’ (iv.77) (Italics original). In the works of artists after Raphael, there is a lack of truth and true faith because at ‘the moment we look at the picture [here Ruskin uses an image of Christ in Galilee as an example] we feel our belief of the whole thing taken away … it is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers’. (iv.82) In fact, Ruskin asks his reader if there has been ‘no true religious ideal?’ and largely answers ‘on the whole, not […] But there is one true form of religious art’ (iv.85). Here he turns to the Last Judgement of Fra Angelico, or ‘any of the scenes laid in heaven by the other religious masters; and the more they are considered, not as works of art, but as real visions of real things, the more or less imperfectly set down, the more good will be got by dwelling upon them. The same is true of all representations of Christ as a living presence among us now, as in Hunt’s Light of the World’ (iv.85). In the Good Shepherd, Burne-Jones hints at his ideas about the sacramental act of transformation—bread and wine transforming during the worship and practice of communion—while also tying these ideas to the crucifixion and sacrifice that is his particular theological model for the Eucharistic celebration.40 Burne-Jones’ Christ as Shepherd is common in his garb for walking fields and herding sheep, but he is royal in his exalted place as a window filled with light and colour. He carries sacramental accessories, like bread and wine, but his head is bent, as if on the cross Burne-Jones saw in Holman Hunt’s Light of the World. Burne-Jones’ sensitivity to the actual context and material of the window, and the symbolic and stylistic significance of the landscape, Christ’s figure and form, all 40  While these ideas would not have been the theological precedent at a Congregational church, Burne-Jones’ own study of theology would have lent him familiarity with the potency of these symbols and ideas; he was known to have ‘devoured’ Robert Wilberforce’s controversial book The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist at mealtimes (Burne-Jones, The Memorials, Vol. 1 (1905), pp. 89–90).

178 

K. HINZMAN

contribute to vision for art that follows in the Pre-Raphaelite mode but is also distinct in Burne-Jones’ own theological and artistic perspective. He does not simply copy a theological notion or Scriptural text; rather, he could be, as Ruskin suggests, using his early theological studies to convey a ‘representation of Christ as a living presence among us now’. The image of the Good Shepherd, transforming into a seemingly intangible projection of light, wraps up and ties together the paradox of material and immaterial realities of Christ’s incarnation and death on the cross. Thus, Burne-Jones could be capturing a ‘living presence’ incarnated and illuminated in a church window ‘among us now’ (iv.86).

The Merciful Knight In his first major work for exhibition, Burne-Jones selected the subject of The Merciful Knight (1863), a painting which his wife Georgiana would later say seemed to ‘sum up and seal the ten years that had passed since Edward first went to Oxford’.41 Shown at the Old Watercolour Society in 1864, the final painting features an image of Christ transforming from wooden crucifix to half-animated man (Fig. 7.3). Though the subject is Italian in origin, it is directly taken from The Broad Stone of Honour (1822) where British author Kenelm Digby recounts the story of a merciful eleventh-century Florentine knight who receives forgiveness from a shrine of Christ on Good Friday.42 A Catholic convert, Digby devoted his life to writing about chivalry, which he believed to be the essential task of the young and pious.43 The stories in books such as The Broad Stone and the Mores Catholici (1831) underlined the merciful gentleness of the mediaeval knight, which above all else, was in the emulation and service of Christ. Digby’s humble, repentant version of Christianity was controversially opposed to the particularly muscular form of belief, as  Burne-Jones, The Memorials, Vol. 1 (1905), p. 262.  Originally published in 1822, The Broad Stone of Honour was republished and revised repeatedly. Since there is no mention of a specific edition or when exactly Burne-Jones acquired them initially, the 1844 edition seems like it would have been easily accessible to him within the timeframe of his readings in his youth, his adulthood, and his subsequent painting of The Merciful Knight (See Allen J. Frantzen, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice and the Great War (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), Footnote 37, p. 286). 43  Kenelm Digby, quoted by Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream (London: John Murray Ltd, 1981), p. 20. 41 42

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

179

Fig. 7.3  Edward Burne-Jones, The Merciful Knight, 1863, watercolour on paper

180 

K. HINZMAN

institutionalised in the leading establishments of Victorian Britain. This ‘muscular’ Christian attitude was associated with a more evangelical Protestant outlook, Britain’s imperial and missionary stance, and a particularly ‘masculine’ outlook on man’s relation to God and the world.44 Digby’s approach posed a counterview not only in the Catholicism of his personal belief but in its open reversal of what he saw as the morally depraved attitude standardised in most forms of ecclesially endorsed authority.45 Both Digby works were a fundamental aspect of Burne-Jones’ day-to-­ day life. Though he downplayed them as ‘sillyish books both’, Georgiana recounted that he kept them ‘in his own room, close to his hand, and often dipped into in wakeful nights or early mornings’.46 ‘I can’t help it’, he had said, ‘I like them’.47 He had not been the only one to like them— scholar Mordaunt Crook has called the books the ‘breviary’ of the romantic and rebellious Young English.48 Ruskin himself went so far as to claim that he ‘first learnt to love nobleness’ from Digby.49 As Burne-Jones’ first formal presentation of his artistic approach in an exhibited painting, The Merciful Knight reflects how he seriously sought to unify his variety of inspirations into a profoundly religious work of art focused on the theological profundities embodied by Christ on a cross. In Digby’s text, the ‘miracle’ occurred at the shrine when the nobleman prayed for the forgiveness of an enemy he could have killed but did not when ‘the remembrance of Christ, who prayed for his murderers on the cross, overcame the young nobleman’.50 In this moment of remembrance, the knight is physically ‘overcome’ by the animation of the wooden Christ, who leans over to embrace him. Burne-Jones chooses this moment to illustrate artistically, including an inscription on the painting’s inner 44  See, for instance, Charles Kingsley, one of the main proponents of this outlook and antagonistic to Newman and the Tractarians, in his sermon on ‘England’s Strength’, Sermons for the Times (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1898). In Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Donald E. Hall analyses this particular strain in Victorian thought and literature. See also Peter Gray on ‘The Manliness of Christ’ in R. W. Davis and R. J. Helmstadter, eds., Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society. Essays in Honor of R. K. Webb (New York and London, Routledge, 1992). 45  Frantzen, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice and the Great War (2004), pp. 130–131. 46  Burne-Jones, The Memorials, Vol. 2 (1905), p. 56. 47  Ibid., p. 56. 48  Crook, William Burges (1981), p. 20. 49  Ruskin, quoted in ibid., p. 21. 50  Digby, quoted in Frantzen, Bloody Good (2004), p. 132.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

181

mount as ‘Of a Knight who forgave his enemy when he might have destroyed him and how the image of Christ kissed him in token that his acts had pleased God.’51 He combines references to multiple points in the story—the Knight’s forgiveness of his enemy, God’s and Christ’s ‘pleasure,’ and final forgiveness of the mercifully repentant knight—and ultimately unifies them in the ‘token’ of the exchanged kiss. This choice allows Burne-Jones to bring together a variety of concepts related to the Christ figure that is simultaneously dead and reanimated on a cross. The work seems to explore the nature of materiality itself, relating to the transient nature of art and of Christ himself. As a figure, Burne-Jones depicts Christ in a loin cloth and the crown of thorns. His feet are still attached by nail to the shrine and as he embraces the knight, the bloody hole where he had been nailed through his hand is depicted. Despite the indication of physical tear, however, Christ is still in a mode of transformation. Nearly halfway wooden still, his flesh is discoloured and reflective while his hair and beard are etched with stiff, straight lines. He is neither fully a man, with the muscles and fleshiness of a body, nor a statue, with the idealisation often associated with inanimate human figures in art. Many of these features could be seen to correlate with Burne-Jones’ earlier description of Hunt’s Light of The World and his own depiction of Christ as Good Shepherd, in which he highlights how ‘the head [is] slightly bending, even as it bowed upon the cross … [with] the crown budding with new leaves and the pierced hands;—the perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting’.52 Burne-Jones is developing here a distinct aspect of ‘the Christian legend’ tied to the cross of Christ, and with it, proposing an idea of how the natural may be linked to the supernatural in art and in life. In this I suggest he is drawing both from his early theological education in the sacraments, where sign and symbol are intimately tied with natural realities transforming into supernatural ones, and from Ruskin and his elaborate view of nature’s symbolic and divine roles. Such was Ruskin’s view on Hunt’s Light of the World in Modern Painters, a ‘poetical picture’ in which ‘the whole thought and arrangement of the picture being imaginative’ while also displaying historical and natural observations: ‘details of it are wrought with simple portraiture; the ivy, the jewels, the creeping plants, and the moonlight being calmly studied or remembered from the things  Christian and Wildman, Edward Burne-Jones (1998), p. 93.  Burne-Jones, ‘Mr. Ruskin’s New Volume’ (1856), pp. 223–224.

51 52

182 

K. HINZMAN

themselves’. (v.65) Thus, even as the imaginative, miraculous transformation of Christ is occurring in The Merciful Knight, Burne-Jones pays incredible attention not only to the different aspects of Christ which are human and are wooden, but the believability of the scene and its abundance of flowers, the intricacy of the knight’s armour, and the general setting of the shrine. Burne-Jones creates a world where the supernatural must contain the natural. ‘Imaginative art always includes historical art’, Ruskin claimed (v.65) (italics original)—the supernatural in Burne-Jones always includes the natural to a heightened and detailed degree. In the combination of symbolical reference and natural attention, the painting achieves not simply believability but mystery; as an image of Christ it could be seen a ‘living presence’ because it sustains that unbelievable balance of divine and human embodied by Christ in his incarnation, death, and resurrection through the cross.

‘A Mystic Thing’: The Tree of Life More than twenty years later, in the 1880s, Burne-Jones was designing a vast scheme of mosaics for G.E. Street’s St. Paul’s-Within-The-Walls, the American Church in Rome. Among his many designs for the project, one design above others ‘said as much as anything I have ever done’.53 The picture, a ‘Tree of Life’ showing a muscular Christ posed with arms outstretched in a cross form, was full of rich sombre colours and suggested an enigmatic, manifold meaning. ‘Everything is done to make it not a picture,’ he said (Fig. 7.4). I doubt if you will care for it—perhaps you will. It’s one of those things I do outside painting, far away from it. It has more to do with architecture, and isn’t a picture a bit. It’s a mystical thing—Christ hanging with outspread arms but not crucified: the cross is turned into a big tree all over leaves, and the stems of the tree are gold … the severe limitations of mosaic are all obeyed and observed. I love to work in that fettered way, and am better in a prison than in the open air always. There is a man on one side of him and a woman on the other, and a cornsheaf by the man and two babies and a lily by the woman—that is all. I am doing my best, but it isn’t a picture and few will understand it. It is bright colour and will be high up and very big when it is 53  Burne-Jones to Thomas Matthew Rooke, Memoirs of Thomas Matthews Rooke: typescript: or Notes of conversations among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1890–1899. MSL/1988/7, Victoria and Albert Museum: National Art Archive, p. 22.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

183

Fig. 7.4  Edward Burne-Jones, design for The Tree of Life, 1888, watercolour and gouache carried out—and it can’t be sold and will be in Rome and will last for ever, and that is why I like doing them. (Emphasis added)54

According to Georgiana, he ‘owned’ that the man was Adam, the woman was Eve, who ‘prefigured the Annunciation,’ with the two ‘toddles’ standing ‘for mankind’.55 This sort of symbolism is in line with Burne-Jones’ discussion about the nature of Christianity with his studio assistant Thomas Rooke that ‘there are only two sides of Christianity for which I am fitted by the Spirit that designs me—the carol part and the mystical part. I could not do without medieval Christianity… all belong to it’.56 The fact that Burne-Jones sees particular importance in The Tree of Life could give us an indication of how his earlier ideas about art and the  Burne-Jones, The Memorials, Vol. 2 (1905), p. 159.  Ibid., p. 160. 56  Ibid., p. 160. 54 55

184 

K. HINZMAN

cross have matured in his later years. Indeed, in discussing the design, he develops and unifies the theological and artistic issues pointed out by Ruskin and by his younger self, in early articles and works analysed above. In fact, Burne-Jones’ elusive way of speaking about his design gives the sense of the design not merely embracing Christian prefiguration and reference, but casting over a range of symbolic iconography outside the Christian lexicon. In fact, he would write to his friend and art critic Julia (Ady) Cartwright that the design may lead some to think he was a ‘heretic’;57 while tied to Old and New Testament passages, the ‘Tree of Life’ as a symbol also had connections to other traditions in Judaism, Islam, Nordic mythology, and even Buddhism.58 Christ here, heroically depicted with a Michelangeloesque body and downward-bending head, is at once a cross and a tree; he is at once death, in the cross, and life, in the tree. Hung between a man and woman that are both vaguely and definitely Adam and Eve (and a prefigurative Mary of the Annunciation), the idea of Christ as unified with nature and beyond nature is presented in a design that Burne-Jones seeks to be ‘not a picture’—indeed totally ‘outside of painting, far away from it’, much as his Good Shepherd stained glass window could itself be considered a revelatory Light of the World.59 As a form of ‘architecture’, within the ‘fetters’ of the church’s design, Burne-­Jones fetters Christ to a cross that blooms into a tree and paves the way for the other mosaics behind it which depict images of the heavenly hosts in Paradise. The design becomes a hinge, not only in the great compositional scheme of the church, but also in Burne-Jones’ matured vision of a distinctly Christian, and intensely enigmatic, art that resounds with echoes of Christ’s downward bent head in The Light of the World, The Good Shepherd, and The Merciful Knight.

Conclusion: Beyond the Cross That was an awful thought of Ruskin’s, that artists paint God for the world. There’s a lump of greasy pigment at the end of Michael Angelo’s hog-bristle brush, and by the time it has been laid on the stucco, there is something 57  Burne-Jones to Julia (Cartwright) Any, 1890–7, MS 3264 (ff. 13–43), Beloe Papers (Lambeth Palace Library). 58  Eleizer Shore, ‘The Tree at the Heart of the Garden’, Parabola: The Tree of Life 14:3 (August 1989), p. 39; Lee M. Hollander, trans., The Poetic Edda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), pp.  2–4; p.  10; p.  60; Paul Jordan-Smith, ‘The Serpent and the Eagle’, Parabola: The Tree of Life, pp. 64–71. 59  Burne-Jones, The Memorials, Vol. 2 (1905), p. 159.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

185

there that all men with eyes recognise as divine. Think of what it means. It is the power of bringing God into the world—making God manifest. It is giving back her Child that was crucified to Our Lady of Sorrows. (Emphasis added)60

Burne-Jones is speaking here to Dr Sebastian Evans, a friend and debating partner in the final years of Burne-Jones’ life after, the death of Morris. He reflects on that ‘awful thought of Ruskin’s’, connecting the ability of the artist to convey the divine with ‘making God manifest’—‘giving back her Child that was crucified to Our Lady of Sorrows’.61 Much as he saw the crucified Christ in his early response to Hunt’s Light of the World in his review on Ruskin, Burne-Jones here reflects on the crucifixion, its imaging, and its power to ‘paint God for the World’.62 In this, there is the key what Burne-Jones himself may consider ‘the loveliest of Christian legend’ with which all art may be ‘harmonised’ (xxxiii.296). Burne-Jones is not typically known for his images of Christ and crucifixion—indeed, such themes, other than the animated Christ in The Merciful Knight, are limited in his works to specifically religious commissions and church designs, such as The Good Shepherd and The Tree of Life. However, these images of the crucified Christ give us an insight into Burne-Jones’ wider artistic imagination, and, ultimately, a theological view of his art and its nature. Indeed, if we are to follow Ruskin, paintings such as Mirror of Venus (1877), King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884), Love Among the Ruins (two versions, c.1873 and c.1894), or The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (c.1881–1884) may owe their sense of mystery and sadness to the fact they follow a particular pattern or model. Seemingly far beyond the confines of religious painting, there is something of religious magnitude to Burne-Jones’ pictures of sad beauties and pining lovers. Perhaps here, like Ruskin, we may seek to look at them in ‘harmony’ with the ‘Christian legend’—the sorrow, suffering, but ultimate hope that is proposed by a Light of the World or Tree of Life.63 Far from the ‘procession of the living dead’ that some critics may see in them,64  Ibid., p. 257.  Ibid. 62  Ibid. 63  Ibid., p. 40. 64  Laura Cumming, ‘Edward Burne-Jones Review  – An Endless Procession of the Living Dead’, The Guardian, 22 October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/ oct/28/edward-burne-jones-tate-britain-review-laura-cumming, accessed June 2022. 60 61

186 

K. HINZMAN

Burne-Jones’ art in all its forms and themes could be aiming to strive after ‘that awful thought of Ruskin’s, that artists paint God for the world’— whether in a stained glass window of Christ or a canvas of separated lovers.

Bibliography Athanasius. ‘On the Incarnation of the Word.’ Christianity in Late Antiquity 300–450 C.E.: A Reader edited by Bart D.  Ehrman and Andrew S.  Jacobs. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Atkinson, Miles, trans. Historical Tracts of St. Athanasius with a preface and notes by John Henry Newman. Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1848. The Book of Common Prayer and the Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Church of England Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David Pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches. 1662. Cambridge: John Baskerville, 1762. Burne-Jones, Edward. ‘Mr. Ruskin’s New Volume.’ The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (April 1856). Burne-Jones, Edward. Letters to Julia (Cartwright) Ady, 1890–7. MS 3264 (ff. 13–43), Beloe Papers. Lambeth Palace Library. Burne-Jones, Georgiana. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones. 2 vols. London: Chiswick Press, 1905. Christian, John and Stephen Wildman. Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-­ Dreamer. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998. Church, R.W. The Oxford Movement. Twelve Years, 1833–1845. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1900. Corbett, David Peters Corbett. The World in Paint: Modern Art and Visuality in England 1848–1914. Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 2004. Crook, Mordaunt. William Burges and the High Victorian Dream. London: John Murray Ltd, 1981. Cumming, Laura. ‘Edward Burne-Jones Review – An Endless Procession of the Living Dead.’ The Guardian (22 October 2018) https://www.theguardian. com/ar tanddesign/2018/oct/28/edward-­b urne-­j ones-­t ate-­b ritain review-­laura-­cumming. Davis, R. W. and R. J. Helmstadter, editors. Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society. Essays in Honor of R. K. Webb. New York and London, Routledge, 1992. Fitzgerald, Penelope. Edward Burne-Jones. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1997. Frantzen, Allen J. Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice and the Great War. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. Giebelhausen, Michaela. Painting the Bible: Representation and Belief in Mid-­ Victorian Britain. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

7  ‘THE LOVELIEST TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND’: RUSKIN… 

187

Gilley, Sheridan. Newman and His Age. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1990. Hall, Donald E. Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Hewison, Robert, Ian Warrell, and Stephen Wildman. Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-­ Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2000. Hollander, Lee M, trans. The Poetic Edda. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Howes, Graham. The Art of the Sacred: An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Art and Belief. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Janes, Dominic. Victorian Reformation: The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840–60. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Jay, Elisabeth. Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain. London: Macmillan, 1986. Jordan-Smith, Paul. ‘The Serpent and the Eagle,’ Parabola: The Tree of Life 14:3 (August 1989), pp. 64–71. Kinglsey, Charles. ‘England’s Strength.’ Sermons for the Times. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1898. Knight, Frances. The Church in the Nineteenth Century. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008. Newman, John Henry. ‘Sermon II: The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religions Respectively preached 13 April 1830, Easter Tuesday.’ Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843 3rd ed. London, Oxford and Cambridge: Rivingtons, 1872. Newman, John Henry. Arians of the Fourth Century. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908. Newman, John Henry, translator. Select Treatises of S.  Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, In Controversy with the Arians. Oxford, London and Cambridge: James Parker and Co. and Rivingtons, 1877. Rooke, Thomas Matthew. Memoirs of Thomas Matthews Rooke: typescript: or Notes of conversations among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1890–1899. MSL/1988/7, Victoria and Albert Museum: National Art Archive. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Sewter, A.  Charles. The Stained Glass of William Morris and His Circle  – A Catalogue. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975. Shore, Eleizer. ‘The Tree at the Heart of the Garden.’ Parabola: The Tree of Life 14 no. 3. New York, August 1989. Wilberforce, Robert. The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. London: John and Charles Mozley, 1853.

CHAPTER 8

Crystal Balls: Visions of Creation in the Art of Burne-Jones Suzanne Fagence Cooper

I need nothing but my hands and my brain to fashion myself a world to live in that nothing can disturb.1

In the spring of 1883, John Ruskin (1819–1900) gave a series of lectures in Oxford on ‘The Art of England’ (xxxiii).2 His first talk, delivered in March, considered ‘Realistic Schools of Painting’. In May, he turned his attention to the art of Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) and George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), and the problem of painting mythological scenes, ideas, or symbols. In this lecture, Ruskin acknowledged the limits 1  Edward Burne-Jones quoted in Georgiana Burne-Jones, The Memorials of Edward Burne-­ Jones, Vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 337. 2  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xxxiii.267–286).

S. F. Cooper (*) York, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_8

189

190 

S. F. COOPER

of realism. He explained that his own skills fell short when he tried to describe or draw unearthly images: he could not, he said, ‘define to you how the light should fall on the two sides of a nose of a Day of Creation’. He believed that ‘some kind of strangeness or quaintness … would be not merely admissible, but even desirable’ in such a figure (xxiii.298). Naturalism was not a priority here. Burne-Jones produced several different schemes portraying The Days of Creation from the early 1860s, including stained glass designs, book illustrations, and the presentation watercolours shown at the Grosvenor Gallery, based on his church windows, but with greatly enriched details. By daring to imagine the act of Creation in his designs and illustrations, it seemed that Burne-Jones had seen further than Ruskin. As Ruskin said, Burne-Jones’ watercolour designs for the Days of Creation (Fig.  8.1 & Fig. 8.7), exhibited in 1877, ‘involved a group of questions and difficulties which I feel to be quite beyond the proper sphere’ of his Professorship. He could ‘deal with living creatures, or solid substances’, but Burne-Jones was transcending these ‘mortal and temporal’ things. In his watercolours and stained glass designs, he was reaching back into impossible depths of time, to the origins of the world, and was making them visible now (xxxiii.298).3 Both Burne-Jones and Ruskin were bothered by the problem of representing the God-as-maker. For Ruskin, it coloured, perhaps unwittingly, his belief in what an artist could or should be. Certainly, it is telling that in his review of the 1877 Grosvenor Gallery exhibition, he focused on BurneJones’ pictures of the Days of Creation, worked in watercolour and platinum paint, before turning to look at James Whistler’s (1834–1903) Nocturnes. Burne-Jones’ work, he wrote, may be ‘strange to us’, but ‘it is wrought with the utmost conscience of care’. Whistler, on the other hand, belonged to a modern school where ‘imperfections’ were ‘gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged’. The Days of Creation were named in the same breath as ‘Giotto, Masaccio, Luini, Tintoret and Turner’. Only ‘Bellini or Carpaccio’ could have made them more completely beautiful. Meanwhile, Whistler was asking ‘two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’ (xxix.160). These were the remarks that led Whistler to take Ruskin to court for libel. Ruskin knew he was being rude. He called Whistler impudent, conceited, a coxcomb, and described the painting of The Falling Rocket 3  A set of photographs of the Days of Creation was given by Ruskin to the University of Oxford as part of his teaching collection, according to (xxi.308).

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

Fig. 8.1  Edward Burne-Jones, The Days of Creation: the First Day, 1870–1876, watercolour, gouache, platinum paint, shell gold on linen-covered panel with zinc prepared ground

191

192 

S. F. COOPER

(1875) as ‘wilful imposture’. Yet, for Ruskin, value was not simply about market value. He was criticising the manner in which Whistler had painted the picture; it looked unfinished to him, and the subject was unedifying. Why would Whistler spend his time painting the darkness, when he could be contemplating the light? This chapter reconsiders how Burne-Jones’ images of Creation were made and exhibited within a complex cultural and scientific context. As we unpick the various versions of his Days of Creation, we can also examine the implications of this subject for Ruskin, Burne-Jones’ friend and patron. Burne-Jones’ works required Ruskin to address the limits of his own vision by raising, for example, the possibilities offered by the use of microscopes and other lenses. In addition, many of the scientific discussions of the origins of the natural world, from the 1860s onwards, emphasised the distinction between what was speculative, and what was based on concrete evidence. These debates echoed Ruskin’s own uncertainty about what a ‘Day of Creation’ should look like. We hear similar concerns raised in the lectures of John Tyndall (1820–1893), a scientist with whom Ruskin disagreed on many points, from glacial movement to spirituality. In his 1870 address to the British Association in Liverpool, Tyndall acknowledged a common ‘wish to know something of our remotest ancestry. On its first detachment from the sun, life, as we understand it, could not have been present on the earth. How, then, did it come there?’ He went on: ‘the thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom … I have no right to intrude upon you unasked the unformed notions which are floating like clouds or gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative mind’.4 Burne-Jones, on the other hand, dared to explore these unformed, speculative notions, and give them form and colour. While Tyndall rejected the book of Genesis, calling it ‘a poem, not a scientific treatise’, Burne-­ Jones contemplated the text, and brought into focus the unresolved questions of the origins of life. As Burne-Jones explained, ‘the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels I shall paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul’.5

 John Tyndall, ‘Virchow and Evolution’, Popular Science Monthly 14 (Jan. 1879), p. 266ff.  Oscar Wilde quoting Edward Burne-Jones, 1885, in Stephen Wildman and John Christian, eds., Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer (New York: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), p. 237. 4 5

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

193

Creation and the Oxford Museum of Natural History Ruskin found it hard to break the connection between creation, creativity and the Creator. This concern became increasingly urgent from the 1860s. Like many of his contemporaries, he tried to come to terms with Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) evolutionary theories outlined in On the Origin of Species (1859). Was it God’s will or Natural Selection that had ‘created great whales and every living creature that moveth’? (Genesis 1:21) Ruskin and his good friend Dr Henry Acland (1815–1900) had to address these difficulties when they discussed their plans for the Museum of Natural History in Oxford which opened in 1860, less than a year after publication of Darwin’s disruptive text. Ruskin was closely involved with the decoration of this Gothic Revival building, designed by the Irish architectural firm of Deane and Woodward. Ruskin’s own watercolour designs for carved columns and capitals, ornamented with leaves and lizards (now in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum) show his desire to influence the details of architectural scheme. The implications of the evolutionary debate, the paradigmatic shifts in thinking at this time, can be seen on the façade of the building. John Hungerford Pollen (1820–1902), who had worked with Burne-Jones on the Oxford Union murals in 1857, was commissioned to design the carvings surrounding the main entrance door. His first sketches showed the spandrels filled with angels and the figures of Adam and Eve, with the Tree of Knowledge at the apex. But the final version reflected a slightly different point of view. The image of the Garden of Eden was less prominent— partly because of financial pressures, but also partly because it implied that curiosity was dangerous. When we look at the door today, we see Adam and Eve standing quietly at either side of the entrance. And the large single angel seated above the door has also been altered (Fig. 8.2). This is the great spirit presiding over a complex pattern of ‘flowers and thorns and fruit’. In the first drawings, the angel held two books. Now they hold one book—‘the emblem of intellectual and spiritual life’—and an orb or sphere. But, as Acland explained, it is no longer the customary symbol of divine authority. The orb here is a ‘dividing nucleated cell, the type of all material function, growth and decay’.6 6  Henry Acland, quoted in Carla Yanni, Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display (Princeton Architectural Press: 1999, this edition 2005), p. 86.

194 

S. F. COOPER

Fig. 8.2  John Hungerford Pollen, Angel of Life, 1860, stone carving

The idea of representing microscopic cell structure in this way was astonishingly modern. The concept of cells as the essential components of all living things was still very new. In 1831, Robert Brown (1773–1858) had first applied the term ‘nucleus’ to the central feature of a cell. And in 1839, Theodor Schwann (1810–1882) published diagrams, making cell structures visible to a wider audience. It was not until 1855, however, with the work of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), that the theory that ‘every cell stems from another cell’, or omnis cellula e cellula, was established. These investigations and discoveries lay behind Pollen’s design for the Museum portal. They were achieved through the use of microscopes and glass slides, and the slicing up of living tissue. Ruskin was antagonistic towards these investigations on a microscopic level. He was an advocate of close observation, but privileged the naked eye. The Index to his Complete Works makes this clear. Under the heading of ‘Microscope’, we read first, ‘inventor of, died of starvation’, followed by ‘mistaken use of; … nasty sights seen through; … not required for the study of art; … not to be used in popular study of botany; … to be rarely

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

195

used’ and finally ‘R. disinclined for microscopic work’ (xxxix.346). Ruskin preferred to look directly, without a magnifying lens or glass slide between himself and the object. This reluctance to investigate the microscopic world showed the limitations of his desire to see the invisible, the things beyond our natural vision. In his Art of England lectures, he declared that ‘all delicacy which is rightly pleasing to the human mind is addressed to the unaided human sight, not to microscopic help or mediation’ (xxxiii.346). The reason is made clear in a later lecture. To see through the microscope, he had to ‘keep one eye open and the other shut’ (xxxiii.445)— this was only using half of his vision. It seemed wrong to Ruskin. His friends and colleagues, however, took a different view. Within five years of this principle—omnis cellula e cellula—being put forward, Pollen and Acland together produced an elegant yet radical response to the anxiety of evolutionary theory. They hit upon a syncretic iconography, combining both ancient and modern religious motifs, to satisfy both scientists and religious traditionalists. The cell, as the building block of all potential life, is an essential part of God’s plan. There is a wonderful sense of the microscopically small and the unspeakably vast being encompassed in this one image. The angel remains true to the concept of divine majesty, seated in splendour. And yet this figure also embodies a possible post-Darwinian relationship between God, humanity and the created world, by showing the process of transformation as it happens, held safely in the Angel’s hand. This dual aspect of Creation—visible both in the Word of God and in the workings of Nature—was well established when it was described by Acland in his lecture given in 1858 to promote the Museum project. He quoted the seventeenth century physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), who declared that ‘there are two books … from which I collect my divinity; besides the written one of God, another of His servant, Nature’. Most tellingly, from our perspective, the quotation from Browne continues with the suggestion that, by looking at Nature, we can catch ‘the first glimpses of unuttered ideas, traces (as we believe) though we see them darkly as in a mirror, of unexpressed Art of the great Artificer’.7 It is this element—the ‘glimpses of unuttered ideas’—that Acland and Pollen were bringing into focus in their new version of the ‘Two Books’. But now it was the Word of God and the Cell of Nature. For Burne-Jones, as we

7  Henry Acland and John Ruskin, The Oxford Museum (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1859) pp. 17–18.

196 

S. F. COOPER

shall see, the real fascination was in the unexpressed Art seen ‘darkly as in a mirror’, the partial reflection, the image of Creation held within the glass. We know that Ruskin kept a close eye on developments at the Museum. His letters to Acland about the architecture and the decoration of the building were published in 1859 as an appendix to the text of Acland’s lecture. They emphasised his desire that the design should embody the idea that ‘all the phenomena of nature … were intended by the Creator to enforce His eternal laws of love and judgement’ (xvi.221). Ruskin did not comment directly on the Angel with the orb/cell and Pollen’s new interpretation of the ‘Book of Nature’. But he must have discussed this and the other carvings with Acland. After all, he wrote enthusiastically about the ‘enrichment of the doorway’, and the natural ornament he envisaged there (xvi.228). It therefore seems likely that he talked about these designs with his protégé, Burne-Jones.

Orbs and Globes In 1859–1860 Ruskin and Burne-Jones were meeting regularly to plan Burne-Jones’ first journey to Italy. Ruskin encouraged him to travel to Pisa and Florence, Siena, Padua and Venice, to study works by Early Renaissance masters at first hand. Burne-Jones’ encounters with artists like Vittore Carpaccio (1465–1525) and Simone Martini (c.1284–1344) coloured his own work for years to come. He learnt their delicate language of gesture, the interactions between sacred and secular figures. In Florence he saw a Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) altarpiece in a quiet church; he was delighted that the artist showed ‘heaven beginning six inches over the tops of our heads as it really does’.8 On his second visit to Italy in 1862, Burne-Jones came face to face with another picture that helped to form his iconography of Creation. This time he was travelling with his wife Georgie (1840–1920), and with Ruskin too, who paid for the expedition. Ruskin hoped that his young friend would be able to make copies of some favoured paintings. These included Paolo Veronese’s (1528–1588) Thanksgiving for the Victory of Lepanto (1581–1582) on display in the Ducal Palace, Venice. The pencil drawing made by Burne-Jones was among the pictures given by Ruskin to 8  Edward Burne-Jones to Agnes Graham, October 1876, quoted by Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination (London: Faber, 2011) p. 100.

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

197

the University of Oxford, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum. Rather than attempting to record all of Veronese’s composition—it is over five metres long—Burne-Jones concentrated on one middle section. The effect of the cropping is very peculiar. Burne-Jones shows only the head of an angel juxtaposed with the large crystalline orb held by Christ. We see Christ’s hand steadying the globe, but the rest of his body is missing. The effect of the image is odd, as if Burne-Jones was playing with the possibilities of the interaction between angel and globe. The figure of God Incarnate is erased, and instead Burne-Jones focuses on new essential objects—hands, eyes, wings and the impossibly large crystal ball with its eerie lights and shadows. These Italian copies, excitedly recorded and preserved, formed the bedrock of his art in the 1860s and beyond. They reassured him that it was possible to side-step realism, to bring something out of nothing. He gained confidence, touching a blank canvas with colour and line, to construct new landscapes of the imagination. How does the Oxford Museum angel fit into this narrative? Perhaps we can see it as a missing link that helps us understand the changes in Burne-Jones’ vision of Creation in the early 1860s. Acland’s ‘nucleated cell’, Veronese’s great orb and the heavenly messengers of fifteenth century altarpieces all helped to transform his work. It might be useful to look more closely at the idea of the orb or globe, which becomes one of the most distinctive elements in Burne-­ Jones’ designs for the Days of Creation. Burne-Jones would have been familiar with the conventional figure of Christ holding an orb even before he travelled to Venice. On his visits to Chartres, he might have seen Christ enthroned in two of the thirteenth century windows in the Cathedral. In the Good Samaritan window, for example, Christ is seated on a rainbow, with a red orb held high in His left hand. Later, Burne-Jones saw Fra Angelico’s (1395–1455) fresco of Christ in Majesty (1447) with an orb, in the cathedral of Orvieto. Christ’s wounded hands and side are clearly shown—this is Christ after the Ascension, waiting in judgement. There were plenty of other examples closer to home in the early manuscripts he studied with William Morris (1834–1896). These included the thirteenth century Douce Apocalypse (c.1250–1275), in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Burne-Jones made copies of many of these illuminations in a sketchbook which is now at Wightwick Manor (National Trust). He knew, for example, the dramatic image of Revelation (11:15–17) illustrating the sounding of the seventh trumpet and,

198 

S. F. COOPER

Loud voices in heaven, which said, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ”.

Again, Christ is seated on a rainbow, and holds a clear globe in his left hand. The globe has several divisions inscribed on it, in the shape of a T. (There were similar bands marked on Fra Angelico’s orb in Orvieto, Italy). They represent the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe as separated by water. In some versions of these schematised maps, including one made at Thorney Abbey around 1300 (now at St. John’s College, Oxford), Jerusalem is at the centre, and the island of Britain drifts at the very edge of the earth. In images like this it becomes clear that ‘early medieval Christian scholars such as Bede (unknown-c.755) were well informed concerning the world’s spherical nature’.9 So the idea of the earth being defined within the space of a globe was well established in the PreReformation works of art that Burne-Jones saw and appreciated. However, in one of the distinctive turns that his work takes, Burne-Jones redeployed the symbol usually held by Christ the King at the end of the world, offering it instead as a way to imagine the beginning of things. The appeal of the orb for Burne-Jones was enhanced by its resemblance to a crystal ball. Veronese’s orb, for example, was transparent, but surmounted by a fine gold cross. In some Renaissance works, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (c.1500, which was known in the nineteenth century through copies), the two concepts of orb/crystal ball were elided even more obviously. Leonardo’s painting superimposed the supernatural or scrying qualities of the rock crystal sphere on the more conventional imagery of Christ holding a terrestrial globe. It is unlikely that Leonardo had ever encountered a rock crystal sphere of the size that he paints. The orbuculum or crystal ball used by sixteenth century mystic John Dee was tiny, only 5.2 cm in diameter. It was not until the nineteenth century that a carved crystal sphere with a diameter of 32 cm (closer to the one held by Christ) was made in China. (It is known as the ‘Dowager Empress ball’ and is now in the Penn Museum, Philadelphia.) However, the close observation of occlusions in the body of the crystal, and distortions created by the curvature, show that Leonardo is likely to have studied the properties of rock crystal, while exaggerating the size of the 9  Michelle Brown, ‘Making manuscripts and mappae mundi’, in Dan Terkla and Nick Millea, eds., A Critical Companion to the English Medieval Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2019), p. 23.

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

199

orb to create an impression of wonder and fragility. This figure of Christ as Pantocrator also has, in the words of Martin Kemp, a sense of ‘mystery, of something not quite known … uncanny strangeness’.10 The terms used to describe Burne-Jones’ work in the nineteenth century, and Leonardo’s in the twenty-first century are startlingly similar. As one reviewer put it, in 1888, Burne-Jones’ works were ‘mystical …, at times occult and cryptogrammic’. He was ‘a man who dwells alone in a dreamland’.11

Burne-Jones and the Crystal Ball Burne-Jones began to experiment in the early 1860s with the image of the crystal ball, and what might be seen in it, in sacred and secular subjects. We know that, by the autumn of 1870 at least, Ruskin had his own crystal ball. He used it as a visual aid in one of his lectures on Sculpture held in Oxford. Ruskin encouraged his students to consider ‘this crystal ball, for instance, which is not imitative’ and he noted that he had not illustrated it when the lectures were published. It was, he wrote, ‘a sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable to the reader, without a figure’ (xx.392). It is not clear whether this object has survived. It is not currently in the geology collections at Brantwood. However, presumably it was available for friends like Burne-Jones who wanted to study the visual effects of looking through the crystal sphere. While Ruskin was concerned about the outward form of the crystal ball, its role as a sculptural object, Burne-Jones was more interested in what might lie within or beyond the orb. They looked at the object in very different ways. Ruskin’s disquiet about placing a lens or slide between himself and Nature resurfaces here. Burne-Jones, on the other hand, becomes increasingly drawn to the unexpected visions that might be held within the crystal ball. He could explore disjunctions of scale and the possibility that entire new realms of living things might be seen here, as they were within the glass of a microscope slide: these alternative views of the world underpinned Burne-­Jones’ fascination with the crystal ball from the 1860s.

10  Martin Kemp, quoted in lot essay, lot 9B, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, Christie’s New York, 15th November 2017. 11  Frederic Harrison, ‘A few words about Picture Exhibitions’, The Nineteenth Century 24 (July 1888), p. 38.

200 

S. F. COOPER

In his drawings for Astrologia (c.1863–1865), for example, Burne-­ Jones shows a flame-haired girl gazing into the depths of a crystal ball. She is seen in profile, with both hands clasping the transparent sphere. Burne-­ Jones was working on these images while he was also redefining his visions of Creation in stained glass and illustrations. The composition does not resemble the images of Christ the King, nor indeed the angels of Creation that were emerging in his art at the same time. This is a young woman, seen in profile, intent on divining meaning from the forms that emerge within the crystal. Burne-Jones suggests that this too is the role of the artist: to see things that are obscure or concealed; to interpret these images and to make them visible to others: the artist as clairvoyant. We soon learn that in Burne-Jones’ hands, the orb is potentially a slippery subject. It can allude to the orb of power, or a mappa mundi, or the crystal ball of prophecy. Yet it always carries the implication of extended vision, seeing beyond the surface. At times, Burne-Jones seems to be referring back to the favourite reflective surfaces of Jan van Eyck’s (1390–1441) multiple convex mirror in the Arnolfini Portrait (1434), and the suggestions of tiny figures beyond the picture plane—another example of seeing more, seeing something outside our normal vision. And then as the emblem of Astrologia, the orb refers explicitly to divination. By extension, when we consider the movements of the stars and planets, it can also signify the spheres of heaven. This idea of transparent moving spheres encircling the earth was established in late Antiquity by Ptolemy. Burne-Jones was most likely to have encountered the theory when it was reconfigured by Dante in his Divine Comedy (1320). Dante described the radiance of the Godhead at the centre of the turning spheres in Canto 28 of the Paradiso. He wrote in detail about the constant circling, the orders of angels and blessed souls, and their hymns of praise, ‘echoing on from choir to choir, / ‘Hosanna’ to the fixed point’. This vision was known as the Crystalline Heaven.12

Burne-Jones and the Days of Creation Throughout his life, Burne-Jones returned regularly to the texts of Genesis drawing out the process of creation—from the moment when ‘the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be 12  Crystalline Heaven was the title given to the illustration by Gustave Doré for this 28th Canto of Paradiso, published by Hachette & Co., 1867.

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

201

light: and there was light’ (Genesis 1:2–3). At one level, this was inevitable as a leading designer of stained glass. These subjects might appeal to his clients, and he would be expected to fulfil their brief. But it seems to be more than this. These images allowed him to make the act of Creation visible, to show the transformation from void to beautiful, teeming life. This was the process he went through too, every day in the studio: filling the blank canvas, or the empty window. Burne-Jones fixed on the image of the orb, as the site of this transformation, the space where ideas became real and solid forms, as if brought into focus and suddenly seen. He remade the scenes over and over, in different manners and materials: pencil, watercolour, and glass. One of his earliest treatments of the subject combined both the creation and the end of days. Burne-Jones’ design for the rose window at Waltham Abbey (1860–1861, Fig. 8.3) is remarkable because it represents passages from Genesis and Revelation simultaneously. The central light shows Christ in Majesty, one hand raised in blessing, enthroned among angels, ‘and there was a rainbow round about the throne’ (Revelation 4:3). Then the days of creation are shown in the seven lights clustered around this central window, with Eve emerging from Adam’s side on the sixth day. The encircling lights are extraordinary. Burne-Jones experiments here with a radical rejection of naturalism. The picture surface is broken into small fragments, with whirling patterns, clouds, and teardrop shapes indicating the division of light and dark, water and dry land. Stormy outlines of waves in the skies and seas—representing the second day—calm into gentle, undulating bands of moving water, create a visual link between the third and fourth days. The inherent strangeness of the subject is made clear in the unreality of its depiction. How should an artist visualise an earth ‘without form, and void’ or ‘the firmament’ (Genesis 1:2 & 7)? Burne-Jones achieves this by drawing abstracted images, which blend mediaeval models with modern handling of glazing and colour. His use of rippling lines to suggest the division of heaven and earth was well established in images of God-as-­ Creator. They appear, for example, on the magnificent opening page of a French Bible Moralisée (1226–1275) (Fig. 8.4).13 This manuscript was accessible to Burne-Jones, as it was held in the Bodleian Library and his friend Morris would certainly have relished a book like this. The first great gilded illustration showed the figure of  Held in the Bodleian Library: Bodl.270b, fol.5v.

13

202 

S. F. COOPER

Fig. 8.3  Edward Burne-Jones, The Days of Creation, 1860–1861, stained glass

Christ measuring the earth with dividers. The inner edges of the globe were fringed in green, blue, and red; this shorthand was repeated throughout the manuscript, wherever the liminal space between heaven and earth was described. The edges are not fixed, but porous and mobile, allowing for communication between angels and men. Burne-Jones often made use of this pattern in his own designs through to the late 1880s. We see a version of these surging waves/clouds beneath the feet of Christ in Majesty in the mosaics he designed to fill the apse of St. Paul-within-the-Walls in Rome.

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

Fig. 8.4  Bible Moralisée, 1226–1275, illuminated manuscript

203

204 

S. F. COOPER

In Burne-Jones’ Creation / Christ in Majesty window at Waltham Abbey, the stylised trees, with their runnels of flowing waters also seem to have been inspired by his studies of mediaeval models. We often see similar schematic outlines in the trees illustrating the Douce Apocalypse (1250–1275); they appear in the depiction of angels with their trumpets and a rain of fire, from Revelation chapter 8, for example. There are also landscapes like this—with Nature reduced to essentials—in fifteenth century stained glass. It is not clear if Burne-Jones knew the Pricke of Conscience window (c.1410–1420) in All Saints North Street, York, or the great East window of the Apocalypse in York Minster (1405–1408). But both were the focus of research and conservation work between 1861 and 1867. And it is likely that Ruskin was aware of these remarkable specimens of pre-Reformation art, as they encapsulated the skills and intricate symbolic details of the late-flowering mediaeval church. In particular, they demonstrated the need to be succinct and to respond to the limitations of the brittle medium. Burne-Jones, even at this early stage in his career, was developing his understanding of stained glass—especially the possibilities that non-naturalistic forms could be both decorative and meaningful. The circular framing of images at Waltham Abbey reinforces these ideas. To a large extent, the rose window setting was determined by the architect William Burges (1827–1881). However, we are also conscious of the repeated circles of the structure, and within the designs. We see it in the sun and moon, the arc of the rainbow, the halo and the red-gold fruit, the concentric leading lines defining the structure of the first two days of Creation, and finally in Christ’s orb; the central point around which the whole programme turns. The circling forms, with their constant sense of gentle motion and shared patterns, express in a simple and satisfying way the challenging verses repeated four times in Revelation: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last’ (Revelation 22:13).

Bible Gallery Illustrations Having identified the orb as a powerful compositional device for his vision of Creation at Waltham Abbey in 1861, Burne-Jones brought the motif into closer focus for his next series of images. In 1863, he worked on drawings to illustrate The Bible Gallery planned by the Dalziels (now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, see Chap. 7 in this volume). They

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

205

were to be cut as wood engravings by the family firm, so they were conceived in black and white with touches of colour in the worked-up drawings. They are held within narrow borders, to fit across the width of page. In three of the seven Days, great spheres dominate the design. They are the subject, as globes of light and dark, or the earth itself, turning amid the rushing waters. And in two more, the orbs hang overhead, heavily present. Everything else is emptied out, making space for the rays of light, or shards of darkness that cut across the image (Fig. 8.5). The abbreviated, non-naturalistic designs rely on the weight of meaning that is carried by the orbs. Burne-Jones’ image for the sixth day— showing Adam and Eve among the animals—looks tentative, fussy even, by comparison with the purposeful geometry of the earlier days. The seventh day, the culmination and day of rest, is redeemed by the circling motion of the tiny angels. They strike bells to celebrate God’s pleasure in His work: ‘and behold, it was very good’ (Genesis 1:31). Burne-Jones’ designs were appropriate for the medium of book illustration, where the story-telling had to be compressed into tight spaces on the printed page. As such, they were never going to look like Creation images at Waltham Abbey. However, the changes in his treatment of the subject go beyond this. They gesture towards the later iterations of angels and globes in the Days of Creation windows in Middleton Cheney (1864), Tamworth (1874), and Manchester College, Oxford (1895), and the presentation drawings that he gave to Aglaia Coronio (c.1870) and exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery (1877, Fig. 8.1 & Fig. 8.7). There is a shift in the way he thinks of the orb or globe. The orb is no longer a reference to the earth itself, or a symbol of authority. It becomes the space in which the act of Creation happens. It is the crucible. It is the ‘dividing nucleated cell’. In the fourth day of the Dalziel series, Burne-Jones represents the ‘two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also’ (Genesis 1:16). The sun, moon, and stars all seem to be jostling for space, held within a sphere that hangs over the ocean. We only see a portion of this great globe. But we understand the massive forces of light and movement that are condensed into the space. Burne-Jones was not the first artist to conceive of the Creation in these terms. There were mediaeval precedents, like the day-by-day Creation scenes in the Bible Moralisée and other early manuscripts which he had studied in the Bodleian Library. There the artist imagined God looking lovingly at a group of orbs, each representing a different day: one is divided simply in half, black and white; the second has the ruffled edges of heaven

206 

S. F. COOPER

Fig. 8.5  Edward Burne-Jones, Days of Creation, designs for The Bible Gallery, 1863, watercolour, body colour, with gold and heightened with white

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

207

embracing the material universe; the third shows tiny growing things, sprouting from the earth; and so on. The effect is two-fold. Firstly, it emphasises God’s delight in the created world. Secondly, there is a disconcerting disruption in scale; the orbs containing all created matter could rest easily in God’s lap. Both effects are visible in the multiple Days of Creation designs that Burne-Jones worked on from 1864.

The Angels of Creation It might be useful here to consider another possible reference point for Burne-Jones’ later Days of Creation windows, which are more complex than the Dalziel book illustrations. It helps, perhaps, to account for the overall conception of the later designs, both for stained glass, and the associated large watercolours exhibited in 1877 (Fig. 8.1 & Fig. 8.7): with the main figure becoming a standing angel, instead of God Himself; the movement of the large sphere across the surface of the pictures, as BurneJones draws the six different days; and even the detail of the flame that sits on top of each angel’s head. These all seem to point to Burne-Jones’ familiarity with a series of fifty engravings made in Venice of Ferrara, c.1465–1475. They are known as the Mantegna Tarot, although they neither were drawn by Mantegna, nor are they tarot cards; rather they are exemplars, showing hierarchies in human society, and figures of the Muses, the Liberal Arts, the Virtues, and Astronomical symbols. Burne-Jones could have seen copies in the British Library or other private collections, as they were circulating quite widely in the fifteenth century and after (Fig. 8.6). Several of the engravings are relevant here. We may, for example, question whether the print of Jupiter (no. 46 in the series) could be related to Burne-Jones’ figure of Christ in Majesty at Waltham Abbey. The print is evidently a conventional image, but there are similarities in the angle of the head, the shape of the crown, the drapery of the cloak at the throat, and even the position of the rainbow arc beneath the seat of power. This is tentative. But there are more interesting associations between Burne-­ Jones’ later stained glass Days of Creation—for Middleton Cheney (1864), Tamworth (1874) and Manchester College, Oxford (1895)—and the engraving of the Angel of the Eighth Sphere from the ‘Tarot’ series. Comparing Burne-Jones’ stained glass designs for these churches alongside the fifteenth century engraving we can determine that he was willing to incorporate more esoteric sources into his visions of Creation.

208 

S. F. COOPER

Fig. 8.6  Master of the E-series Tarocchi, Octava Spera (The Eighth Sphere), c.1465–1475, engraving

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

209

And in doing so, could imagine the process of Creation in more experimental ways. No longer was God the Father visible as the great Architect, seated in Majesty on a rainbow as we find in Burne-Jones’ earlier window for Waltham Abbey, or wielding a pair of dividers, as He was often depicted in mediaeval sources. Instead, the Universe seemed to be danced into being, held in the arms of the angels. Looking at the small details initially, both the ‘Tarot’ and Burne-Jones’ windows show a single winged figure in fluid drapery. Both have a prominent decoration on their foreheads—something that is absent in the other ‘Tarot’ engravings. In Burne-Jones designs, this is a small flame; in the fifteenth century print, it seems to be a tiara on the angel’s brow, but the effect is equivalent. More importantly, there is a comparable relationship between the angel and the sphere. Burne-Jones’ Days of Creation hold spheres that are far larger than the traditional orb. Like Leonardo da Vinci’s larger-than-life crystal ball in the Salvator Mundi, the size of these spheres implies something extraordinary. The great transparent globes need to be cradled in both hands, held carefully against the body; they are far more substantial than the small crystal balls associated with kingly authority. They are filled with living, moving shapes, with all of Creation condensed and clasped within. Burne-Jones’ angels carry the weight of the world. The ‘Tarot’ globe is filled with stars, and seems quite light to lift, by comparison. But there is an undoubted kinship between the fifteenth century Italian and nineteenth century British images. Full-length angels first appeared in Burne-Jones’ stained glass scheme for All Saints Church, Middleton Cheney in 1864. They were designed to fit six lights in the middle section of the West Window, but were reused and recoloured for other churches until the 1890s. These Days of Creation are very different to the images he made for the Rose Window at Waltham Abbey. In the designs for Middleton Cheney, Burne-Jones sites the process of Creation within the transparent globe. The sign for each day—a flock of birds, or the sun and moon—is presented to the congregation by its angel. It is almost as if we are standing in the place of the Creator, to enjoy the sight of the new beauties, and see that they are good. We might also note that Burne-Jones has moved the site of Creation from a nebulous space to an enclosed transparent form, the large lens-like crystal ball. Each one is brought before the viewer to be visually interrogated, so we can see how far the process has gone, day by day. In this, Burne-Jones seems to be playing with the new scientific theories about the beginning of the world, which demanded evidence rather than speculation or poetry to explain Creation. Burne-Jones seems to turn this on its head,

210 

S. F. COOPER

as he provides an alternative revelation, drawn from the Bible texts and his artistic interpretation. He shows, with intense clarity, a step-by-step guide to how all living things might be brought into being. Burne-Jones subverts the scientific reliance on unnaturally heightened vision. He uses the central form of the magnifying lens—or glass slide seen through the eyepiece of a microscope—as the place where Creation occurs, apparently without the direct intervention of God. We see no divine Hand of the Maker, only the work as it is done. Secondly—and this is a bold innovation in terms of composition—the figures of the angels are layered, as if each new Day moves to stand in front of their predecessor, once their globe is ready to be seen. This creates a wonderful impression of gathering complexity, as the background fills up with wings, faces, and glimpses of the earlier globes. And the foreground becomes a pattern of delightful bare feet, perched on clouds. The effect is relatively muted in the Middleton Cheney windows: the glass painting is a little cautious, and the colours limited to the yellows and browns of silver stain. However, in the next version of the designs, at St Edith’s, Tamworth (1874), the impact is much greater. This is partly because of the stronger palette—with the addition of reds as well as yellows and partly because the robes of the angels themselves are now enriched, as if with embroidered or woven decoration. The Days are still only one part of a great flurry of angelic activity in the East Window, competing with dozens of minstrels, saints, and prophets for our attention. But Burne-Jones’ treatment of the subject seems to be more resolved. It was while he was working on the Tamworth windows that Burne-­ Jones redrew the Days of Creation as a series of large watercolours (Fig. 8.1 & Fig. 8.7). Each of the six panels is a metre tall, and they are highly finished. According to the Burne-Jones online catalogue raisonné, in addition to watercolour, he worked in gouache, shell gold, and platinum on a linen-covered panel. These are delicate, carefully crafted objects. (They are now in the collection of the Fogg Art Gallery, except for the Fourth Day which was stolen in 1970 and has not been recovered.) These were the pictures that Ruskin admired for their ‘consummately powerful imagination’ at the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in 1877, and which he directly compared with Whistler’s Nocturne (xxix.160). In these paintings Burne-Jones dwelt on the subject to amplify the suggestions he had already made in the window designs. One of the most noticeable changes is in his use of colour. Freed from the limitations of the material in stained glass production, Burne-Jones’ watercolour angels are

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

Fig. 8.7  Edward Burne-Jones, Sixth and Seventh Days of Creation, exhibited 1877, watercolour, gouache, platinum paint, shell gold, on linen over panel

211

212 

S. F. COOPER

now clothed in feathers and robes that reflect their place in the procession of Days. The First Day shimmers in greys and shadowy blues, but the Third Day is dressed in softly blended pinks and greens, and by the Sixth and Seventh Day, the picture surface is filled with a gentle rainbow of tones. It is still not a riot of colour. But there is a strong sense of splendour increasing as the Days gather. This impression of abundance, of the fullness of Creation, is heightened by other details. The way that the angels embrace the globes held against their bodies looks very much like the caring gesture of a pregnant woman touching her rounded belly. This is how new life is formed and nurtured, within the encircling body. We might also notice changes in the space beneath the angels’ feet. In the first two Days, this is a featureless glassy surface, almost like the smooth shell of a crystal ball. But once we reach the Third Day, when ‘the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree’ (Genesis 1:12) the angels stand on ground that is beginning to burst into life, with small patches of grass, and daisies, and tiny blue anemones. On the Fifth Day, they are on a sandy shore, with little pools of water and seashells under their feet. By the Sixth and Seventh Days, all the space is now filled with wings and faces, and a tangle of briar roses. Burne-Jones, the creator of this scene, has designed his ideal place to rest and enjoy the work of his hands: a place of soft music, with the scent of flowers, beautiful faces, and sheltering wings. Burne-Jones added another detail, which helps us to understand how this transformation happened. The little flame which appeared on the heads of all the stained glass angels has been altered in the watercolour version. Now it passes from one angel to the next, and sits only on the forehead of foremost angel. So, in the panel of the Fifth Day, only the angel holding the orb filled with a flock of birds has a flame on their brow. And it grows stronger as the Days progress. In the First Day (Fig. 8.1) it is a wisp of smoke, barely visible. But in the last panel, it is burning clear above the flower garland worn by the Sixth Day (Fig. 8.7). It is as if the Spirit of God, the spark of life, is moving from angel to angel, as each part of Creation is brought into being. These changes were not carried forward into the later series of windows for Manchester College, Oxford (1895, now Harris Manchester College). The cartoons from Tamworth seem to have been reused by the team at Merton Abbey, so that details like the flames and the blossoming foreground were not included. These angels stand on little clouds, as they draw near to us. They all have bold red wings; there is no sense of colour

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

213

increasing from Day to Day. As a result, some of the subtleties in the Burne-Jones’ reading of the Genesis text is lost. There is a decorative sameness to all the figures, rather than the more nuanced response found in his watercolours. What can we learn from the stained glass windows and the watercolour series from the 1870s? We can clearly see Burne-Jones’ diverse working practices; in fact, his own process as a creator, as he moved from decorative to fine art production and back again. The iconography of the Days of Creation glass commissions was effectively established in 1870, and continued for another twenty-five years, apart from variations in colouring and surface painting. The later angels are painted with a firmer hand, but most of the composition was fixed at Middleton Cheney. This demonstrates the workshop system employed by Morris and Co. and the collaborative nature of stained glass production. Burne-Jones drew the figures, but other members of the Firm were responsible for the colouring, leading, and often the background fillings too. The Days of Creation were passed from hand to hand, to become a three-dimensional product, ready to be installed in their architectural setting. The paintings shown at the Grosvenor Gallery served a different purpose. They allowed Burne-Jones to interrogate the possibilities of the Creation verses, and to bring them into tighter focus. These were panels to be seen up close, unlike the windows hanging high above the congregation in a church. This directness encouraged viewers to step forward and look into the heart of the spheres. Burne-Jones has created worlds within worlds here, a complex system of fluttering and glassy surfaces, and richly rewarding depths. He plays with the impossible scale of his subjects: how large or small are these figures and the globes they hold? How long ago? The mirrors, watery surfaces, crystal balls and glassy orbs that he so often painted seemed to provide a clue to understanding his desire to paint ‘the art of culture, of reflection’. This was the phrase used by Henry James when he described how Burne-Jones’ work could be recognised in its full beauty by ‘people who look at life not directly, as it were … but in the reflection and ornamental portrait of it furnished by art itself in other manifestations’. It was an art that celebrated all forms of creativity, the wonders ‘furnished by literature, by poetry, by history, by erudition’.14 Or, in the 14  Henry James, Athenaeum, May 18 1878, p. 642, quoted in Stephen Wildman and John Christian, eds., Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist Dream (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), p. 193.

214 

S. F. COOPER

words of Ruskin, Burne-Jones could open these portals into far-off places, thanks to his ‘indefatigable scholarship and exhaustless fancy’ (xxxiii.296). The changing iconography of Burne-Jones’ Days of Creation appears, at one level, as a microcosm of his own growth as an artist. It demonstrates the constructive interaction he established between pre-­Reformation and contemporary ways of picturing the Bible’s Creation account. He reinterpreted thirteenth century manuscripts and Botticelli’s solemn angels, Veronese and Dante, in the light of modern possibilities, like Pollen’s audacious image of the beginning of life—in the single cell—sustained by the Majesty of a Divine Creator. By doing so, he questioned the origins of conventional images. Burne-Jones set out clearly, in his Days of Creation, his own distinctive vision of what art and artists could offer their audience. Burne-Jones was prepared to challenge and reimagine the controversial subject of the origins of life on earth. He offered an alternative view to the materialism of science, through the lens of poetry and the landscapes of his imagination. When he showcased the six watercolours at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, he drew attention to his own particular blend of old and new, his ability to conjure up fresh iconography from the most ancient texts. As he said to a young admirer, many of the Bible stories were ‘too beautiful not to be true’.15

Bibliography Burne-Jones, Georgiana. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones. 2 vols. London: Chiswick Press, 1904. Harrison, Frederic. ‘A few words about picture exhibitions’, The Nineteenth Century 24 (July 1888), p. 38. James, Henry. Athenaeum, may 18 1878, p. 642, in Stephen Wildman and John Christian, Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998. MacCarthy, Fiona. The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination. London: Faber, 2011. Martin Kemp, Quoted in lot essay, lot 9B, post-war and contemporary art evening Sale, Christie’s New York, 15th November 2017. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912).

15  Georgiana Burne-Jones, The Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones Vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 209.

8  CRYSTAL BALLS: VISIONS OF CREATION IN THE ART OF BURNE-JONES 

215

Schoenherr, Douglas E. ‘Edward Burne-Jones’s account books with Morris & Company (1861–1900): An annotated edition’, The Journal of Stained Glass, Vol. xxxv, 2011, p. 182. Terkla, Dan and Nick Millea, eds. A critical companion to the English medieval Mappae mundi of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2019. Yanni, Carla. Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display. Princeton Architectural Press: 1999, this edition 2005.

PART IV

Visual Interlude ii: A Syncretic Communion

CHAPTER 9

A World Without Ceiling: Mary Watts’ ‘Language of Symbols’ at Limnerslease Lucy Ella Rose

Symbolist craftswoman Mary Seton Watts (née Fraser Tytler) (1849–1938) and ‘England’s Michelangelo’ (Blunt 1989) George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) read John Ruskin’s works in their reading alcove, known as the ‘niche’, that Mary designed for the sitting room at their Surrey studiohome (Fig. 9.1). The couple named this abode ‘Limnerslease’: ‘limner’ being Latin for ‘artist’ and ‘leasen’ being the Old English word meaning ‘to glean’, in the hope that golden years of creativity would be gleaned there. Ruskin’s writings were often comforting or thought-provoking bedtime reads for the couple. They were enchanted by his concept of nature’s divine powers in his work The Queen of the Air (1869), which Mary gave to her husband for

L. E. Rose (*) Surrey, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_9

219

220 

L. E. ROSE

Fig. 9.1  Mary and George F.  Watts reading in the ‘niche’ at Limnerslease, c.1894–1895

his 74th birthday. The Wattses held Ruskin in an almost religious reverence among the ‘great preachers’, championing his ‘great gospel’ and ‘beautifully holy mind’.1 George Watts told Mary (as he stepped into his bath) that he thought ‘Ruskin had perhaps the most original mind of all the great men of his day’.2 The many references to Ruskin’s works in Mary’s diaries—the majority of which remain unpublished—reflect his deep influence on the couple’s thinking as a leading art critic of their day. They also illuminate the private sacred conversations that took place not only between artists but also between husband and wife. However, while Mary shared Ruskin’s belief that ‘all education begins in work’, and his belief in ‘all that would develop the best in humanity’, she recognised ‘the clouds gathering over the keen, far-reaching vision of 1  Mary Watts, from Diaries of Mary Seton Watts held at Compton: Watts Gallery Archives [COMWG2008.4, MSW/1–10]: 23 August, 15 April 1893; 23 March 1891. Hereafter by dates. 2  Watts: 14 February 1898.

9  A WORLD WITHOUT CEILING: MARY WATTS’ ‘LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLS’… 

221

the grand old prophet’ in his older age.3 Mary did not share Ruskin’s views that woman’s ‘power is not for rule […] and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet orderings’ of domesticity,4 and that woman should submit in ‘true wifely subjection’ to her divinely ordained role as ‘the helpmate of man’ (xviii.111). The Wattses’ conjugal partnership itself represented the creative values they jointly supported. Mary records in her diary how she worked alongside her husband in their studio-­ home not as a helpmeet but as a serious professional craftswoman working in her own distinct medium to design, create and install her gesso relief ceilings at Limnerslease. She writes, ‘I worked hard at my ceiling. Signor in the library drawing.’5 She ‘slaved’ at her ceilings and worked at them ‘like a tiger’6 (Fig.  9.2). Mary clearly intended her intricately crafted designs, spreading over the low ceilings through the entrance hall and sitting room on the ground floor of the couple’s home, to have an immediate and lasting impression on their many celebrity visitors, which included the likes of writer George Meredith and campaigner Josephine Butler. Refuting Ruskin, Mary combined intellect, invention, creation and domesticity in her designs for Limnerslease. She transformed the interior into a work of art with her highly imaginative and ambitious schemes of symbolic decoration: her plaster ceiling panels of stylised gesso symbols inspired by ancient cultures; her Celtic fireplace surround designs; and her bed ends. Whilst Mary decorated features within the walls of the traditionally female domestic sphere, digging clay in the rural backwoods of the couple’s home to make the features for Limnerslease was an ‘unladylike’ activity that necessitated her transgression of the home and of Victorian feminine conventions. In later life, she held a large women’s suffrage meeting at Limnerslease (Surrey Advertiser 29 November 1913), supporting women’s breaking of glass ceilings directly beneath the symbolic ceilings she designed. In her creation of the ceilings, though, she shared Ruskin’s ideas about the neglected significance of the sky and its unique ability to please, teach and talk to humankind. As Mary observed, Ruskin remarked: ‘It is a strange thing how little in general people know about  Watts: 24 March 1891.  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xv.149). 5  Watts: 13 January 1891. ‘Signor’ was how Mary affectionately referred to G.F. Watts. 6  Watts: 20 January, 10 February 1891. 3 4

222 

L. E. ROSE

Fig. 9.2  Mary Watts and assistants working on a ceiling panel, 1891

the sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for … the sole and evident purpose of talking to him, and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her’ (v.343). Mary attended to an aspect of the Victorian home that was least often decorated, and evidently intended the ceiling panels—an internal ‘sky’ or pseudo-raqia—to speak to one another and to viewers below, offering her visitors a kind of spiritual immersion in her architectural patchwork quilt of worldwide civilisations. Her ceilings can be viewed as a means of educating the viewer and enabling conversations with the divine (Fig. 9.3). Mary’s Limnerslease ceilings are little-known and critically neglected. Yet in the syncretic and hieratic symbolism of these ceilings, Mary developed an extraordinarily rich iconographic vocabulary that anticipated her designs for the Watts Chapel: a unique fusion of Art Nouveau, Celtic, Christian, Romanesque, Byzantine and Egyptian influence (Fig. 9.4).

9  A WORLD WITHOUT CEILING: MARY WATTS’ ‘LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLS’… 

223

Fig. 9.3  Mary Watts, the gesso ceiling in the Red Room of Limnerslease, 1891

She had first-hand experiences of different cultures from her travelling and was familiar with different aesthetic discourses from her formal art training and research into ancient religions and symbolism. At Limnerslease, Mary was able to develop her growing interest in these subjects and give them expression in her ceilings. Mary’s diaries are sites of creative inception that log her first experiments with gesso in 1887 and document the creation of her ceilings and the ‘niche’ in the sitting room at Limnerslease in 1891. Testifying to her careful consideration of their design, she writes in her diary, ‘I gave my mind to the whole conception of my ceiling for some hours, it is to be the concrete expression of the spiritual atmosphere that Signor has round him […] put into the silent language of symbols […] the whole scheme should be bound together if possible with a single cord, as the symbol of the unity & fundamental law underlying all’.7 The Celtic cord of the circular symbols, spirals, mazes and knots undulating in gesso relief over the ceilings—as in the Watts Chapel—creates the impression of a mysterious handwriting embossed on the white, page-like plaster 7

 Watts: 25 January 1891.

224 

L. E. ROSE

Fig. 9.4  Mary Watts, Watts Chapel ceiling, 1895–1898

9  A WORLD WITHOUT CEILING: MARY WATTS’ ‘LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLS’… 

225

panels, representing the interconnectedness of all people and things. The intentional colourlessness of the ceilings—in contrast to the rich PreRaphaelite colour scheme of her Chapel decoration—suggests both a tabula rasa and a threshold or portal to a higher divine realm, which is unknown and yet to be collectively written or jointly experienced. This ceiling scheme prefigured Mary’s aim to explore ‘the passage between the mystery of birth and the mystery of death’ in the Chapel, and—in its meeting of ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’—to inspire a ‘glorious consciousness of its affinity with the Infinite’.8 Multiplicity was central to Mary’s thought and design; she resisted dedication to one religion and one creative medium in favour of uniting and embracing multiple ideas and symbols. She saw the very creation of her ceilings as an act of worship, writing in her diary, ‘when the good man [in church] asked us what we were doing for God—my ceiling—I thought.— to drop the least speck of awakening in other hearts towards that great unity—brotherhood of the good endeavour! between Christian— Mahommedan—Hindu—Parsee! [sic]’.9 Mary’s interest in ancient civilisations and religions is evident in the five larger panels (each c.114 × 89 cm) of her hallway ceiling, which include a Buddhist panel featuring Narayana figures and lotus flowers; a Brahman panel featuring an elephant and rosary beads; a Hebrew or Jewish panel featuring the Star of David and lions; a Chaldean or Assyrian panel featuring winged figures and the crescent; and an Egyptian panel featuring scrolls and scales (Fig. 9.5).10 Mary’s writings (Chapel notebook and diaries) show her fascination with the richness of these symbols and her recognition of their connections—for example, the reference they make to nature in their motifs of birds and trees. Her optimistic merging of multiple religions and their symbols in her ceiling designs reflects a historical, universal human need for the divine whilst also asking faiths, or ideas of the sacred, to communicate within the heavens, using the ceiling as a pseudo heaven. It can be seen as a celebration of a multi-faith view of the world and a progressive facilitation of an interfaith dialogue. The ceilings of her home evidently held a kind of a divine power for Mary: she describes the ‘deep white arch’ 8  Mary Watts, The Word in the Pattern: A Key to the Symbols on the Walls of the Chapel at Compton (London: Wm. H. Ward and Co., 1905), p.3. 9  Watts: 29 October 1893. 10  See Catherine Hilary, ‘Mary Watts’s Ceiling Decoration at Limnerslease’ in Mark Bills, ed. An Artists’ Village: G.  F. Watts and Mary Watts at Compton (London: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., 2011), pp. 159–160.

226 

L. E. ROSE

Fig. 9.5  Mary Watts, detail of the Egyptian gesso ceiling panel at Limnerslease, 1891

9  A WORLD WITHOUT CEILING: MARY WATTS’ ‘LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLS’… 

227

of the studio ceiling looming around her and George ‘like a great chapel’ and the drawing room ceiling like a ‘blessing hand […] over [their] heads’ (Fig. 9.6).11 Amongst the figurative symbols decorating the twenty-one panels (17 measure c.75 × 80 cm; 4 are c.79 × 159 cm) of the sitting room ceiling are various forms of cross combined with hearts, crowns, entwined palms and suns. Inspired by her honeymoon to Egypt, the sun resurfaces in Mary’s work as a symbol of life and the universe as well as the new dawn, with its spiritual and socio-political significance (in the context of the fight for female emancipation that Mary actively supported). The sun’s central place in her sitting room ceiling encourages viewers to contemplate its uplifting symbolism as well as the meaning of the other designs to which it points in every direction with its outspread angel-like wings. The intricate detail of these is comparable to the wings foregrounded in Mary’s large Aldourie Triptych (1886–1903), for which she modelled three of her husband’s paintings of angels in clay and had them cast in bronze relief for her family cemetery in Scotland. Emerging like rays from the central sun panel are four rectangular ceiling panels showing various joys: bees in the cells of a hive, signifying industry and the joy of work; butterflies emerging from their chrysalises, signifying renewal and joy of the soul; wheat and grapes, signifying produce and the joy of the senses; and hieroglyphs such as crossed hearts and roses, signifying love. Wings dominate Mary’s ceilings in the goddesses, bees and birds as well as the winged sun, suggesting her preoccupation with liberty and transcendence. The rectangular ceiling panels in the sitting room at Limnerslease are interspersed with square panels showing various symbolic birds: the owl representing wisdom; the phoenix representing hope and renewal; the pelican representing love; and the cock representing alertness. Of her avian imagery, of particular note is Mary’s pelican motif, which also features on the exterior walls of the Chapel and the pelican rug she designed for Liberty’s (retailed 1903), which made it famous. Reconceiving the idea of Christ-like self-sacrifice, she depicts a stylised vulning pelican mother feeding her brood with her own flesh and blood, framed by a circle and scrolls that suggest the provision and continuity of life (Fig. 9.7). This is a powerful image of maternal protection and matriarchal self-­ sacrifice. Such designs, along with her androgynous altar-piece figure in  Watts: 11 May, 18 July 1891.

11

228 

L. E. ROSE

Fig. 9.6  Mary Watts, detail of the winged sun ceiling panel at Limnerslease, 1891

the Chapel—a version of her husband’s painting The All-Pervading (1904)—open a religious and aesthetic conversation about the nature of the divine. Mary’s unique symbolic iconography in Limnerslease—as in

9  A WORLD WITHOUT CEILING: MARY WATTS’ ‘LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLS’… 

229

Fig. 9.7  Mary Watts, detail of the vulning pelican ceiling at Limnerslease, 1891

the Chapel—extends beyond, and reworks, traditional symbols of Christianity in its multiple religious and historic visual references. Her inventive designs combine a variety of seemingly opposed registers and styles without privileging any one in particular. Mary’s creative struggle with the ceilings and her high expectations of herself are conveyed by diary entries such as, ‘the ceiling was all up & I saw my work for the first time complete—though I would like to begin it again & do it better in every way. […] The rector of the village who came through the house made no remark upon the ceiling whatsoever—it evidently was a blank from all points to him.’12 Yet Mary did not require the rector’s approval. Whilst the Wattses felt a deep religious reverence,  Watts: 17 April 1891.

12

230 

L. E. ROSE

George ‘reasoned and rebelled against the unreality of ordinary religious teaching’ at church and conceived a radically ‘different idea of an Almighty God’ in his Symbolist paintings.13 Mary applauds his ‘wisdom in not insisting [on] any particular dogma or doctrine’14—a wisdom displayed in her own ceilings, where her aesthetic transcendence is an invitation to us to transcend our own corporeal limitations. Of the fulfilment she finally found in her ‘ceiling scheme’ and the ‘endless variety of ideas that they suggest’, she writes, ‘it seems to me that I am now doing what I purposed to do, at the beginning of my life with Signor & it makes it the most delightful work I have ever done’.15

Bibliography Blunt, Wilfrid. England’s Michelangelo: A Biography of George Frederic Watts. London: Columbus Books Ltd., 1989. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Hilary, Catherine. ‘Mary Watts’s Ceiling Decoration at Limnerslease’ in Mark Bills, ed. An Artists’ Village: G. F. Watts and Mary Watts at Compton. London: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 2011, pp. 157–162. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Watts, Mary. George Frederic Watts: The Annals of An Artist’s Life [Vols 1–3]. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912. ———. The Diaries of Mary Seton Watts. Compton: Watts Gallery Archives [COMWG2008.4, MSW/1–10], 1870–1886, 1887, 1891, 1893, 1896, 1898, 1902, 1904, 1906–1908. ———. The Word in the Pattern: A Key to the Symbols on the Walls of the Chapel at Compton. London: Wm. H. Ward and Co., 1905.

Internet Sources Internet source accessed in June 2022 https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ ——— ‘Women and the Vote: Last Night’s Meeting’, Surrey Advertiser (29 November 1913). 13  George Watts quoted in Mary Watts, George Frederic Watts: The Annals of An Artist’s Life (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912), Vol. I, pp. 15–16, and Watts: 27 January 1893. 14  Watts: 13 March 1887. 15  Watts: 12 March 1891.

PART V

Reinvigorating Sacred Spaces

CHAPTER 10

Victorian Exodus: Visualising the Old Testament in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881) Madeline Hewitson

Notwithstanding the critics’ generally positive reviews of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery: Illustrations from the Old Testament (1881), George and Edward Dalziels’ assessment of their own work was, in fact, the most damning. They wrote in their autobiography (Fig. 10.1): Yet with all this vast array of talent our ‘Bible’, commercially speaking, was a dead failure. […] The balance of the number printed were disposed of at prices which we will not here record. Thus ended a work, begun with the highest aims, over which we spent many years of careful, patient labour, and several thousands of pounds.1 The failure of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery has passed into art historical lore as the bookend to the ‘golden age’ of Victorian illustration in the 1860s. George and Thomas, two members of successful family businesses The Brothers Dalziel and The Camden Press (a wood-engraving firm and a  George and Edward Dalziel, The Brothers Dalziel: A Record of Fifty Years’ Work, 1840–1890 (London: Methuen & Co., 1901), p. 255. 1

M. Hewitson (*) Oxford, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_10

233

234 

M. HEWITSON

Fig. 10.1  Title page from The Brothers Dalziel, Dalziels’ Bible Gallery: Illustrations from the Old Testament (New York: Scribner and Welford, 1881)

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

235

London-based printing shop respectively), had conceived the project in 1862. In contrast to this commercial flop, The Brothers Dalziel was, according to Rodney K. Engen, the ‘leading light’ in the field of illustrated publishing.2 The firm was responsible for the vast majority of notable illustrated publications in Britain for nearly half a century. Their achievements are evidenced by their enormous archive, now held in the British Museum, which includes fifty-four thousand proofs set within albums, which document every year of their practice between 1839 and 1893.3 They produced wood engravings to accompany the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1857), Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense (1862) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (1865–71). They also supplied imagery to many of the major illustrated periodicals including The Cornhill Magazine, Punch, and The Illustrated London News. Although each illustration was signed ‘Dalziel’, they collaborated with famous painters, many of whom agreed to work in wood engraving for the first time on behalf of the firm, and nurtured the talents of illustrators such as Arthur Boyd Houghton, Edward Moxon and William Small. This project aimed to capitalise on a recent boom in illustrated Bibles. As Rachel Teukolsky explains, the illustrated Bible became the single most popular form of illustrated publication in middle-class Victorian homes, enabled by mass printing technologies and a literary culture that embraced the combination of word and image for storytelling.4 Dalziels’ Bible Gallery followed on from titles such as Charles Knight’s Pictorial Bible (1836–1838) and John Cassell’s Illustrated Family Bible (1859–1863), the latter of which had sold three hundred and fifty thousand copies in just

2  Rodney K.  Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Wood Engravers (Chadwyck-Healey: Cambridge, 1985), p. 64. See also Paul Goldman and Simon Cooke, eds., Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855–1875: Spoils of the Lumber (Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012) and Bethan Stevens, ‘Woodpeckings: the Dalziel Archive, Victorian Print Culture and Wood Engravings’, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/english/dalziel/, accessed April 2022. 3  The full archive has been digitised on the British Museum’s website: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=%22Bethan%20Stevens%22&keyword=dalziel, accessed March 2022. For more see, Bethan Stevens, The Wood Engravers’ Self Portrait: the Dalziel Archive and Victorian Illustration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022). Paul Goldman, Victorian Illustrated Books 1850–1870: The Hey-day of Wood-engraving (London: British Museum Press, 1994). 4  Rachel Teukolsky, Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 144.

236 

M. HEWITSON

six years.5 However, the Dalziels’ intention was to innovate beyond the previous iterations by commissioning the rising stars of the 1860s art world to produce a luxury fine art gift book sold at a far higher price point than Knight and Cassell’s cheaply printed publications that had been intended for mass consumption.6 Importantly, the Dalziels’ version, when it failed to secure the editorial services of lexicographer George Grove, was destined to be solely a ‘picture’ book and did not include written Scripture like other illustrated Bibles such as Knight and Cassell’s.7 Therefore, by necessity, this project prioritised an imaginative and aesthetically ambitious visualisation of Bible stories which offered something distinct from other titles in the field. However, the project never reached a satisfactory stage of completion and letters between the commissioned artists and the firm reveal the tedium of coordinating such an ambitious project; an inconclusive back-­ and-­ forth of extensions, missed deadlines and half-hearted apologies, which carried on for nearly twenty years. Facing professional embarrassment and bankruptcy, the Dalziel’s took the sixty-two illustrations they had managed to complete and published one thousand copies of the Bible. These sold poorly despite the table of contents, which boasted a current and future President of the Royal Academy, fellow Academicians and a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Regardless, its contributions from some of the period’s leading artists have secured its legacy, even if its sales did not. Dalziels’ Bible Gallery has received ample attention from art historians, literary critics and historians of the book as a compendium of the key developments in mid-Victorian illustration. Because of the contributors’ notoriety, these studies have often focused on individual artist’s contributions to Dalziels’ Bible Gallery. In particular, these have centred on the work of Edward John Poynter 5  Richard Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 303. 6  For more on the Dalziels’ Fine Art Gift Books see, Lorraine J. Kooistra, Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture, 1855–1875 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011), pp. 79–126. However, the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery was not typical of their Fine Art Gift Book output, as it was not accompanied by poetry which Kooistra argues was crucial in establishing poetry in popular culture. 7  After The Brothers Dalziel business shuttered, Alex Foley and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge bought the copyright to Dalziels’ Bible Gallery. Foley published new versions in 1894 and 1900; these versions included written Scripture aimed it at young children with additional illustrations by Simeon Solomon.

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

237

whose detailed Orientalist depictions touch on two key Victorian revivalisms: that of ancient Egypt, as Stephanie Moser recently detailed and Assyria, as Donato Esposito has revealed.8 Similarly, Laura McCulloch’s study on Ford Madox Brown’s contributions reveals how he drew on other contemporary illustrated books which depicted archaeological discoveries in the Near East to inform his vision of the Old Testament stories of Joseph, Eglon, and Elijah.9 While this research has provided crucial insight into the work of key Victorian painters and the intersection between archaeology, the Bible and Orientalism in fine art, one unique element of the composition of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery has been overlooked. The illustrations in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery are drawn exclusively from the Hebrew Bible, in other words, the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament,10 making it the only prestigious publication of its kind to do so at the time. Although The Brothers Dalziel’s original intention had been to publish a complete illustrated Bible, spanning Genesis to Revelation, their failure to achieve this ambition instead resulted in a unique volume that offers scholars insight into the changing status of Old Testament imagery in mid-Victorian visual culture. This chapter explores the Old Testament essentialism of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery and highlights its depiction of the Book of Exodus, the largest continuous narrative in the volume, which makes up a fifth of the illustrations. This study situates popular Victorian illustration within histories of religious art, which have thus far primarily privileged historical illustration such mediaeval illuminations. A focus on the Exodus section, perhaps the most important biblical narrative to Victorian Christians after the Gospels, will reveal this story’s, and its protagonist, the prophet Moses’, importance within mid-Victorian visual and literary culture. 8  Stephanie Moser, Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-­ Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 109–128 and Donato Esposito, ‘Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881): Assyria and the Biblical Illustration in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ in Steven W.  Holloway, ed., Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007), pp. 267–296. 9  Laura McCulloch, ‘Fleshing Out Time: Ford Madox Brown and the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery’ in Paul Goldman and Simon Cooke, eds., Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855–1875: Spoils of the Lumber Room (Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 115–135. 10  In Judaism, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is comprised of only twenty-four books, but the Christian Hebrew Bible has thirty-nine books. This is because of the practice of bisecting Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles and of counting Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets as separate books. It is worth noting that the Tanakh would have been Solomon’s understanding of the Scripture.

238 

M. HEWITSON

The Pre-Raphaelites and Ruskin: Biblical Art for Modern Times Before giving a detailed account of the Exodus section of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, I would first like to turn to broader context of Pre-Raphaelite illustration in order to explore the role of Old Testament imagery in contemporary debates on religious art. Although William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) is the only original member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to contribute to Dalziels’ Bible Gallery—with an illustration of Eliezer and Rebekah (Genesis 24:11–20)—the Pre-Raphaelites collaborated with the firm on other projects throughout the 1850s and 1860s. For example, concurrent with the production of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, they worked with John Everett Millais (1829–1896) to publish The Parables of Our Lord (1864) whose illustrations were mostly sourced from the New Testament. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) and Holman Hunt contributed five illustrations for Moxon’s Poems of Alfred Tennyson. Rossetti later wrote a poem mocking the Dalziels’ protracted process which read in part, ‘O WOODMAN, spare that block / Oh gash not anyhow! It took ten days by the block / I’d fain protect it now’. This riposte directed at the ‘woodsmen’ mirrored frustrations between the artists and engravers later on the Bible project.11 Consequently, illustration became an established, and lucrative, medium of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its associates, in large part due to these collaborations with The Brothers Dalziel.12 As in their painting, which I turn to momentarily, sacred subjects were a key component of Pre-Raphaelite illustration. The medium allowed them to innovate in both technique and subject to create new ways of seeing and understanding religious material.13 Beyond illustration, the predominant understanding of the Pre-­ Raphaelites’ religious art has largely revolved around images from the New Testament and in particular, radical reimaginings of Jesus Christ and 11  ‘O WOODMAN, spare that block, Oh gash not anyhow! It took ten days by the clock, I’d fain protect it now.’ Chorus—Wild Laughter from Dalziel’s Workshop. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Address to The Brothers Dalziel (1857). First published in William Bell Scott, ed., Autobiographical Notes Vol. 2 (London: Harper and Brothers, 1892), p. 157. 12  Gregory R. Suriano, The Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators (New Castle, Del: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2000) and Susan P. Casteras, Pocket Cathedrals: Pre-Raphaelite Book Illustration (New Haven, CT: Yale Centre for British Art, 1991). 13  For more see Christiana Payne, Pre-Raphaelite Drawings and Watercolours (Oxford: Ashmolean Publishing, 2021).

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

239

the Holy Family by Millais, Holman Hunt and Rossetti. However, less attention has been devoted to their frequent depictions of Old Testament narratives. In the founding principles of the Brotherhood, via the List of Immortals they drew up in 1848, the artists included ‘The Author of Job’, and the prophet Isaiah but, notably, the list does not feature any Gospel writers, disciples, or saints.14 While this study reveals the significance of the Old Testament within illustration, there is opportunity for future studies to examine the Brotherhood’s Old Testament subjects including Thomas Woolner’s alto-relievo figures of Moses and David, Rossetti’s David triptych both for Llandaff Cathedral (1855), and Millais’ paintings The Tribe of Benjamin (1848), Esther (1865) and Jephthah (1867), to name but a few. Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’) (1849–50, see Fig.  4.1, p. XX), a watershed moment in Victorian New Testament painting, is inscribed with a quote from the Old Testament prophet, Zechariah: ‘And who shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends’ (Zechariah 13:6). These examples reveal the Brotherhood’s interest in a more nuanced understanding across the breadth of Christian liturgy as well as their knowledge of Old Testament prophets, which I will go on to explore later in my analysis. In Michaela Giebelhausen’s study of Victorian biblical painting, she identifies John Ruskin, the great advocate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as one of the crucial figures in debates over the state of Victorian religious art arguing that ‘He saw pictorial representation as having the power to either enhance or undermine belief’.15 Scholars have continually emphasised Ruskin’s deep interest in and frequent citation of Scripture, despite his personal crisis of faith.16 Moreover, as other chapters in this volume attest, there is further insight to be gained from examining his writing from the perspective of religion and spirituality. Ruskin was, according to Andrew Tate, ‘highly biblically literate’ and drew on the

14  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. 1 (London and New York: Macmillan, 1905–1906), p. 159. 15  Michaela Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible: Representation and Belief in mid-Victorian Britain (Aldershot and London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 9. 16  For more see C.  Stephen Finley, Nature’s Covenant: Figures of Landscape in Ruskin (University Park: Pennsylvania, 1992) and Michael Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

240 

M. HEWITSON

entire Christian Bible in all areas of his writing.17 However, elements of the Old Testament, in particular the Psalms and Mosaic law, stood out to Ruskin and in this chapter, I foreground the importance of the Old Testament in his writing on Mosaic law as a foundation for sincere biblical art, a principle I argue is shared in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery. Dalziels’ Bible Gallery brings together two seemingly disparate subjects on which Ruskin wrote much and settled little. Firstly, the way in which religious subjects could be authentically conveyed in art works to inspire faith and feelings of sacrality. And secondly, his anxiety, which he wrote about in Ariadne Florentina (1873), around the mechanical reproduction of art works, in particular wood and metal engraving, and its relationship to industrial capitalism.18 Dalziels’ Bible Gallery is illustrative of Ruskin’s mission to make art, particularly biblical art, more accessible to a greater number of people through a book by engravers deeply involved in mass media production. However, at the same time, Ruskin also worried that accessibility, in this case achieved through mass-produced wood engraving, posed a threat to the value of art if quantity took precedence over quality. As we shall see, similar contradictions are central to the visual interpretation of Exodus. While they are left unresolved, as they were for Ruskin, for the viewer to draw their own conclusions this book calls attention to the same issues that Ruskin considered most important to man’s relationship with God. Ruskin never directly commented on Dalziels’ Bible Gallery although he was an admirer, associate and, at other times, critic of The Brothers Dalziel. In 1859, they engraved several illustrations by Richard Doyle for an edition of The King of Golden Sands, a fairy tale Ruskin wrote for then twelve-year-old Effie Gray. The following year they reproduced the frescoes from the Arena Chapel in Padua on behalf of the Arundel Society to which Ruskin wrote an introduction. While he felt, ‘Nothing can surpass the cleverness of our school of Dalziel’ (xix.155), he tempered his praise, for example, with a chiding response to their edition of Birket Foster’s Beauties of English Landscape (1862) in which he challenges them in a

17  Andrew Tate, ‘“Sweeter also than honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 3:1/2, Literature and Religion (2009), p. 114. 18  For more on this subject see, Jonah Siegel ‘Black Arts, Ruined Cathedrals, and the Grave in Engraving: Ruskin and the Fatal Excess of Art’ Victorian Literature and Culture 27:2 (1999), pp. 395–417.

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

241

letter to ‘be better than ‘charming’ and […] educate the public taste as well as meet it’.19 He also scoffed, ‘I do not know anything more humiliating to a man of common sense, than to open what is called ‘an Illustrated Bible’ of modern days’ (iv.59). The type of illustrated Bible Ruskin was referring to were the cheaply printed volumes, which often re-used existing illustrations and brought the methodology of biblical historicism, which included the new sciences of geology, archaeology and anthropology, to bear on the Scripture, which he argued stripped the poetic power of the text.20 In contrast, the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery artists approached the Old Testament with an ambitious aesthetic scope that would reawaken the importance of these stories, and in particular, the Exodus, which I detail momentarily, to modern audiences who were looking for alternative religious narratives. I argue that there was a desire to distinguish the Old Testament as a separate source because of the contemporary relevance of its stories to Victorian believers. While Ruskin’s belief may have been waning, the quest to ‘produce [a religious] art which shall be at once entirely skilful and entirely sincere’ (v.86–87), in other words, art which had an impact on the viewer’s understanding of morality and the cultural sense of matters sacred, was still worth pursuing.

The Law and the Many Faces of Moses Described as the ‘heart of the Hebrew Bible’, the Book of Exodus narrates the foundational story that establishes the Jewish people as a nation and establishes the codes now commonly referred to as Judeo-Christian ethics.21 As a book with such historical and mythic significance, Exodus is accorded ample space within Dalziels’ Bible Gallery. It has thirteen illustrations, the second largest number per book after Genesis, but the longest continuous narrative in contrast to Genesis, which has episodes that stretch from Cain and Abel to the death of Joseph. Exodus’ liberation epic 19  Ruskin to Dalziel, letter 12 August 1862, quoted in Dalziel, The Brothers Dalziel: A Record of Fifty Years’ Work, 1840–1890, p. 154. 20  Teukolsky, Picture World (2020), pp. 115–135. 21  Herbert Marks, ed., ‘Introduction to Exodus’ in The English Bible, King James Version: The Old Testament (Norton Critical Editions) (London and New York: WW Norton & Co, 2012,) p. 107. See also John Rogerson, ‘The Old Testament and Christian ethics’ in Robin Gill, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 28–40.

242 

M. HEWITSON

interweaves the drama of overcoming a powerful oppressor with the intricacies of Jewish ritual practice and in this period, spoke to audiences with its archetypal story of the law and issues very much alive to contemporary readers such as slavery, nationalism, and establishment of a Jewish homeland.22 Central to this epic was Moses, the liberator, lawgiver and the most senior Jewish patriarch, revered in all three Abrahamic faiths as a prophet. The Table 10.1 below is an excerpt of the contents page from the 1881 Camden Press edition which serves as the only explanatory text in the volume. This feature is unusual amongst illustrated gift books and primarily serves to identify the highly influential artists with their illustrations. In addition, I have added the corresponding Scriptural references to reveal certain gaps and omissions. By cross-referencing these illustrations with Scripture, we can see that the illustrations cover about two-thirds of the book. Most notably, the section ends at a moment of high drama, ‘Moses Destroying the Tablets’ (Fig. 10.2). Yet it does not include its resolution, a gap of eight chapters, where the Israelites recommit themselves to God and Moses brings down the tablets from Mount Sinai for a second time, an image depicted contemporaneously by John Rogers Herbert in his epic frescoes for the Peer’s Robing Room at the Palace of Westminster in 1864.23 There is also a large gap between chapter 17, the Israelites’ first days in the desert following their crossing through the Red Sea and chapter 32, the destruction of the tablets. These chapters contain detailed Jewish social and ritual law, conveyed through the Decalogue, commonly known as the Ten Commandments, and Covenant Code, which provides the framework for much of the legal literature found in the rest of the Old Testament. After the Exodus, the next illustration in the sequence is Pickersgill’s ‘Korah Swallowed Up’ from Numbers, skipping Leviticus, a book devoted to laws and prohibitions entirely. In this respect, Dalziels’ Bible Gallery cleaves to art historical precedent by privileging scenes of narrative, which lend themselves to the established conventions of history painting. In this way, this group of mostly academically trained artists brought the conventions of painting to their illustration. The exception to this is Thomas Dalziel’s 22  Edward Adams, Liberal Epic: The Victorian Practice of History from Gibbon to Churchill (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). See also the discussion in Teukolsky, Picture World (2020), pp. 174–188. 23  For more see Nancy Langham-Hooper, ‘Unrolled: John Rogers Herbert (1810–1890) and the monumental Moses in the National Gallery of Victoria’, Art Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria 54 (December 2015): pp. 71–81.

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

243

Table 10.1  The Exodus in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (illustrations 24–36  in the order they appear) Artist

Title

Exodus reference

Simeon Solomon Edward John Poynter Edward John Poynter

The Infant Moses Moses Slaying the Egyptian Moses Keeping the Jethro’s Sheep Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh The Water Turned into Blood—The Boils and Blain The Israelites in Egypt. Water-Carriers.

2:2 2:12 3:1

Edward John Poynter Thomas Dalziel Edward John Poynter

5:1 7:20 and 9:8

*No Scriptural reference—a pre-­existing watercolour Edward Dalziel purchased in 1862 Frederic Leighton Death of the Firstborn 12:29–30 Thomas Dalziel Departure of the Israelites— 13:20 and 14:28 Destruction of Pharaoh and his Host Edward John Poynter Miriam 15:20–21 Arthur Boyd Houghton Gathering Manna 16:4–36 Edward John Poynter Moses Strikes the Rock 17:6 Edward Armitage Moses’ Hands Held Up 17:11 Frederick Richard Pickersgill Moses Destroys the Tables 32:15

‘double illustrations’, the most experienced of the Exodus artists. ‘The Water Turn into Blood—The Boils and Blain’ and ‘Departure of the Israelites—Destruction of Pharoah’ include two engravings printed on the same page and give compositional variety within the series. They shift the imagery from portrait-oriented images with close perspectives, as we will see in several images of Moses, to landscape-oriented, panoramic, and dramatic views of the plague-ridden banks of the Nile and the Red Sea filled with drowning men. Seven artists were responsible for illustrating Exodus: Edward Armitage (1817–1896), Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1820–1900), Thomas Dalziel (1823–1906), Frederic Leighton (1830–1896), Edward John Poynter (1836–1919), Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836–1875), and Simeon Solomon (1840–1905). The majority chose to depict Moses’ personal journey within the broader narrative. Dalziel Bible Gallery’s Exodus

244 

M. HEWITSON

Fig. 10.2  After Edward Armitage, ‘Moses Destroys the Tables [Tablets]’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881), wood engraving on India paper

coalesces around this central character and highlights his role as a vengeful and righteous patriarch. Therefore, in this next section, I turn to an analysis of the various depictions of Moses by Solomon, Poynter, Armitage, and Pickersgill.

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

245

Moses was perhaps the most important biblical figure after Jesus in the Victorian’s religious imagination. According to Ruskin, ‘the story of Moses […] contains plain teaching for men of every rank of soul and state in life’ on issues of morality (xxxiii.37). The depictions of Moses seen in Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, where he is often the only character in the image, are representative of the individual moral character that Ruskin strongly promoted in religious art. According to Leighton, this was also an aim expressed by the Dalziels ‘to confine yourself to subjects expressed with very few [figures], if possible’.24 This dictum seems especially relevant to the Exodus narrative, which, in the literary context of the nineteenth-­ century liberal epic or bildungsroman genre, needs a central character through which to express moral growth.25 One telling example of his importance is the frontispiece of Cassell’s Illustrated Family Bible. It includes mirror portraits of Moses and Christ, as respective keepers of the Old and New Testaments, revealing how Moses had become central in popular Christian thought as the leading representative of the Old Testament. Moses, as portrayed in the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, offers a visual alternative to the figure of Christ making it a distinctive piece of Victorian Old Testament visual culture. These portrayals pushed beyond a largely hegemonic Christian visual culture which prioritised images of Christ to allow for a fuller exploration of biblical masculinities and visualise ethical dilemmas from an Old Testament perspective, which as we will see, aligned more closely than the New Testament to contemporary debates around imperial violence and colonial liberation. The first Exodus illustration is ‘The Infant Moses’ by Solomon (Fig. 10.3) based on his oil painting Mother of Moses which was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1860. The alteration in title, as well as some compositional details, shifts attention away from Jochebed and sister, Miriam, both modelled by Solomon’s cousin Fanny Cohen and onto the young male child in his mother’s arms. The two women look on at the infant whose head tilts back at an angle that makes his eyes and nose just visible to the viewer. Miriam holds a woven basket, most likely based on examples found on the Assyrian carvings in the British Museum. It serves as a foreshadowing device for scenes not illustrated where the  Dalziel, The Brothers Dalziel (1901), p. 238.  For more see Richard Salmon ‘The Bildungsroman and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction’ in Sarah Graham, ed., A History of the Bildungsroman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 57–83. 24 25

246 

M. HEWITSON

Fig. 10.3  After Simeon Solomon, ‘The Infant Moses’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881), wood engraving on India paper

Pharaoh’s daughter discovers Moses floating in the basket on the Nile and takes him in to be raised as an Egyptian. Mirroring the Gospel’s account of the life of Christ, Exodus then jumps forward nearly twenty years to Moses’ adolescence. ‘Moses Slaying the

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

247

Egyptian’ (Fig. 10.4) is rich in Orientalist detail found in Poynter’s other work for Dalziels’ Bible Gallery and more broadly in his oeuvre as Moser has explored.26 The scene is littered with pots and baskets, which the artist sketched on his frequent trips to the British Museum. Moses, now a cherished son of the Pharaoh’s daughter, has witnessed an Egyptian beating an enslaved Hebrew and prompted by a sense of kinship, which was established in ‘The Infant Moses’, takes vengeance by murdering the Egyptian and hiding his body. In this scene, Poynter has depicted the moment before the murder takes place. However, the image works on the assumption of a biblically literate viewer, as do many of the illustrations, who would know the wider context. Moses grabs at the Egyptian’s neck in an unwavering grip. In the other hand, he grabs hold of a mallet, a grizzly detail of Poynter’s own creation, as the Scripture does not reveal the method of murder. Both are shirtless with tensed and flexed forearms, torsos and calves; their physique gestures to a style known as ‘muscular Christianity’, found in other examples in Victorian Protestant art, which centred on the development of the body as a vehicle for moral progress.27 In this image, God’s strength is conveyed through Moses’ retributive act. However, Poynter draws our attention to one of the most important narratives of the Old Testament Bible story: behind Moses’ shoulder, the Hebrews continue to toil and subsequently endure bondage for another forty years. This detail undermines the murder as an act of restorative justice. Moses’ violence has not redressed the balance or liberated his people from their bondage. This important detail, subtly inserted as a background detail, raises the moral ambiguity of the act. This scene depicts a moment of violence that at its core violates one of the Ten Commandments Moses would eventually deliver to the liberated Hebrews. This type of morally ambiguous act, between vengeance and ruthless violence, distinguished the Old and New Testaments for many Victorian Christians. Put more simply, it was a difference in moral framework between the Mosaic law laid out in Exodus and Christ’s imputation to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Matthew 12:31) which sets the moral tone for the New Testament, a very different basis for morality and justice.

 Moser, Painting Antiquity (2019), pp. 173–217.  For more on muscular Christianity Tim Barringer, Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2005). 26 27

248 

M. HEWITSON

Fig. 10.4  After Edward John Poynter, ‘Moses Slaying the Egyptian’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881), wood engraving on India paper

In this illustration, Poynter offers a vision of the former and the violence of the act open to this theological ambiguity. Victorian Anglican interest in the Exodus often coalesced around Christological readings of Moses’ role in the Old Testament, which often led to comparative readings of Moses and Christ. One of the most notable examples in the period was the sermon ‘Moses the Type of Christ’ preached

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

249

by Cardinal John Henry Newman in 1841 and published in 1843.28 Newman highlighted the symmetry between their missions and their extended, private dialogues with God. In the sermon, Newman quotes John 1:17, ‘the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ’. In this quote, Moses and the Law are the basis for human morality based on a strict code and Christ is responsible for the ineffable qualities of truth and grace. Ruskin also writes about John 1:17 where he offers his firm belief in the power of the law, even superseding the loving nature of Christ. ‘The law was given as a foundation […] those respecting the law are always full of delight’ (vii.22). ‘Moses Slaying the Egyptian’ offers an extreme example of man’s moral failings. The idea of moral burden, in both physical and psychological terms, can also be seen in ‘Moses’ Hands Held Up’ by Pickersgill. This scene (Fig. 10.5) depicts Moses’ intervention in the Battle of the Rephidim. If Moses keeps his arms raised, the Israelites will prevail, but if he lowers them, the enemy gained ground. Victory O Lord (1871) by Millais also depicts this event, which according to Paul Barlow is the artist’s ‘most important and most neglected painting of the 1870s’.29 In both images, Moses has lost his strength and his arms threaten to fail him and the Israelites. Aaron and Hur support their Patriarch and keep his arms raised until the soldiers prevail. Here, the Exodus gives an example of just war, another debated example of Old Testament ethics which was held up against the New Testament’s invocation to turn the other cheek to violence. For Victorian viewers, for whom by the 1880s Queen Victoria’s ‘little wars’ across the globe had become nearly continuous, the idea of military intervention on behalf of Christian empire was relevant and pressing.30 Through an emotive depiction of Moses burdened with the weight of war in literal and metaphorical terms, Dalziels’ Bible Gallery offers a telling of the Exodus that uses imperial logic to justify acts of violence and war. Given the emphasis on law and nationhood in the Exodus, which is reflected in these illustrations, the context of the British Empire is perhaps the most germane to understand why the Old Testament took on a 28  John Henry Newman, ‘Moses the Type of Christ’ in Parochial and Plain Sermons (8 vols.) (London: Longmans, Green, 1891), pp. 118–132. 29  Paul Barlow, Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2005), p. 130. 30  Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars (London: Allen Lane, 1973).

250 

M. HEWITSON

Fig. 10.5  After Frederick Richard Pickersgill, ‘Moses Hands Held Up’ from Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881), wood engraving on India paper

renewed relevancy in the nineteenth century. In Exodus and most of the other books of the Old Testament, justice, oppression, and liberation are key themes which were, at the time of its publication, playing out in Victorian political and cultural spheres with notable similarities. As

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

251

Ruskin’s later writing shifted from aesthetic theories to social issues, his engagement with the Old Testament reflected this turn and he focused on the plight of the oppressed found in Psalms and Proverbs.31 For him, the law as it was laid out in Exodus was crucial for keeping society on track in such turbulent times. In ‘Moses Destroys the Tablets’ by Armitage, the Law is represented by the two tablets, inscribed with the Ten Commandments, held aloft by Moses, who is turned away from the viewer. The tablets are a simple yet powerful symbol, frequently referenced in Old Testament paintings of earlier periods including seventeenth-century Dutch painting, most famously by Rembrandt, and, in less-well known but highly influential eighteenthand nineteenth-Jewish decorative arts, also known as Judaica. Although the writing on the tablets is an incomprehensible mock script rather than Hebrew, it references an increased interest in ancient Eastern languages in this period and work undertaken in the nation’s museums and Oriental institutes to decipher cuneiform tablets and other ancient forms of writing. This depiction of the Law comes just moments before its destruction, paralleling the narrative moment in ‘Moses Slays the Egyptian’. Moses’ arms are at the highest point in a downward swinging motion, standing on the ball of his right foot to increase his power, which will send the carved stone tablets crashing to the ground. This image calls to mind, in a contemporary parallel, Armitage’s most famous work Retribution (1858) which also depicts destruction, and in some instances, murder as seen in ‘Moses Slaying the Egyptian’, by a vengeful leader. In the painting, Armitage allegorises the British suppression of the Indian Uprising of 1857. The figure, personified as Britannia, slays a Bengal tiger to avenge the deaths of British women and children as well as the orphaning of a young girl who watches on as the grizzly justice is carried out in her name. Both Retribution and ‘Moses Destroys the Tablets’ address the consequences of breaking an established moral code. As I have discussed, murder was prohibited in the Ten Commandments, but the Old Testament also offered certain circumstances under which it was permissible. Retribution is a polemical painting that, by its very title, suggests that Indian sepoys’ violence against British colonisers justifies retributive

31  Michael L. Malleson, ‘John Ruskin his theology and faith’ (Master’s Thesis, University of Durham, 1992), p. 86 and p. 138.

252 

M. HEWITSON

action and allegorises the violence and murder of that action.32 As Armitage depicts in his illustration, Moses destroys the Law to punish the Israelites for their idolatry. This event is later cited in Number 14:23 as one of the reasons God condemns the Israelites to wander in the desert for forty years. These punishments are a few examples of the many exacted in the Old Testament which are often described as divine retribution or, in other words, just punishment for straying from the righteous path. Far from the only example in the Old Testament, Dalziels’ Bible Gallery illustrates other acts of divine retribution including the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, and, as we have seen earlier in the Exodus, the plagues wrought upon the Egyptians. Drawing on the Old Testament framework of justice, these illustrations repeatedly show violent acts that are sanctioned by God. As we can see from the sequence of illustrations, this is the final illustration in the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery Exodus. However, once again, the presumptive biblically literate viewer would know the resolution to this moment of high drama: the Israelites repent, recommit themselves to God and Moses brings down a second set of tables from Mt. Sinai. But in this illustration, Armitage offers something altogether more ambiguous, akin to Poynter’s ‘Moses Slaying the Egyptian’ in his choice to depict the moment of punishment rather than its peaceful resolution. As we have seen, for Ruskin, Mosaic Law was at the foundation of society and by extension, art. Therefore, we can also read this image as a crossroads between righteousness and idolatry but also between a new form of religious art that felt relevant enough to inspire or one that left audiences unmoved. By presenting these choices through Old Testament subjects, a part of their Bible that was simultaneously familiar yet distant from the story of Christ, Victorian Christian viewers were given a new visual idiom with which to weigh up the issues that affected their present. Moses and the Exodus’ renewed relevance in the context of the nineteenth century made the Old Testament more striking and convincing artistic subject matter for the Dalziel’ Bible Gallery illustrators. Dalziels’ Bible Gallery is a unique compendium of religious art that moves scholarly attention beyond mid-Victorian depictions of Jesus Christ in painting and onto narratives from the Old Testament while also highlighting the importance of book illustration in the development of British religious art. Despite the illustrated book’s associations with 32  For more see Carol Jacobi and David Blayney-Brown, eds., Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (London: Tate Publishing, 2015).

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

253

mass-­ production the volume interweaved some of the period’s most important aesthetic and theological developments to further religious art. Although I have explored just one section of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, which covers nearly twenty books from the Hebrew Bible, I have raised the importance of the Exodus and revealed its particular resonance with Victorian audiences through its themes of violence, adherence to the law and the moral character of Moses. This case study reveals how the illustrators of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, many of whom were associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, adapted the Old Testament at a critical juncture in the formation of Victorian religious art to tell stories that fit the moral issues reflected in their present. Ruskin was a strong proponent of the enduring relevance of Mosaic Law and perceived the Old Testament as a strong moral code. As such, to him, it was an ideal artistic subject to help stimulate British religious art in a new direction. However, such a commitment to the Law also led to a confrontation with political and social consequences in the age of Empire. Dalziels’ Bible Gallery gives a focused insight into how artists perceived the Old Testament as a distinct category within biblical art which led to a new wave of art concerned with the socalled First Book.

Bibliography Adams, Edward. Liberal Epic: The Victorian Practice of History from Gibbon to Churchill. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Altick, Richard. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. Barlow, Paul. Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais. Abingdon: Ashgate, 2005. Barringer, Tim. Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain. New Haven and London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2005. Bethan Stevens, The Wood Engravers’ Self Portrait: the Dalziel Archive and Victorian Illustration Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Casteras, Susan P. Pocket Cathedrals: Pre-Raphaelite Book Illustration. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Centre for British Art, 1991. Dalziel, George and Edward. The Brothers Dalziel: A Record of Fifty Years’ Work, 1840–1890. London: Methuen & Co., 1901. Engen, Rodney K. Dictionary of Victorian Wood Engravers. Cambridge: Chadwyck-­ Healey, 1985. Esposito, Donato. ‘Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881): Assyria and the Biblical Illustration in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ in Steven W.  Holloway, ed.

254 

M. HEWITSON

Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007: pp. 267–296. Farwell, Byron. Queen Victoria’s Little Wars. London: Allen Lane, 1973. Finley, C. Stephen. Nature’s Covenant: Figures of Landscape in Ruskin. University Park: Pennsylvania, 1992. Giebelhausen, Michaela. Painting the Bible: Representation and Belief in mid-­ Victorian Britain. Aldershot and London: Ashgate, 2006. Goldman, Paul and Simon Cooke, eds. Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855–1875: Spoils of the Lumber Room. Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. Goldman, Paul. Victorian Illustrated Books 1850–1870, the hey-day of wood-­ engraving. London: British Museum Press, 1994. Holman Hunt, William. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 vols. London and New York: Macmillan, 1905–6. Jacobi Carol and David Blayney-Brown, eds. Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial London: Tate Publishing, 2015. Kooistra, Lorraine J. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture, 1855–1875. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011. Langham-Hooper, Nancy. ‘Unrolled: John Rogers Herbert (1810–1890) and the monumental Moses in the National Gallery of Victoria’ Art Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria 54 (December 2015), accessed April 2022, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/unrolled-­john-­r ogers-­herbert-­and-­the­monumental-­moses-­in-­the-­national-­gallery-­of-­victoria/. Marks, Herbert, ed. The English Bible, King James Version: The Old Testament (Norton Critical Editions). London and New York: WW Norton & Co, 2012. Malleson, Michael L. ‘John Ruskin: his Theology and Faith’, Master’s Thesis, University of Durham, 1992. Moser, Stephanie. Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-­ Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Newman, John Henry. ‘Moses the Type of Christ’ in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1891: pp. 118–132. Payne, Christiana. Pre-Raphaelite Drawings and Watercolours. Oxford: Ashmolean Publishing, 2021. Rogerson, John ‘The Old Testament and Christian ethics’ in Robin Gill, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 71–99. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Salmon, Richard. ‘The Bildungsroman and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction’ in Sarah Graham, ed. A History of the Bildungsroman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 57–83.

10  VICTORIAN EXODUS: VISUALISING THE OLD TESTAMENT… 

255

Siegel, Jonah, ‘Black Arts, Ruined Cathedrals, and the Grave in Engraving: Ruskin and the Fatal Excess of Art’ Victorian Literature and Culture 27:2 (1999): pp. 395–417. Stevens, Bethan. ‘Woodpeckings: the Dalziel Archive, Victorian Print Culture and Wood Engravings’, accessed April 2022, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/english/dalziel/. Suriano, Gregory R. The Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators. New Castle, Del: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2000. Tate, Andrew. ‘“Sweeter also than honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 3:1/2 Literature and Religion (2009): pp. 114–125. Teukolsky, Rachel. Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Wheeler, Michael. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

CHAPTER 11

Heaven on Earth: Evelyn De Morgan’s Rejection of Materialism Sarah Hardy

Bulging money bags, golden crowns, piles of juicy rubies, and sapphires as big as apples are peppered across seven of Evelyn De Morgan’s (1855–1919) paintings beginning with The Crown of Glory in 1896 and ending with The Worship of Mammon in 1909. In this chapter, I use the ideas of John Ruskin (1819–1901) and William Rathbone Greg (1809–1881)—social commentators read by De Morgan—to demonstrate how she juxtaposed these symbols of opulence with both Christian and Spiritualist imagery alike. This enabled her to present her view that materialism—something she presents as middle-class wealth—was in some way a barrier to true faith and virtue in modern life. An account of De Morgan’s own social position and religious beliefs is given at the start of this chapter as a foundation for the ideas she communicated in these paintings. I then explore the Christian virtue of Charity embodied by the figures of St. Francis and St. Christina in three of De Morgan’s paintings. These pick up Ruskin’s observation of a shift in Christian teaching at the end of

S. Hardy (*) London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_11

257

258 

S. HARDY

the nineteenth century, which encouraged Christians to learn ‘God’s truth … know what He means when He tells you to be just’.1 Just as De Morgan had understood her own privileged position which prompted and enabled her to turn to charitable giving, her pictures depict Saints who she believed were ‘happy because their faith in the supreme good outweighs the passing evils of matter’.2 De Morgan saw in St. Francis and St. Christina figures who had rejected the material wealth they had inherited in order to form a better world. De Morgan’s pictures Earthbound and Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City (both 1897) align material greed with spiritual oblivion through coded symbols of angels and flying spirits, but the central characters in both pictures embody society’s materialism under the capitalism economy. Greg’s Rocks Ahead: Or the Warnings of Cassandra (1875) critiqued the Christian teaching: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5:3). Greg saw this as a tool used by the wealthy and the powerful to maintain a capitalist-driven social order. Viewing De Morgan’s paintings through this lens aids our understanding of her complex imagery, and it is here argued that her materialism-themed pictures go beyond a call for individual spiritual advancement as part of a call to a more Christian-Socialist centred way of living and seeing.

Love, Life, and Peace, Gently Blending: De Morgan’s Personal Belief System De Morgan was born to upper middle-class parents, Anna Maria Spencer Stanhope (1824–1901) of Cannon Hall and Percival Pickering QC (1810–1876), in London in 1855. The Pickerings travelled to De Morgan’s mother’s ancestral home in Yorkshire to have her baptised, welcoming her into the church, and encouraging her adoption of its charitable ethos. She was raised and educated in a comfortable home, benefitting from a well-rounded education provided by visiting masters and her

1  John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xviii.492–493). 2  William and Evelyn De Morgan, The Result of an Experiment (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, and Kent, 1909), p. 37.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

259

mother.3 Theology was an essential element of De Morgan’s early instruction. She grappled with comprehending the ­complexity of religious ideas from a young age, causing her to remark ‘of course I know that God made Heaven and Earth, but where did He sit when He made them?’4 During her home studies, De Morgan wrote poetry, some of which has a Christian tone to it which also suggests she was a curious and intelligent child exploring her own belief system. Her poem The Angel of Death describes a young lover’s grief whilst stood at the grave of their partner. The mature, lyrical stanzas are filled with hope: Through the sun sky, Breaks a glad light, Gleams o’er the hills, A hath of light. And a spirit, Is descending. Love, life and peace Gently blending.5

De Morgan’s Christian mode of thinking and engagement with the material and spiritual world seems to have been a committed one; she regularly attended church with her father throughout her adolescence and well into her early adulthood.6 This well-rounded Christian upbringing and education, coupled with De Morgan’s natural inquisition, provided her with a theological grounding and an intellectual acuity which she would later use artistically when challenging the status quo during what some have dubbed ‘the Victorian crisis of faith’.7

3  Wilhelmina Stirling, William De Morgan and His Wife (London: Henry Holt, 1922), p. 144. 4  Ibid., p. 145. 5  Evelyn De Morgan, 1867, handwritten manuscript. De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London, MS_0006, Box 1. 6  Percival Pickering, 1871, Diary. De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London, MS_0382, Box 18. Contains various references to attending church with Evelyn, such as Sunday 22 January, Sunday 12 February, for example. 7  Bernard V. Lightman and Richard J. Helmstadter, eds., Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990).

260 

S. HARDY

Rather than a crisis of waning belief, critic William Michael Rossetti (1829–1919) saw religion as ‘more a matter of conduct and of the inner life than a thing expressible in a formula or a proposition’.8 This, it seems, is the culturally embedded belief system to which De Morgan subscribed, one in which she could accept Christian moral traits alongside some of the new Spiritualist practices she was introduced to. Like Rossetti, Greg argued that the majority of people did still possess Christian faith even in an age of growing scientific scepticism, but that it was possible to ‘modify this or that dogma of their creed to suit their reason, or to bring it into harmony, as they would say, with the growing enlightenment of the age’.9 Spiritualism had gained traction in 1850s America as an option which sought empirical proof for the heavenly realm.10 Through ‘spirit rappings’ and séances, Spiritualists demonstrated the physical existence of human souls after death. It provided a solution for some to this growing religious scepticism despite the efforts of magicians and stage performers to uncover spirit communications as tricks.11 De Morgan engaged with the late nineteenth-­century Spiritualist movement with increasing interest following her introduction to her mother-in-law Sophia,12 the social reform campaigner who spent six years living with a medium whilst researching her book From Matter to Spirit (1863). Sophia De Morgan (1809–1892) and her husband, the mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), were firm believers, adopting much of their position from the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborg claimed ‘spiritual development’13 continued throughout and beyond mortal life, leaning on Darwinian theories to boost the reputability of his evolutionary theory. The artistic community in England became particularly interested in Spiritual practices: the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) attempted to contact his deceased wife, the artist Elizabeth 8  William Michael Rossetti, ‘The Externals of Sacred Art’, Fine Art, Chiefly Contemporary: Notices Re-Printed with Revisions (London: Macmillan, 1867), p. 43. 9   William Rathbone Greg, Rocks Ahead: Or the Warnings of Cassandra (Boston Massachusetts: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1875), p. 126. 10  R. Laurence Moore, ‘Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings’ in American Quarterly 24:2 (October 1972), p. 474. 11  Peter Lamont, ‘Spiritualism and a mid-Victorian crisis of evidence’, Historical Journal 47:4 (2004) pp. 897–920. 12  Judy Oberhausen, ‘Evelyn De Morgan and spiritualism’ in Catherine Gordon ed., Evelyn De Morgan Oil Paintings (London: De Morgan Foundation, 1996), p. 37. 13  Sophia De Morgan, From Matter to Spirit (Cambridge: University Press, 1863), p. 187.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

261

Siddal (1829–1862), through regular séances,14 and the painter Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884) developed skills as a medium after attending her first séance in 1859.15 De Morgan spent years engaging in automatic writing with her husband William (1839–1917), the son of Sophia and Augustus, and recording messages they received during these séance-like sessions for publication in The Result of an Experiment (1909). Ayla Lepine has suggested that although many new religious movements seemingly offered an alternative to Christianity in the late nineteenth century, such as Theosophy, Unitarianism, and Spiritualism, there were many people who were comfortable in viewing these as complementary belief systems.16 De Morgan confidently painted Christian iconography at the height of her own engagement with Spiritualism. Rather than suffering a ‘disillusionment with Christianity’17 as Lois Drawmer suggests, she was actually confident in accepting the complex matrix of shifting religious options available. De Morgan was able to take aspects of Spiritualism and Christianity to suit her own morals and values, experiencing them in parallel rather than forcing a chasm between them. De Morgan was anxious about the place of faith in wider society and this is reflected in her materialism pictures. The sparkling gold and sumptuous jewels in some of her images are juxtaposed with Christian and Spiritualist iconography as De Morgan sought to affirm the pursuit of material wealth as something which must be overcome with devout faith and virtuous practice for the betterment of society.

Heavy Is the Head that Wears the Crown: De Morgan’s Call for a Moral Awakening In The Crown of Glory De Morgan relies on traditional Christian imagery to present middle-class materialism as something which relies on charity to be overcome (Fig. 11.1). She depicts a wealthy woman in an opulent interior, frozen in a moment of uncertainty as she looks upon the image of 14  J.  B. Bullen, Rosalind White and Lenore A.  Beaky, eds., Pre-Raphaelites in the Spirit World: The Séance Diary of William Michael Rossetti (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021). 15  See https://georgianahoughton.com/, accessed May 2022. 16  Ayla Lepine online talk for the De Morgan Foundation, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wvyznuYy0vw, accessed May 2022. 17  Lois Drawmer, ‘The Impact of Science and Spiritualism on the Works of Evelyn De Morgan, 1870–1919’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, 1999, p. 94.

262 

S. HARDY

Fig. 11.1  Evelyn De Morgan, The Crown of Glory, 1896, oil on canvas

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

263

Christ marrying St. Francis to Holy Poverty emblazoned on a tapestry hung on the wall behind her. With one hand she holds a gold and pearl necklace around her neck, whilst the other hovers over a crown on an ebonised table next to her. Although The Crown of Glory has received little critical attention to date, it has been highlighted by Elise Lawton Smith as a picture which depicts a woman ‘caught between two realms, the material and the spiritual, just as the mermaids decorating the pot on the bookcase are caught between land and sea’.18 Due to the quiet stillness of a single moment and lack of narrative in the painting, we must rely on the symbols employed by De Morgan to understand who the woman is and the full complexities of the dichotomy the picture represents. The woman stands in front of a doorway with a decorative lunette, containing a winged sun, the ancient Egyptian emblem of divinity and royalty. It is embellished with peacocks, representing eternity and the everlasting power of monarchy. She is dressed in a fine silk gown, decorated with gold embroidery, red feathers, pearls, and opals. The red cape, white gown, and gold braid tied around her waist recall the coronation dress worn by Queen Victoria. Pearls stand for wisdom and opals for hope which indicate De Morgan’s belief in individual agency and choice in actions, regardless of the position one is born into. Although the Divine Right of Kings has secured the woman’s place as Queen in the social hierarchy, this Queen appears weary as she reaches for her crown, perhaps hesitant to accept its associated power and responsibility. This decision point was one De Morgan could likely identify with; she was herself born into privilege but had turned her back on the social respectability associated with her position to devote herself to her art and thereby, its inherent instability and unconventionality, as then considered. When her mother proposed that she should be presented at court as a debutante, De Morgan threatened, ‘if I go, I’ll kick the Queen!’19 De Morgan’s animosity was not directed towards Queen Victoria, but rather indicative of her evolving political views; her youthful umbrage was with the idea of inherited status and wealth being God-given or absolute. Next to the Queen in the painting, snakes crawl up the legs of the ebony tripod table towards the golden crown. The threat of the snakes, whose pictorial function here is symbolic, sexual, and political, is mirrored 18  Elise Lawton Smith, Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and the Allegorical Body (Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), p. 174. 19  Stirling, William De Morgan and His Wife (1922), p. 180.

264 

S. HARDY

by the embroidered edge of her gown which seems to coil and writhe. As with the snake that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, the encroaching snakes here progress towards the crown, urging the Queen to take it. Her curled arm and pointed hand replicate their serpentine movement, suggesting her submission to the crown and thereby, her fully embracing of the divine power and associated material wealth it represents, has been interrupted. Aligning the Queen’s inherited status and wealth with original sin demonstrates De Morgan’s presentation of it as something immoral, as a barrier to living a good life of Christian virtue. The complex pictorial construction and serpentine patterns De Morgan employs emphasise the complex moral precipice the Queen faces. Significantly though, behind the Queen an eagle can be seen holding a snake in its mouth, hinting that the Queen can overthrow the social and queenly restrictions bestowed upon her, if she chooses to look beyond the plentiful temptations of vice that come with great wealth in preference for Christian virtue. As a socialist artist, De Morgan’s reading list included many texts which explored these Christian-Socialist ideas. It is telling that she read Ruskin’s Crown of Wild Olive (1866) whilst developing her ideas for The Crown of Glory.20 The book records three lectures Ruskin delivered in the 1860s, Work, Traffic, War which deal with the view that there is a materialistic middle class which had lost its connection to traditional Christian values. Perhaps it was the title of Ruskin’s essays which inspired the title of De Morgan’s painting. Certainly, applying Ruskin’s social criticism as a frame of reference to the picture expands our understanding of De Morgan’s painting as a reflection on society—not just the individual’s—need for a moral overhaul. Ruskin warned ‘the Bible tells you to dress plainly and you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you to have pity on the poor, and you crush them under your carriage-wheels’ (xviii.492). He asserted that a rejection of Christian values had polarised the classes. In sharing these lectures at working men’s clubs and in publications, Ruskin was campaigning for society to awaken to the social problems caused by materialism and to prevent further moral and social decline. 20  The recent discovery of a reading list extant in one of De Morgan’s few surviving sketchbooks can be dated to 1875–77; this is the same time she is known to have taken an independent trip to Italy, where she visited Rome, Perugia, and Assisi. Authors included in this list are, amongst others, John Ruskin and William Rathbone Greg. The sketchbook is in the collection of Wightwick Manor, a National Trust property in the West Midlands (NT 1288042).

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

265

The visual lesson to connect with Christian values, in the hope of rousing the moral conscience of the middle classes, was famously presented by William Holman Hunt’s (1827–1910) paintings The Light of the World (1851–53, Figure 5.1) and The Awakening Conscience (1853) both displayed together at the Royal Academy in 1854. The former drew inspiration from the Book of Revelation (3:20) ‘[B]ehold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me’. It depicts Christ knocking on the door holding a lamp, patiently waiting to be allowed in and to bring the wisdom and hope of his light to the inhabitants. It was such a spectacularly important painting that when the third version was completed in 1904 it was toured across the world as far as New Zealand before being hung in St Paul’s Cathedral in perpetuity. In its pendant picture, Hunt imagined the impact on the middle classes if they were to reject their entitled position and instead act upon the teachings of Christ. Rising from the lap of the married man with whom she is having an affair, a woman rises to look out of the window. Ruskin describes the awakening in Hunt’s painting as a physical metamorphosis, ‘the countenance of the lost girl, rent from its beauty into sudden horror; the lips half-open, indistinct in their purple quivering, the teeth set hard, the eyes filled with the fearful light of futurity, and with tears of ancient days’ (xii.335). It is as though Ruskin views the religious awakening as visceral transformation and certainly De Morgan’s symbolic language in The Crown of Glory demonstrates that she shared this sentiment. The Phoenixes atop the staircase have similarly transformed and risen from the ashes; De Morgan’s picture is a lesson that palpable change is possible for any who seek to deny vice and embrace Christian morality for a richer more spiritual existence. Whereas Hunt used pendant paintings to demonstrate the wealthy middle classes welcoming Christian virtue, De Morgan uses multiple picture planes concurrently in The Crown of Glory to ensure that wealth and Christian virtue are communicated as distinct, but with the possibility of transformation from the former to the latter. The tapestry directly references Giotto’s (1267–1337) St. Francis marrying Holy Poverty from the vast painted ceiling at the Lower Church in Assisi, which De Morgan first saw on a trip to Italy in 1875.21 It is the only example of a 21  Catherine Gordon, ‘Chronology’ in Catherine Gordon, ed., Evelyn De Morgan Oil Paintings (London: De Morgan Foundation, 1996), p. 9.

266 

S. HARDY

painting-within-­a-painting in De Morgan’s oeuvre and she uses it here to create three discrete spaces when this painting is viewed: the real space external to the painting, inhabited by the viewer; the illusionary lavish interior; and the historical sacred space depicted in the tapestry. This strategic system of pictorial planes convincingly depicts segregated spaces in the picture; one of material wealth and one of Christian piety. De Morgan’s visual devices suggest that the barriers between these spaces can be overcome. A spikey potted yucca has been strategically placed in front of the tapestry so that its green shards fuse and grow with the Giotto’s brambles, blurring the line between these imagined realities. The wealthy Queen is young and has time to change. In seeing the tapestry, she has experienced an awakening that her own reality of opulence is at the expense of pure Christian virtue. Although she might be plighted by her God-given or inherited position of wealth, she can choose to reject her material crown and turn to Charity and Christian virtue. Subtle yet deliberate adjustments to the Giotto composition have been made by De Morgan in her copy which draws the viewer into the web of interaction. St. Francis places the wedding ring on Holy Poverty’s left-­ hand ring finger, rather than her right as in the Giotto fresco. This folds the three figures into each other and allows Holy Poverty’s now free right hand to point from the tapestry. Simultaneously, Christ looks across two pictorial planes into our reality. As he captures our gaze, we are pulled into this matrix and experience the same arresting moment as the Queen in the picture. De Morgan depicts the immediate need for change Ruskin was rallying for: ‘we are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of political change. That a struggle is approaching … between wealth and pauperism’ (xviii.494). It is telling that De Morgan selected the image of St. Francis and Holy Poverty for this picture; after all, St. Francis chose to give up his wealth in order to live a pious Christian life. Marrying poverty is a metaphor for his deep engagement with a spiritual life devoid of distractions. However, framing poverty as a morally good Christian condition became problematic in the nineteenth century. Ruskin took issue with elements of Christian teaching which allowed the powerful to maintain a social system in which the poorest in society were somehow to be taunted by a deferred promise: that of eternal glory. Of the wealthy, he says, ‘it may be no sign of hardness of heart [for them] to neglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching; and to leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally’ (xviii.396). Nineteenth-century morality was closely allied with

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

267

moral degeneracy; those whom God had chosen to be born into wealth were moral, those who were poor were immoral. Ruskin and De Morgan both suggested morality was not a fixed state, and through Christian virtue, could be improved upon. The tears cried by De Morgan’s Queen (a small but important detail in the painting which is only visible in the original oil) are echoed in the mother of pearl chandelier and her pearl necklace. Her tears reflect her spiritual journey, as Holy Poverty catches her eye, and she is moved to change. Yet this impetus to change is not motivated by the promise of heavenly utopia which she might personally attain if she follows Christ, but by realising that she can help the poor who suffer immensely on earth. When faced with the harsh reality of the desperate state of the poor in Holy Poverty’s shabby dress and gaunt frame, she realises her wealth is at the expense of the happiness of others; her improvement would be a benefit for all society. De Morgan’s Socialist leanings meant she believed inequality could be overcome by sharing the means of production and giving power to the working classes. Ruskin critiqued the maintenance of the class system through labour: ‘[W]henever we buy, or try to buy, cheap goods … remember we are stealing somebody’s labour. … You know well enough that the thing could not have been offered you at that price, unless distress of some kind had forced the producer to part with it’ (xvi.402). De Morgan’s visual response to Ruskin shows her awareness of the shift in Christian teaching from the 1880s, which Frances Knight suggests sought to address the ‘inherently corrupting’ environment of the poor, rather than ‘the need for personal reformation, as Christians traditionally had’.22 Knight demonstrates that there was a pragmatic and active response amongst wealthy Christian philanthropists, such as Samuel (1844–1913) and Henrietta (1851–1836) Barnett who promoted a ‘social utopia’23 of Toynbee Hall; a place which would allow the educated to live amongst the poor in order to offer them the means of social reform. One such industrialist who ensured that his wealth improved the lives of the poor was the shipping magnate, William Imrie (1836–1906). Described by Margaretta Frederick as De Morgan’s ‘most devoted’24 22  Frances Knight, Victorian Christianity at the Fin de Siècle (London and New  York: I. B. Tauris, 2016), p. 179. 23  Ibid., p. 186. 24  Margaretta S.  Frederick, ‘Paintings and Patrons, Reflections on the Advent of the Modern Era’, in Margaretta S. Frederick, ed., Evelyn & William De Morgan: A Marriage of Arts and Crafts (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), p. 106.

268 

S. HARDY

patron, he was the first owner of The Crown of Glory. A private man, noted for his ‘quiet and unobtrusive life’,25 Imrie was typical of a wealthy Victorian philanthropist. He was, for example, well known for his support of local charities such as Herbert Lee Jackson Jones’s Food and Betterment Association, and organisations connected with St. Margaret’s Church on Princes Road in Liverpool. Imrie’s benevolence continued after his death, his will outlining funds to benefit poor Liverpool Clerks, Liverpool Medical charities, and the Liverpool Cathedral Committee. Imrie’s generosity favoured the church and organisations addressing poverty.26 Since The Crown of Glory was not exhibited until after it entered Imrie’s collection,27 it can be assumed that this picture was painted by De Morgan with at least some input from her patron.28 Frederick rightly cites Imrie as a ‘patron of complex aesthetic appreciation’29 due to the religious and secular paintings he displayed together in his collection, and so The Crown of Glory’s marriage of pious charity combined with a lavish, modern, fashionable interior reflects his own home and benevolence.

Charity Begins at Home: De Morgan’s Donations The marriage of St. Francis to Holy Poverty was such an important religious motif to De Morgan that she treated the subject again in an eponymous painting in 1905 (Fig. 11.2). Despite its importance to the artist, The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty has, thus far, not been the subject of serious critical enquiry. The painting was lost in a fire in 1991, 25  ‘The Death of Mr. William Imrie, A Prince of Shipowners’, Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 08 August 1906, p. 5. 26  Ibid. 27  The Crown of Glory was painted in 1896 and first exhibited in Wolverhampton in 1907, lent by Imrie’s daughter. 28  The relationship between Evelyn De Morgan and her patrons is frustratingly undocumented, meaning it is difficult to discern how much influence her clients had in selecting subject matter. In her 1922 biography of her sister, Wilhelmina Stirling does offer one example of a commission De Morgan fulfilled for her maternal uncle Walter Spencer Stanhope. On this occasion, the subject was to be ‘chosen by its future recipient’ (Stirling, William De Morgan and His Wife (1922), p. 353); however, in a bizarre coincidence, De Morgan supposedly had the idea to respond to Psalm 85:10 whilst sketching one evening only to hear from her uncle the next morning his idea for her to paint that very subject, and Mercy and Truth Have Met Together, Peach and Righteousness Have Kissed Each Other (1898) was completed for Spencer Stanhope’s collection. 29  Frederick, ‘Paintings and Patrons’ (2022), p. 110.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

269

Fig. 11.2  Evelyn De Morgan, The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty, 1905, oil on canvas

270 

S. HARDY

and only low-resolution photographs exist, which is perhaps why academic interest has been hampered. However, since a description is included in Wilhelmina Stirling’s 1954 catalogue of the De Morgan Collection30 and a number of detailed sketches are extant for the painting, it is more likely that the overt Christian iconography and religious sentiment of the paintings have made it difficult to include in established narratives of De Morgan’s oeuvre. St. Francis is excluded from Patricia Yates’ otherwise thorough overview of De Morgan’s engagement with biblical subjects31 and mentioned only as a side note by Elise Lawton Smith in her discussion of De Morgan’s rejection of materialism in her seminal work The Allegorical Body (2002). From a photograph of St. Francis, some details are discernible, despite the fact the glass was taped, obscuring it in part. We can see that the picture depicts St. Francis, Holy Poverty, and an apparition of the Crucifixion, set in an Italianate landscape in a triangular formation to echo the Holy Trinity. St. Francis approaches the figure of Holy Poverty holding out a solid gold ring, the last material possession of his reformed life which is used to cement his dedication to embracing charity in pursuit of Christian earnestness, and most importantly here, rejecting materialism. The painting is an oddity in the chronology of De Morgan’s canon, more recalling her earlier Renaissance-inspired religious paintings than the Symbolist allegories she was regularly working with at the turn of the century. Acquired by the National Gallery in 1853, Botticelli’s Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels (1475–1480) panel could have been an influence to De Morgan. The realism of the St. Francis they both depict is one of the most striking elements of the paintings, particularly in the case of Botticelli who favoured the raw anguish and emotion in the saint’s face over his typical Botticellian type. De Morgan made a pastel study for the head of St. Francis which gives equal attention to depicting him realistically and to the emotional experience of complete devotion. As with all of her pastel portraits—which number some fifty—De Morgan captures the physical presence of the sitter and convincingly imbues them with the psychology of

30  Wilhelmina Stirling, Old Battersea House and the De Morgan Collection of Pictures & Pottery (Battersea, London: H. J. Rowling & Sons, 1954), p. 17. 31  Patricia Yates, ‘Evelyn De Morgan’s Use of Literary Sources in her Paintings’, in Catherine Gordon, ed., Evelyn De Morgan Oil Paintings (London: De Morgan Foundation, 1996), pp. 53–74.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

271

the character they are sitting for.32 Ruskin asserted that ‘man doesn’t hate Christ, but can’t understand Him—doesn’t care for Him—sees no good in that benevolent business’ (xviii.414), suggesting a disconnect between Christ’s teachings and Christian values in modern society. By rendering St. Francis with compelling conviction, perhaps De Morgan was hoping to offer her audience a benevolent character they could relate to. One who had been wealthy and disconnected, but rejected that in favour of charity and faith. The only time De Morgan displayed The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty (1905) to the public during her own lifetime was at an exhibition she curated in her studio in the spring of 1916. The whole event had been organised by De Morgan to display works which mostly depicted her symbolic painterly responses to the atrocities of the First World War. She advertised the exhibition in the press and created a catalogue to accompany the works.33 But this wasn’t a cynical exploitation of war to improve her reputation. As a pacifist artist De Morgan reluctantly conceded the war as a necessary evil which would bring eventual peace to mankind.34 In keeping with her pacifism, her part in supporting the war effort wasn’t direct; rather she preferred to harness her position as a wellknown artist to hold an exhibition-come-fundraiser and to donate all of the proceeds to the British Red Cross and its Italian counterpart the Crosse Rosa.35 This exhibition followed other similar acts of charity in her lending of her picture The Salutation (1883) to The Artists’ War Fund Exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery and lending and eventually giving her painting The Christian Martyr (1880) to South London Art Gallery. De Morgan’s mission to present her paintings to the public institutions for the ‘edification of ordinary people’36 demonstrated her hope that art could help 32  The model for St. Francis was possibly De Morgan’s favoured male model Alessandro di Marco who sat for a number of her paintings as he did for other artists of the time, such as Alphonse Legros who depicted him as a monk with a similar pose to De Morgan’s St. Francis (Alphonse Legros, Le moine à l’orgue, c. 1869. Etching, 29.9 ×21.3 cm. British Museum, 1879,0510.390). 33  S. M. F., “Symbolism in War Pictures”, The Vote, 5 May 1916, p. 1023. 34  Her depiction of war as a praying soldier in her artworks such as Our Lady of Peace (1907) supports this. 35  Evelyn De Morgan, 1916, printed exhibition catalogue. De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London, MS_0598_5, Box 21. 36  Yates, ‘Evelyn De Morgan’s Use of Literary Sources in her Paintings’ (1996), p. 55.

272 

S. HARDY

awaken in others a collective ambition to improve the state of the world around them through charitable giving. Individual action taken to move beyond one’s inherited position of privilege and to share wealth through charity was rendered by De Morgan in her magnum opus, St. Christina Giving her Father’s Jewels to the Poor (1904) (Fig. 11.3). In the largest canvas De Morgan ever painted a whole city is present as St. Christina shares out material wealth equally amongst all of the poorest residents. Dressed in classical robes in an Italianate cityscape, she is flanked by angels who physically destroy the gold idols glorified under the old regime and redistribute the fragments. Unique amongst De Morgan’s materialism pictures, St. Christina depicts action, promoting her own personal vision and activism that the wealthy should engage in charity, as she did. Whereas The Crown of Glory and St. Francis anticipated moral action, the figures in St. Christina are physically destroying and rebuilding the world around them on the basis of charity and equality, realising Ruskin’s call for practical action to instigate social change, he said, ‘one hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer’ (xviii.422).

Fig. 11.3  Evelyn De Morgan, St. Christina Giving her Father’s Jewels to the Poor, 1904, oil on canvas

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

273

Cupidity the Citie’s Fate: De Morgan’s View of Religion in a Capitalist System De Morgan engaged regularly with the Spiritualist practice of automatic writing; a method of receiving messages from spirits of the dead. Many of the messages she purportedly received present material wealth as a barrier to spiritual progression. One message from an Angel reads ‘[M]y light will blind your mind from earthly profits’.37 Her views on Spiritualism seem aligned with her views on Christianity, that there is no place for materialism within it. De Morgan was wary of professional mediums who charged a fee for their services, as evidenced in a letter to her friend Kate Holiday in which she discusses ‘spirit rappings’.38 Although she is keen to establish her absolute belief that ‘there are spiritual agencies surrounding us’, De Morgan critiques paid mediums, calling their ‘performance distasteful’ and ‘unconvincing’.39 On the whole, De Morgan stated, ‘I would rather not have anything to do with paid mediums’.40 For De Morgan, spirit contact was an organic personal practice which could not be stimulated or produced according to a set of rules, ‘we know nothing of the conditions that make communication from the other side either possible or impossible’,41 she commented. Her scepticism of those profiting from Spiritualism hints at a wider distaste for the place of religion as a commodity in a capitalist society. This is visualised in Earthbound (1897), (Fig. 11.4). Judy Oberhausen describes a ‘worldly man who possesses all the accoutrements of wealth and power yet is portrayed as somehow morally bankrupt’,42 he embodies a clear dichotomy De Morgan saw in Victorian Britain between leading a materialistic life and moral, happy life. Many years prior to producing this painting, De Morgan wrote poems, plays, and stories as a young adult. One of these, extant in the De Morgan Collection archive, is entitled ‘The Love

 William and Evelyn De Morgan, The Result of an Experiment (1909), p. 30.  Evelyn De Morgan to Kate Holiday, undated, Letter. De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London, MS_0291, Box 1. 39  Ibid. 40  Ibid. 41  Ibid. 42  Oberhausen, ‘Evelyn De Morgan and spiritualism’ (1996), p. 40. 37 38

274 

S. HARDY

Fig. 11.4  Evelyn De Morgan, Earthbound, 1897, oil on canvas

of Money Is the Root of All Evil’43 and is a tragedy in five acts. Sadly, De Morgan never finished the project, but Act I sets the scene of an old, lonely Count at the end of his years in a castle. ‘Sitting near the front of the stage, he is an old shrivelled man his hair and beard are white and tangled’,44 his description matches the miser depicted in Earthbound. The Count is lamenting that his daughter wishes to marry a man as ‘poor as a church mouse’.45 Through the Count’s soliloquy, De Morgan contrasts the rich colourful and fulfilling life of his daughter with his lonely existence of great fortune but none to spend it with. In play and painting, De Morgan warns of the desperate unhappiness that a fixation on material wealth in the place of love, religion, or spirituality can bring to one’s life.

43  Evelyn De Morgan, 1870, Unpublished manuscript. De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London, MS_0007, Box 1. 44  Ibid. 45  Ibid.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

275

In discussing how ‘capitalism became the religion of modernity’, Eugene McCarraher describes the long nineteenth century as ‘the gilded age’.46 It was a century in which society moved from a feudal to a capitalist economic system and thus, materialism came to dominate. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), a philosopher, socialist, and one of the first critics of the emerging capitalist society opined ‘[T]he middle classes in England have become the slaves of the money they worship. … Their sole happiness is derived from gaining a quick profit. They feel pain only if they suffer a financial loss.’47 Greg’s Rocks Ahead; Or the Warnings of Cassandra (1875) was read by De Morgan. It is a Marxist critique of the place of religion which, under capitalism, becomes ‘a potent ally … to the governing, richly endowed classes of the earth’.48 In parallel with Ruskin’s concerns about social structures, Greg suggests that the wealthy, having secured their own riches, disenfranchise the poor further with the promise of heavenly salvation as a reward for their ‘wretched’49 position on earth. It was whilst reading Greg that De Morgan first made a compositional sketch for Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City (1897), (Fig. 11.5),50 a complex metaphor for nineteenth-century political economy. Despite being weighed down by his golden bounty and crown, Cupidity (material greed) is imagined as a downcast figure. He is—according to De Morgan’s accompanying poem—‘fettered to a sightless mate’ and indeed, he is chained to the human figure of Blindness with spiked manacles. Here, Blindness is a stark contrast to Cupidity; in blue robes and simple sandals, he is the manifestation of poverty. Poverty is blind and so cannot escape, as it is those with material wealth who have the power in this system and are able to maintain it. Together, these figures emulate the system of oppression the poor are maintained in under capitalism, as Ruskin describes, ‘the art of making yourself rich is equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor’ (xvii.44). However, critics such as Seth Koven have argued that the exchange between rich and poor was 46  Eugene McCarraher, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019), p. 1. 47  Friedrich Engles, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968) pp. 311–312. 48  Greg, Rocks Ahead (1875), p. 143. 49  Ibid., p. 142. 50  See note 6.

276 

S. HARDY

Fig. 11.5  Evelyn De Morgan, Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City, 1897, oil on canvas

more cyclical than linear.51 For all of the material wealth of the rich, the poor had the freedom from ‘prevailing norms about class and gender relations and sexuality’,52 leading to the rise of popularity of ‘slumming’ where the wealthy would undertake tours of some of the poorest areas of London. Greg cited religion as a means of social control, one which helped maintain this grime status quo. In order to break free from the chains capitalism, Greg suggested society should focus on overcoming its pursuit of materialism on earth: No doubt, with no hope of a coming world of rest, of compensation, and of undying felicity, much of the colour would fade from life, and a sadder, soberer hue would steal over the prospects of humanity. Still, if men were

51  Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 4. 52  Ibid.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

277

what they ought to be and might be, Earth, we all trust, might grow immeasurably nearer to a Heaven than it is.53

Echoing Greg’s ideals, De Morgan engaged the artist G.  F. Watts (1817–1904) in a conversation about the rejection of material wealth in 1893. Sharing these thoughts with a fellow socialist artist suggests De Morgan was deliberating over how to capture the sentiment in paint. Watts’ wife, the artist Mary Watts (1849–1938), recorded in her diary on 20 August 1893: Mrs De Morgan is here, our only visitor. Signor [G.F. Watts] lay in the niche & talked of the change that might be wrought for mankind, were he but to realise that his present ideal is all for self, self advancement, & chiefly by money getting for self, & instead was to fix eyes upon the grand universal idea of helping all to reach a happier & better state of things. A heaven might really dawn upon earth.54

Both artists executed ‘money getting for self’ as the grotesque Old Testament idol Mammon in paintings: ‘no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money’ (Matthew 6:24). Warning of the evils of holding money sacred, Watts and De Morgan both present Mammon as a giant bronze beast which lures mankind away from humility with a promise of vast wealth (Fig.  11.6). De Morgan’s Mammon (1909) is so enormous he is cropped from view, so the androgynous central figure who paws his vast face is at the centre of the composition. Watts’ Mammon (1884–1885) on the other hand is a brutish oaf who has crushed the naked human forms who have chosen to follow him. De Morgan’s painting is one not of a doom that has befallen the modern world, but one which suggests the possibility of a resolution if only mankind can experience a moral awakening, embrace charitable giving, and reject materialism.

 Greg, Rocks Ahead (1875), p. 149.  Mary Seton Watts, ‘23 August 1893’, unpublished diary, transcribed Desna Greenhow, Watts Gallery Trust. 53 54

278 

S. HARDY

Fig. 11.6  Evelyn De Morgan, The Worship of Mammon, 1909, oil on canvas

Heaven on Earth It is true of all of De Morgan’s paintings depicting the rejection of material wealth that there is a sense of hope for humanity’s improvement. Whether this was through moving beyond assumed inherited positions by means of Christian piety and charity as she demonstrated through her use of the image of St. Francis and through her own benevolence, or by

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

279

dedicating oneself to living a morally good life rather than seeking wealth as a goal, De Morgan believed that the polarisation of the classes could be overcome and that a heaven on earth might become reality. Analysing and understanding this imagery has revealed that De Morgan’s view of Spiritualism was not that it held absolute universal truths nor was it a practice which she dedicated herself to as entirely as has previously been understood. Rather, it seems to have been accepted by her alongside Christian values of piety and charity in her paintings. For De Morgan, the issue was not choosing between religious and spirutalist ideologies, but ensuring beliefs were put into action to combat morally degenerate materialism. De Morgan’s series of paintings dealing with materialism were a timely and important set of pictures made at the height of a booming industrial and materialist society where the polarisation of the classes and growing desperation of those living in poverty was a major concern. They reconcile her position that personal spiritual salvation should not be the goal of religion under the capitalist system it maintains, but virtuous acts and charity should be undertaken by all to improve the state of things. In a final act of charity, De Morgan benefitted St. Dunstan’s Hostel for Blinded Soldiers and Sailors at St. Dunstan’s Lodge, Regents Park, in her last will and testament. She declared that all of the pictures in her home and studio at the time of her death should be sold at auction and the funds raised would go directly to the charity for the ‘benefit and welfare of the blind’.55 De Morgan was a canny and socially engaged artist who wished to use her artworks to inspire a moral awakening in others in order to build a heaven on earth around her.

Bibliography Buckle, Scott Thomas. ‘Is this the face of Alessandro di Marco, The Forgotten Features of a Well Known Italian Model’, The British Art Journal, New German Critique 13:2 (2012), pp. 67–75. Bullen, J.  B., Rosalind White and Lenore A.  Beaky, eds. Pre-Raphaelites in the Spirit World: The Séance Diary of William Michael Rossetti. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021. De Morgan, S. From Matter to Spirit. Cambridge: University Press, 1863. De Morgan, W. & E., The Result of an Experiment. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, and Kent, 1909. 55  Last Will and Testament of Evelyn De Morgan, 27 February 1917, p. 2. De Morgan Digital Archive as formally retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate.

280 

S. HARDY

Drawmer, Lois. ‘Evelyn De Morgan: “Life is Short, but Art is Eternal.” Spiritualism and Science in Late Nineteenth Century Art’, PhD thesis (1999), Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College. Engles, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Trans. Henderson and Chaloner. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968. Frederick, Margaretta S., ed. Evelyn & William De Morgan: A Marriage of Arts and Crafts. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. Gordon, Catherine. ed. Evelyn De Morgan Oil Paintings. London: De Morgan Foundation, 1996. Greg, William Rathbone. Rocks Ahead: Or the Warnings of Cassandra. Boston Massachusetts: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1875. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Knight, Frances. Victorian Christianity at the Fin de Siècle. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016. Lamont, Peter. ‘Spiritualism and a mid-Victorian crisis of evidence’, Historical Journal 47:4 (2004), pp. 897–920. Laurence Moore, R. ‘Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings’, American Quarterly 24:2 (1972), pp. 474–500. Lightman, Bernard V. and Richard J. Helmstadter, eds. Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-century Religious Belief. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990. McCarraher, Eugene. The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Rossetti, William Michael. ‘The Externals of Sacred Art’, Fine Art, Chiefly Contemporary: Notices Re-Printed with Revisions. London: Macmillan, 1867. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Smith, Elise Lawton. Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and the Allegorical Body. Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002. Stirling, Wilhelmina. Old Battersea House and the De Morgan Collection of Pictures & Pottery. Battersea, London: H. J. Rowling & Sons, 1954. Stirling, Wilhelmina. William De Morgan and His Wife. New  York: Holt and Company, 1922.

Archival Material De Morgan, E.  Date unknown. Letter to Kate Holiday. [Letter] De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London. MS_0291. De Morgan, E. 1867. Manuscript. [Letter] De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London. MS_0006, box 1.

11  HEAVEN ON EARTH: EVELYN DE MORGAN’S REJECTION OF MATERIALISM 

281

De Morgan, E. 1870. Manuscript. [Letter] De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London. MS_0007, box 1. Pickering, E. 1871. Diary [Diary]. De Morgan Collection, De Morgan Foundation, London, MS_0382, box 18. Watts, M. ‘23 August 1893’, unpublished diary, transcribed Desna Greenhow. [Diary] Watts Gallery Trust, Compton.

Newspapers ‘The Death of Mr. William Imrie, A Prince of Shipowners’, Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 08 August 1906, p.5. The Will of Mr. William Imrie’, Londonderry Sentinel, 27 September 1906, p.8. ‘Information Wanted’, Formby Times, 22 April 1922, p.3. S. M. F., “Symbolism in War Pictures”, The Vote, 5 May, 1916, p.1023.

Internet Sources https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2B1fKUHVjeuaz3ockfyFg. YouTube, De Morgan Foundation. https://georgianahoughton.com/. Website for Georgiana Houghton’s artwork.

CHAPTER 12

Art on Sundays: Henrietta Barnett and the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions Lucy Hartley

It is folly, if nothing worse, to attempt it. What do the people want with fine art? They will neither understand nor appreciate it. Show them an oleograph of “Little Red Riding Hood”, or a coloured illustration of “Daniel in the Lion’s Den”, and they will like it just as much as Mr. Millais’ “Chill October” or Mr. Watts’ “Love and Death”.1

Such opinions about the very idea of ‘an art exhibition in Whitechapel’ were recorded in an article for the Cornhill Magazine in March 1883 entitled ‘Pictures for the People’. The author was Henrietta Barnett 1  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, Cornhill Magazine 47 (March 1883), p. 344; reprinted in Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894), p. 175.

L. Hartley (*) Michigan, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_12

283

284 

L. HARTLEY

(1851–1936), who, with her husband, the Reverend Samuel Barnett (1844–1913), established the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions in 1881 and Toynbee Hall in 1884 as part of a programme of social activism in one of the poorest districts of London at a time of unprecedented poverty. For seventeen years, until 1898, the Barnetts opened the doors of St. Jude’s School every day during the Easter holiday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays to reveal an exhibition of contemporary art. By 1886, the Barnetts had raised the funds to add three rooms to better accommodate the pictures and the people, and, from 1894, they commenced planning and a fundraising campaign for a permanent gallery: initially christened the Whitechapel Art Gallery and now known as the Whitechapel Gallery (1901–present). The history of the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions (also called St. Jude’s Free Picture Loan Exhibitions and St. Jude’s Picture Shows, and hereafter the Whitechapel Exhibitions) is less well known than the history of Toynbee Hall and the growth of the settlement movement in England, and across the world.2 Broadly speaking, existing accounts divide into two narratives. Frances Borzello is critical of the Barnetts’ experiment— ‘exhibitions of fine paintings for the Whitechapel unwashed’3—even while tracing its influence on public policy for the arts in twentieth-century Britain. Surveying ‘the battle lines drawn up in the 1880s’, she identifies Samuel Barnett and William Morris (1834–1896) as each ‘a missionary for a different religion’; the group led by Barnett ‘wants to show the best art to all’ whereas the group directed by Morris wants ‘to involve everyone in an art that is more flexibly defined than the first group would allow’.4 Seth Koven presents a counter-narrative in which ‘the exhibitions … must be seen as pieces of a much larger project to reshape the interior and exterior landscapes of the urban poor’; herein, the Barnetts are credited for both 2  For example: Asa Briggs and Anne Macartney, Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984); J.  A. R.  Pimlott, Toynbee Hall: Fifty Years of Social Progress (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935); Standish Meacham, Toynbee Hall and Social Reform 1880–1914: The Search for Community (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). I have written about the significance of settlement for the Barnetts’ ideology of practicable socialism in: ‘From the Local to the Colonial: Toynbee Hall and the Politics of Poverty’, Victorian Studies 61:2 (2019), pp. 278–288. 3  Frances Borzello, Civilizing Caliban: The Misuse of Art 1875–1980 (London: Faber & Faber, 1987), p. 6. 4  Ibid. See also Borzello’s earlier essay: ‘Pictures for the People’, in Ira Bruce Nadel and F. S. Schwarzbach, eds., Victorian Artists and the City: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), pp. 30–40.

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

285

creating a site ‘of cross-class cultural exchange as well as contestation’ and reflecting the ‘confusion and overlap between secular and sacred institutions’.5 Diana Maltz inclines towards Borzello’s narrative whereas Lucinda Matthews-Jones leans towards Koven’s narrative, albeit with qualifications. The Whitechapel Exhibitions represent, for Maltz, a form of missionary aestheticism developed around ‘middle-class ways of seeing and acculturation into bourgeois values’, and, for Matthews-Jones, they create an arena ‘for the extension of spirituality beyond the confines of the parish church’ and hence spiritual aestheticism.6 I propose to modify and expand these accounts of the Whitechapel Exhibitions by repositioning Henrietta Barnett at the centre of operations as an organiser, liaison with artists and patrons, promoter, and guide. It is not surprising that the viewpoints of the Barnetts prevail in the exhibition catalogues, nor that the recorded responses of visitors—oftentimes the middle and upper classes and sometimes the working classes—are largely sympathetic in newspaper reports. Still, it is surprising that the success of the Whitechapel Exhibitions is attributed to Samuel Barnett both then and now—with little attention paid to Henrietta.7 And it is even more surprising since Henrietta Barnett is responsible for the primary sources on the Whitechapel Exhibitions: namely, ‘Pictures for the People’ and Canon Barnett. His Life, Work, and Friends, by His Wife.8 These are obviously not impartial records, but the biography is especially unusual because Henrietta constructed narratives in which she was a prominent actor from 5  Seth Koven, ‘The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions and the Politics of Seeing’, in Daniel J.  Sherman and Irit Rogoff, eds., Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), p. 23, p. 25, and p. 34 respectively. 6  Diana Maltz, British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p.  97; Lucinda Matthews-Jones, ‘Lessons in Seeing: Art, Religion and Class in the East End of London, 1881–1898’, Journal of Victorian Culture 16:3 (2011), p. 403. 7  Diana Maltz is a notable exception in focusing on the rhetoric of Henrietta Barnett’s ‘Pictures for the People’ while Koven and Matthews-Jones refer to the article but focus on the role of Samuel Barnett. See also: Geoffrey A. C. Ginn, Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London (London: Routledge, 2017), pp.  68–107, 259–277; Brandon Taylor, Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, 1747–2001 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 82–92; Shelagh Wilson, ‘“The Highest Art for the Lowest People”: The Whitechapel and Other Philanthropic Galleries, 1877–1901’, in Paul Barlow and Colin Trodd, eds., Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 172–186. 8  H. O. Barnett, Canon Barnett. His Life, Work, and Friends, by His Wife, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1918), II, pp. 151–179. Subsequent references will be abbreviated as CBII.

286 

L. HARTLEY

published and unpublished sources (including letters, personal photographs, and engravings), and from memory. She acknowledged the challenges in ‘The Plan of the Book’, determining ‘to treat myself as a dramatist would’ and explaining ‘some of the word-pictures are painted in the pre-­ Raphaelite style and others by the impressionist method’.9 Yet, the bias of the author (especially, though not only, in the biography) is not sufficient justification for a gender bias that leaves Henrietta Barnett on the margins of the Whitechapel Exhibitions or overlooks her voice and actions entirely. My aim, then, is to reconstruct the Whitechapel Exhibitions from the narratives of Henrietta Barnett, concentrating on the first five years to foreground the ways in which she crafted its object lessons. I shall be arguing that ‘pictures for the people’ mobilised painting-as-pedagogy to disseminate lessons towards a spiritual life for the rich and poor, but that, in so doing, it revealed tensions between class hierarchy and property, religious orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and tradition and social change.

Lesson One: ‘Opportunities of knowing the joy which art gives’ Art might not spring to mind as an obvious solution for social impoverishment unless, of course, one followed the teachings of John Ruskin (1819–1900) as was the case with Octavia Hill (1838–1912) and, through her influence, Henrietta Octavia Weston Rowland and Samuel Augustus Barnett (Fig. 12.1).10 This web of connections took shape in the first District Office of the Charity Organisation Society (hereafter COS), which was formed in Marylebone in 1869 by Hill, with members including the

9  CBII, p. vii and p. xi, respectively. For an account of the biography, which ‘reckon[s] with her strategies as a biographer’ and ‘disappearance from history’, see: Seth Koven, ‘Henrietta Barnett (1851–1936). The (auto)biography of a late Victorian marriage’, in Susan Pedersen and Peter Mandler, eds., After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 1994), pp.  31–53, (see p.  32 and p.  47 respectively). For accounts of Henrietta’s life, see Alison Creedon, ‘Only a Woman’. Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformer and Founder of Hampstead Garden Suburb (Chichester: Phillimore & Co., 2006), and Micky Watkins, Henrietta Barnett: Social Worker and Community Planner (London: Micky Watkins and Hampstead Garden Suburb Archive Trust, 2011). 10  Hill was a copyist for Ruskin at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the National Gallery, and Ruskin funded her first housing project at Paradise Place in Marylebone.

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

287

Fig. 12.1  ‘Rev. S. A. and Mrs. Barnett at the Time of their Marriage, 1873’, in Canon Barnett, I, p. 62

Reverend W.  H. Freemantle (1831–1916) of St. Mary’s Church in Bryanston Square, his curate, Samuel Barnett, and Henrietta Rowland. It is essential to register Henrietta Rowland’s privileged upbringing in West London, courtesy of the family firm of Rowlands’ Macassar Oil, if we are to understand the motivations and ambitions that led her to marry and move with Samuel Barnett to St. Jude’s Church on Commercial Street in Whitechapel in March 1873 (see Fig. 12.3). On the one hand, she was motivated by a broadly Christian ethos of service to the poor, which, under the direction of Hill and the COS, worked to effect change within existing structures, primarily the Poor Law and principally via housing relief; and, on the other hand, she was ambitious to address the problem of poverty through new modes of relief, initially housing, art, and education and later town planning and social policy, with an especial focus on women and children. These twin commitments—to help the poor and find solutions to poverty—were certainly not exclusive to Henrietta Barnett as key studies of changing attitudes to poverty in late

288 

L. HARTLEY

nineteenth-­ century Britain have demonstrated.11 Even so, Henrietta Barnett presents a distinctive case among middle-class charity-workers because her public life unfolded from the lived experience of some thirty years in ‘outcast London’ and provided a platform from which she developed a social agenda that spoke to the inadequacy of established institutions (including the Church of England) to meet the needs of the poor. The Whitechapel Exhibitions may have been inspired by ‘one of our active working friends’,12 or by the Kyrle Society, or by William Rossiter in South London, or, perhaps most likely, T. C. Horsfall in Manchester.13 Regardless, the constitution of a secular space vested with spiritual meanings takes on a political significance once the role of a woman as, in effect, co-director of an art exhibition is acknowledged. The ‘active working friend’ was, according to Henrietta, one Samuel N.  Stockham, a former soldier and parish worker who lived at the East London Shoeblacks Home and Brigade for Destitute Boys and who had the idea, she said, ‘to enable the many to see some of the interesting and beautiful things which we had brought from Egypt and show to the few in the Vicarage parties’. And, Henrietta adds, the idea ‘quickly grew’.14 The Inaugural Loan Exhibition ran from 14 to 22 April 1881 and consisted of three rooms of St. Jude’s School, ‘thirty feet by sixty, behind the church, not on a central thoroughfare, and approached by a passage yard; the light was much obscured by surrounding buildings; the doorways were narrow and the staircase crooked’.15 Unpromising as this sounds, the schoolrooms were nonetheless transformed into ‘an oasis of beauty’,16 hastily decorated by William Morris & Co. and displaying around 200 paintings along with 11  See Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study of the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Gertrude Himmelfarb, Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Frank Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-­ Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Ellen Ross, ed., Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 12  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), p. 176. 13  On Rossiter’s Free Library and Art Gallery in South London, see: Taylor, Art for the Nation (1999), pp. 66–99. On Horsfall and his campaign for free galleries for the poor in Manchester, see: Amy Woodson-Boulton, Transformative Beauty: Art Museums in Industrial Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 54–82. 14  CBII, p. 151. 15  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), p. 176. 16  CBII, p. 151.

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

289

pottery, needlework, and decorative objects from the South Kensington Museum. Locals sent objects of their own for display: for example, ‘a dreadful portrait of an uncomely old lady’ was offered by her grandson ‘who used to keep a shop in the High Street’ and a proud mother sent a pencil drawing by her son ‘when he was only fifteen, and now he’s doing well in the pawnbroking line’. These objects were judged ‘undesirable’ and ‘extraordinary’ by Henrietta—and not in a good way.17 The patronising tone is unmistakable, indicating a difference between the few as custodians and the many as recipients of taste and, more broadly, between gift and governance: that is, giving ‘opportunities of knowing the joy which art gives’ and governing ‘the ignorant to even look at a picture with any interest’.18 The principle that held gifting and governing together was that ‘those who care for the poor … see that the best things might be shared by all, and they cannot stand aside and do nothing’.19 It was a principle adapted from Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) and realised at the Whitechapel Exhibitions through community organising. Much hinged on the skills and social standing of Henrietta: from procuring the loan of pictures from patrons and artists to assembling leisured volunteers into a general committee and a series of sub-committees, for decorating the rooms, hanging and watching the pictures, preparing the catalogue, guiding visitors, advertising, and fundraising.20 The list of ‘lenders’ who sent their pictures to St. Jude’s is extensive, and the ‘openers’ who spoke on the first Tuesday represent a veritable who’s who of artists, private owners, and politicians including Lord Rosebery (1881), Leonard Courtney, M.  P. (1882), William Morris (1884), Henry Irving (1888), the Duchess of Albany (1890), and Edward Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1892). After the first year, the three-penny admission charge was dropped and the not-­ inconsiderable expenses were offset by private subscriptions, by donation boxes, and by descriptive catalogues sold for a penny; and from the fourth year, the connection with Toynbee Hall lent academic prestige (not to  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), p. 176.  Ibid., p. 175 and p. 178 respectively. 19  S.  A. Barnett, ‘University Settlements’ in Practicable Socialism (1894), pp.  166–167. This article was first published as ‘The Universities and the Poor’, The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review XV (Jan-June 1884): pp. 255–261. 20  Interestingly, Henrietta claims she hung the pictures with Mr. Chevalier and other helpers: ‘with twelve skilled men, he and I hung some 350 pictures, and gave the men five meals, for their hours extended from 6 a.m. to the last train at night’ (CBII, p. 162). 17 18

290 

L. HARTLEY

mention a ready supply of volunteers) to the Whitechapel exhibitions. Thus, the principle of ‘the best’ resulted in an exhibition of contemporary paintings with a preponderance of works by Pre-Raphaelite painters or painters associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. While the artists formerly known as revolutionaries were, by the 1880s, part of the artistic mainstream (and, in some cases, the establishment), their pictures were co-­ opted into a different revolution at St. Jude’s, limited by locale yet resisting social and religious orthodoxy by opening in the evenings—and on Sundays.

Lesson Two: ‘The usual religious means have failed, the unusual must be tried’ The belief that pictures could serve purposes other than to interest and amuse the rich and the related belief in the religious and social use of pictures need to be understood in the context of two related factors. First, Church: the congregation at St. Jude’s was small and conditioned to expect doles, hence dwindling attendance at Sunday services brought forth an increasingly strong conviction from Samuel and Henrietta Barnett that the national church was failing in its duty to assist the poor. Second, State: the distinction enshrined in the Poor Law between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor was the basis for the actions of the COS, hence Henrietta and Samuel Barnett were steadfastly opposed to outdoor relief and indiscriminate charity even as they moved away from the COS and advanced a kind of mutual aid. As early as 1882 in ‘Passionless Reformers’, Henrietta modified the deserving/undeserving distinction into ‘the worthy poor’/‘the degraded poor’ to make the point that ‘the vast number of people who, while poor in money, are rich in life’s good, who live quiet, thoughtful, dignified lives, are forgotten’ whereas ‘the word “poor” means to many the class which may be called degraded’.21 This modification seems trivial since a moral hierarchy remains. But Henrietta reserves her criticism for the established Church, mocking ‘the religionists’ who ‘have taught until the people know all and feel nothing’ and condemning their failure to thwart the forces of sensuality, materialism, and sensationalism.22 In contrast, she co-opts what James Russell Lowell called ‘passionless 21   H.  O. Barnett, ‘Passionless Reformers’, Fortnightly Review (1894); reprinted in Practicable Socialism (1892), p. 88. 22  Ibid., p. 91.

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

291

reformers’ for the purposes of identifying other religious means of giving ‘priceless gifts’ to ‘the degraded poor’: namely, flowers, music, country visits, histories, and art.23 The big idea nestled herein is that a free public art exhibition could be one such ‘unusual’ means of dealing ‘with the people as individuals’.24 Given this point of view, it can hardly have been a surprise to Henrietta (or Samuel) that the Whitechapel Exhibitions came under attack; in fact, Sunday openings threatened the whole enterprise of ‘pictures for the people’. From the first exhibition, the Lord’s Day Observance Society had mobilised its members to assail people on a Sunday with forecasts of punishment for their sin. ‘Finding this ineffective’, Henrietta said, ‘they appealed to the Bishop of London, who wrote to Mr. Barnett’. Dated April 1882, Samuel’s reply (reproduced in full by Henrietta in the biography) adverts to the complaint by John Gritton of Lord’s Day Observance Society before proceeding to explain why he is emboldened by experience ‘amid people of the lowest type’.25 Just as he is certain that preaching ‘will not teach them of God’, so he is certain ‘that the sight of pictures, helped by the descriptions of those who try to interpret the artist, does touch the memories and awaken the hopes of the people’. He continues: Never in my intercourse with my neighbours have I been so conscious of their souls and their souls’ needs as when they hung around me listening to what I had to say of Watts’s picture, “Time, Death, and Judgement”. Never for anything I have done in my position as Vicar of this parish have I received such gratitude as I did for the use of the schoolroom on Easter Sunday.26

The argument stands squarely within a Ruskinian framework of art as epiphany in the sense that it affirms the capacity of painting to elevate minds and souls towards a spiritual life. To this, Samuel added two further points relating to needs and responsibilities. The first is that the Lord’s Day Observance Society errs in placing ‘a day before the needs of the people who are weary of hearing sermons, and who do not care to pray’; and the second is that the Church errs in keeping ‘the people amid the 23  The phrase, ‘God’s passionless reformers, influences/That purify and heal and are not seen’, is from ‘Under the Willows’; see Lowell, The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell, with a critical preface by William Michael Rossetti (London: Ward, Lock, & Co., 1880), p. 201. 24  Barnett, ‘Passionless Reformers’, in Practicable Socialism (1892), p. 93. 25  CBII, p. 152. 26  CBII, p. 153.

292 

L. HARTLEY

paralysing and degrading sights of our streets’ rather than ‘the view of the good and perfect gifts of God’.27 Samuel’s argument obviously prevailed as the Bishop, though displeased, acceded to his request to suspend judgement and let Sunday openings continue without interference.28 That Time, Death, and Judgement (1886) by George Frederic Watts (Fig. 12.2) was the exemplar for art on Sundays, especially at Easter, was a clever choice. Above the fact that Watts was a favourite artist and friend of the Barnetts, this particular painting dispels the perceived conflict of art with religion through its vivid representation of Time, bearing a scythe, hand-­in-­hand with Death, dispersing flowers, and followed by Judgement.29 It was, in Henrietta’s view, ‘greatly enjoyed’, indeed she captures—and, characteristically, comments on—two responses: ‘“Death does not want the flowers now she’s got ‘em,” told of thoughtful suffering at the apparent wastefulness of death. “Time is young yet, then,” made one feel that the speaker has caught a glimpse of life’s possibilities with which probably any number of homilies had failed to impress him.’30 There are echoes of Henrietta’s criticism of ‘religionists’ in these comments and, too, Samuel’s juxtaposition of the ‘streets’ (and, by implication, the public house) with the ‘gifts of God’. Put differently, Time, Death, and Judgement functions rather like an altarpiece of the kind made famous by Michelangelo, except the church has been replaced by schoolrooms and the gifts are offered not by but to the people. In short, the painting figures the folding of the sacred into the secular. It was likely not a coincidence that the painting was also made into a mosaic (see Fig. 12.3) given by friends of the Barnetts to mark five years of the Whitechapel Exhibitions, placed on the tower of St. Jude’s Church, and unveiled by Arnold.31 Here, then, was a potent symbol of Samuel and Henrietta Barnett’s dissent from the orthodoxies of the Church of England.  Ibid.  There is not space in this essay to pursue the broader debate about Sunday openings, which were not legally sanctioned at national institutions until 1896. For excellent analyses, see: Maltz, British Aestheticism (2006), pp. 98–131; and Woodson-Boulton, Transformative Beauty (2012), pp. 54–82. 29  There are three versions of ‘Time, Death, and Judgement’: Watts gave the first version to the National Gallery of Canada in 1886, the second to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1897 (now on loan to the Watts Gallery, Compton), and the third to the Tate Gallery in 1900. The painting was one of the few allowed to break the Barnetts’ rule of never displaying a painting more than once. 30  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), pp. 179–180. 31  On the gift and presentation of the mosaic, see: CBII, pp. 170–171. 27 28

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

293

Fig. 12.2  George Frederic Watts, Time, Death, and Judgement, 1886, oil on canvas

294 

L. HARTLEY

Fig. 12.3  ‘The Mosaic and Fountain on the West Wall of St. Jude’s Church, Commercial Street, E.’, and ‘St. Jude’s Church and Vicarage, Commercial Street, Whitechapel, 1873’, in Canon Barnett, I, p. 74

‘Sunday Afternoon in the Whitechapel Picture Gallery’ by Francis Carruthers Gould (see Fig. 12.4) offers a rare view of the Exhibitions.32 At first glance, it does not seem radical; indeed, it could be compared to William Powell Frith’s A Private View of the Royal Academy (c. 1881). And yet, the title and the enlarged section showing ‘the Reverend Canon Barnett as guide’ accentuate the Barnetts’ dissent from ‘the usual religious means’ and construction of, as Amy Woodson-Boulton puts it, ‘a new kind of domesticated public space’.33 This view and this space are less about the pictures than the people, for, even though the frames draw

32  Henrietta claims (CBII, p. 155) that ‘Sunday Afternoon’ first appeared in The Westminster Gazette, but I have not been able to locate it. 33  Woodson-Boulton, Transformative Beauty (2012), p. 54.

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

295

Fig. 12.4  Francis Gould Carruthers, ‘Sunday Afternoon in the Whitechapel Picture Gallery’ (n.d.), in Canon Barnett, II, p. 154

attention to the symmetry of the hang, the pictures are little more than abstract lines. Instead, ‘Sunday Afternoon’ presents a split-screen, so to speak, with the panoramic view of visitors framing the close-up of Samuel (who was, ironically, colour-blind) elevated above a group of men and women, all looking intently towards a detail he is pointing out. Both the absence of Henrietta Barnett and the presence of different groups are striking. If, on the one hand, this is a scene of looking and reading and teaching (or, in other words, an object lesson on the benefit to be gotten from pictures), then, on the other hand, this is a space where differences of class and gender seemingly diminish and ‘the worthy poor’ mingle with the middle and upper classes. All were targets for the lessons: the privileged had to share their art-property and the poor had to be taught how to look at art. To proffer pictures ‘as preachers, as voices of God, passing His lessons from age to age’, Samuel explained in a letter to his brother, Frank, turns Sunday openings into a matter of social justice: ‘[T]he nation would not then dare to silence those voices on Sunday, and private owners

296 

L. HARTLEY

would recognize the right of their brothers to the teaching of their common Father’.34 Thus construed, pictures stand for the oppression of the poor and their liberation from the nation and the rich.

Lesson Three: ‘Pictures will not do everything’ c.10,000/26,492/34,644/34,291/46,763/55,300: these are the number of visitors reported to have attended the Whitechapel Exhibitions from 1881 to 1886.35 The numbers are remarkable, and far outweigh the record of visitors to the National Gallery.36 Part of the popularity can be ascribed to open access; that is, the removal of obstacles such as cost of entry and transport, limited access after the working day and on weekends—all of which, as Henrietta Barnett astutely observed, made the prospect of visiting the galleries and museums in the West End unlikely, if not impossible, for working people from the East End. The other, more complex, part of the popularity can be ascribed to national culture; that is, the paintings were placeholders for an experiment in class mediation, which gained publicity (in the press and among picture-owners) because it ­unsettled assumptions about, in Samuel Barnett’s words, ‘what the poor do and what the poor like’.37 Henrietta adverted to such a possibility in the conclusion to ‘Pictures for the People’ by parsing art as necessary, albeit not sufficient, for national progress: Pictures will not do everything. They will not save souls … but shall such works be kept only for the amusement or passing interest of the rich? Shall we not, who care that the people should have life and fuller life, press them into the service of teaching? … Art may do much to keep alive a nation’s fading higher life when other influences fail adequately to nourish it; and how shall we neglect it in these hard times of spiritual starvation?38

 CBII, p. 152.  There is some variability in the visitor numbers recorded in the biography (CBII, p.  156), compared to the Toynbee Record and St. Jude’s Parish Magazine and newspaper articles, but the broad range is consistent. The highest attendance reported was 73,271 in 1892. 36  On attendance at National Gallery, see Jonathan Conlin, The Nation’s Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery (London: Pallas Athene, 2006), pp. 473–474. 37  CBII, p. 161. 38  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), p. 187. 34 35

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

297

The alignment of gifting (pictures) with governing (the people) resembles Samuel’s argument for Sunday openings, but Henrietta’s argument for the ‘double work here for the rich to do’ consists of an appeal to enlightened self-interest; hence, buying and lending pictures become a ‘service’ towards spiritual and national regeneration.39 The examples in ‘Pictures for the People’ fall into four kinds of ‘service’: parable pictures, encompassing George Richmond’s Sleep and Death (c. 1870), Briton Rivière’s Dying Gladiator (1878), and Mihály Munkácsy’s Lint Pickers (1871); pathetic pictures, including Jozef Israël’s Day Before Departure (1872), Walter Crane’s Ormuzd and Ahriman (1870), and Herbert Schmalz’s Forever (1870); landscapes such as John Brett’s Philory, King of the Cliffs (1870), and W.  C. Nakkens’ Harvesting in Holland (1877); and historical or domestic pictures, comprising John Bagnold Burgess’ Presentation (1875), Edwin Long’s Question of Propriety (1875), and Jean-François Millet’s Angelus (1857–1859).40 What is conspicuous about these examples is that the national identity of the painters is not limited to England. Whereas the crowd depicted in ‘Sunday Afternoon’ seem to be differentiated by class, the painters listed in ‘Pictures for the People’ represent a national diversity that seems more reflective of the immigrant population in Whitechapel. (Not that Henrietta makes mention of such matters; in fact, she cites ‘Munkacsy’ and ‘Israel’ in Anglicised form.) The point is interest convergence. For example, Schmalz’s Forever becomes an occasion for Henrietta to comment on its spiritual interest to the poor. She recalls witnessing two girls without hats and sharing a shawl come out of the exhibition and says, pointedly, ‘they might not be living the worst life; but, if not, they were low down enough to be familiar with it’; and she goes on to suggest the response of one girl, ‘that “Forever,” I did take on with that’, proves there is no work ‘nobler than that of the artist who, by his art, shows the degraded lesson that Christ himself lived to teach’.41 In contrast, Millet’s Angelus (see Fig. 12.5) provides an opportunity for Henrietta to remark on its national and spiritual interest for the privileged. She does not refer to the subjects—two peasants bowing over a basket of potatoes to say the Angelus at the end of their working day—or

 Ibid., p. 186.  Some dates given are uncertain. 41  Ibid., p. 183. 39 40

298 

L. HARTLEY

Fig. 12.5  Jean-François Millet, Angelus, 1857–1859, oil on canvas

its recent appearance in the art-market;42 rather, she stresses the veracity of the sentiment to ‘men and women capable of communion with the highest. And at present, when ordinary religious influences appear to make so sadly little impression, shall we not use such pictures also as stepping-­ stones towards the truer life?’43

42  The painting was commissioned, but never collected, by Thomas Gold Appleton; Millet thus changed the title from ‘Prayer for the Potato Crop’ and added a steeple to the church. It was bought by Eugène Secrétan, a copper industrialist (who donated copper for the Statue of Liberty), in 1881 and famously sparked a bidding war between the Louvre and the American Art Association in 1889 (with the latter victorious) before it was bought by Hippolyte François Alfred and bequeathed to the Louvre in 1906. Equally famously, Salvador Dalì insisted it was a funeral scene and, after being x-rayed, a coffin-like shape was revealed under the basket. 43  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), p. 186.

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

299

Reviews in newspapers (in and outside London) commented on the quality and quantity of art at St. Jude’s, often failing to conceal surprise at the interest of Whitechapel people in ‘the gems’ and attributing it to the sale of penny catalogues.44 In matter of fact, the catalogues memorialised how pictures could be used as ‘stepping-stones towards the truer life’ and thus constitute an archive in itself. They were, said Henrietta, ‘great fun’ to prepare in ‘an annual triumph of speed’ by ‘people with ideas’;45 these people included Henrietta and Samuel Barnett, Emily and Edward Tyas Cook, Pauline Townsend, and other friends and, from 1885, Toynbee residents. Whereas Samuel, in a humorous aside, suggested ‘Our Picture Shows’ could be advertised as ‘Lessons given here in seeing’,46 Henrietta made clear that the catalogues were not intended to develop art-critical skills but, rather, to convert ‘a listless ten minutes’ stare’ into ‘an intelligent visit’.47 An article in the Pall Mall Gazette, titled ‘At the End-End “Academy”’ (see Fig. 12.6), reinforces the notion of the catalogue-as-conversion.48 It depicts ‘an East-End Beauty’ with catalogue in hand and proceeds to describe three scenes—‘Consulting the Oracle’, ‘The Symbol’, and ‘The Gospel of Art’—where the catalogue is either used or, in the case of Samuel spreading the gospel, enacted.49 The catalogues were, in other words, prescriptive, engendering literacy while accommodating locality so that, as Cook explained, ‘the pictures are as far as possible brought into relation with the life and ideas of those who are to look at them’.50 Cook also notes in passing that eleven thousand catalogues were sold for a penny in 1884, which represents approximately one-third of the visitors. But if the 44  For example: ‘St. Jude’s Loan Art Exhibition’, Daily News (13 April 1881); ‘A Social Experiment’, Pall Mall Gazette (4 May 1881); ‘Fine Art in Whitechapel’, The Times (21 March 1883); ‘Our Ladies’ Column’, Leicester Chronicle (9 April 1887). 45  CBII, pp. 159–160. 46  S. A. Barnett, ‘Our Pictures Shows’, St. Jude’s Parish Magazine (January 1889), p. 44. 47  H. O. Barnett, ‘Pictures for the People’, in Practicable Socialism (1894), p. 177. 48  (Unattributed), ‘At the East-End “Academy.” A “Private View” at St. Jude’s Schools, Whitechapel’, Pall Mall Gazette (28 April 1886), pp. 1–2. 49  In a letter to Frank in 1885, Samuel trumpeted the value of the catalogues: ‘Exhibition— bition—tion—on [sic]. This has been the event of the week. Day after day crowds have come. The spectators have learnt wonderfully. They study their catalogues, remember the pictures of past years and compare their lessons. More and more am I convinced of the education which such an effort has accomplished. If preaching be any good (and perhaps without life it is none), this preaching has been of the best’ (CBII, p. 156). 50  E. T. Cook, ‘Fine Art in Whitechapel’, The Magazine of Art 7 (1884), p. 347.

300 

L. HARTLEY

Fig. 12.6  ‘At the East-End “Academy”. A “Private View” at St. Jude’s Schools, Whitechapel’, Pall Mall Gazette (1886), p. 2

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

301

descriptions in the catalogues were for those unused to looking at paintings (‘the many’), then the quotations on the covers seem to be directed at those in positions of power and influence (‘the few’). To put it another way: the catalogues performed ‘double work’ insofar as they targeted the material and spiritual poverty of the poor and the spiritual and intellectual poverty of the rich. Take the catalogue for 1884. The inside front and back covers (Figs. 12.7 and 12.8) curate a collection of quotations from Plato, from the Bible, and from William Wordsworth, William Blake, John Keats, Robert Browning, and William Morris relating to art, life, and citizenship. None, however, are more prominent than Ruskin with the well-known lines, ‘life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality’, from Lectures on Art (1870), blazoned on the front and five excerpts on

Fig. 12.7  Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition. Fourth Year—Easter 1884 (London: Penny Hull, 1884), front and inside cover

302 

L. HARTLEY

Fig. 12.8  Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition. Fourth Year—Easter 1884 (London: Penny Hull, 1884), back cover

the inside covers from the following works (in the order presented): Unto this Last (1860), ‘The Relation of Art to Use’ (1870) from the first series of Oxford lectures, ‘The Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art over Nations’ and ‘The Unity of Art’ from The Two Paths (1859), and ‘The Hillside’ (1883) from the second series of Oxford lectures. It is entirely possible that Henrietta and Samuel Barnett attended Ruskin’s ‘lecture at Oxford, 1883’ (as it was cited in the catalogue), since they were in Oxford at the very same time in the process of garnering support for their university settlement in Whitechapel. This detail aside, the placement of Ruskin with Morris alongside Plato and Psalm 90 constructs a political message that pulls no punches about the forces corrupting society and the conditions of possibility for change. The literacy engendered in and by the catalogue was, therefore, not only for the poor but also for the rich. Where the quotation from Ruskin scants the ‘pleasure gardens and pleasure

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

303

chambers’ of the rich compared to the streets and fields of the poor, the quotation from Morris’ ‘The Day is Coming’ (1884) decries the capitalist system wherein gold buys and enslaves workers and thereby destroys country and city, and all the cultural goods therein.51 That ‘The Day is Coming’ had been published just before the fourth exhibition suggests a certain savvy on the part of the Barnetts, both honouring Morris as the ‘opener’ for that year and implying an affinity with the plight of workers in the East End. The potential for political (as well as spiritual) conversion may have only been tacitly endorsed in the catalogue, but, reportedly, Morris beat the drum for social revolution when he addressed class conflict and the conditions of labour in his opening lecture.52

Lesson Four: ‘My inconvenient knowledge’ The notion that a free public art exhibition could promote traditional values and an activist agenda was evidently a distinctive response to a crisis in social relations. ‘Pictures for the People’ was not revolutionary in the socialist terms laid down by Morris because the loans, funding, and labour depended on class privilege; however, it was revolutionary along the theological lines drawn by Ruskin as the fact of opening on Sundays, and during Easter, harnessed art to religion for the purposes of effecting structural change. Take the question posed by Ruskin in an Oxford lecture on ‘The Relation of Art to Religion’ (16 February 1870), ‘the main question of all—how far religion has been helped by art?’53 What Henrietta and Samuel Barnett presented in Whitechapel was proof of the help that art could lend religion; namely, a reinvented type of sacra conversazione centred around the poor and substituting contemporary paintings for preachers. In one sense, they created a space between church and state wherein the local community could ‘enjoy a new pleasure’ and take ‘lessons’ from the

51  ‘The Day is Coming’ was published in Justice on 29 March 1884 and subsequently incorporated into Chants for Socialists (London: Socialist League Office, 1885). 52  The opening lecture has not been published, but Frances Borzello reproduces a report on it from the East London Observer (12 April 1884) in: ‘An Unnoted Speech by William Morris’, Notes and Queries 25.5 (1978), pp. 314–316. An excerpt can also be found in: May Morris, William Morris. Artist Writer Socialist. Volume the Second, Morris as a Socialist (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936), p. 165. 53  John Ruskin, Lectures on Art, in E. T Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds., The Works of John Ruskin. Library Edition, 39 vols. (London: George Allen 1905), XX, p. 57.

304 

L. HARTLEY

examples.54 In another sense, they folded the sacred into the secular with the intention of redistributing ‘gems’ from the West to the East (in London, of course). The mention of ‘gems’ returns us to Henrietta Barnett, her role in and contributions to the Whitechapel Exhibitions. Thus, I want to gather up the strands of discussion by turning from the object lessons disseminated ‘for the people’ to the object lesson delivered by Henrietta as organiser, promoter, and teacher of art. ‘“But you have chosen all the gems,” she said, and then added, “How do you, from Whitechapel, know so much about art?”’55 The surprise here registered by Mrs. Alexander Young occurred during a visit by Henrietta to the Blackheath home of the Youngs in 1893 to procure loans from their art collection. Despite ‘the multitude of interesting pictures’, Henrietta was, by her own account, unimpressed by the quantity and quality of Mrs. Young’s initial selection: ‘I cannot take your second-rate. The best must be lent for the service of the poor.’56 It was in this setting that, having chosen some forty of ‘the best’, Henrietta disclosed her expertise: I apologised for my inconvenient knowledge, and explained that my father had cared much about beauty, that our nursery walls were decorated with excellent engravings of Raphael’s cartoons, and that as children we used to be gathered round the portfolios every Sunday evening and shown the ­masterpieces of the world, as other families gather round the piano and sing hymns.57

This vignette is striking not merely for the family scene (where engravings replaced hymns), but also the language used (whereby knowing about art was troublesome). Apparently, Henrietta proceeded to educate Mrs. Young, ‘one woman soul to another woman soul’, about the way in which art served religion, ‘that to many souls, deaf to the preacher, the artist whispered God’s eternal truths’.58 The Ruskinian resonance is clear, and it is clearer still in the catalogue for the 1893 exhibition where the Young’s extraordinary collection of French art, insured for £50,000, was given

 CBII, p. 151.  Ibid., p. 158. 56  Ibid., p. 157. 57  Ibid., p. 158. 58  Ibid. 54 55

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

305

special attention with a note on technique, colouring, and, above all, ‘their absolute truth to nature’.59 There is more, much more, work to be done in repositioning Henrietta Barnett at the centre of the Whitechapel Exhibitions. Her liaison with artists and patrons, her delight and frustration with the experiment of ‘Vote for Your Favourite Pictures’,60 her willingness to act as guide for groups of children, and her attitude towards the local men and women who attended the exhibitions are all important aspects of her unacknowledged labour. Here, though, I can do no more than offer a glimpse of the last two examples by way of emphasising Henrietta’s inclination to break barriers for the sake of culture and community. In the process of outlining the collective labour necessary to produce the catalogues, she tells the following anecdote: We were laughed at, of course, to our faces, behind our backs, then and now. It is not a month since Miss Townsend overheard a man say in a friend’s drawing-room: “It was worth the journey to East London, for the joke of hearing Mrs. Barnett point out the motherhood in a cow’s eye, to a crowd of Whitechapel roughs.” But we laughed too, and sometimes one did get real wit out of the reception or parody of our descriptions or talks.61

Henrietta’s intervention into the narrative is fascinating for the use of humour to offset the slighting of her explanatory skills and as a corrective to the presumption that the meaning of art was inaccessible to the local people—and also women. In fact, ‘Mrs, Barnett and others would take small parties around the rooms and explain the objects on the walls’ reported a correspondent for The Times, ‘thus, with the combined help of catalogue and lecture, the significance of the pictures was made clear even to mean capacities and their power of appeal immensely reinforced’.62 This rare instance when Henrietta was recognised in the press nonetheless repeats the presumption about high culture and low people. The ‘joke’ may have been enjoyed in a drawing-room, but the irony was not lost on 59  Whitechapel Fine Art Exhibition: Easter 1893. Thirteenth Year (London: Penny & Hull Printers, 1893), pp. 10–11. 60  CBII, p. 164. 61  Ibid., p. 160. 62  ‘Thirty Years of Art at Whitechapel’, The Times (13 April 1911).

306 

L. HARTLEY

Henrietta. In fact, the guided talks she ‘and the home staff’63 organised for children became such a feature of this and other exhibitions that teachers and their classes would eventually be granted permission by the Department of Education to visit galleries and museums during school-time. The conclusion towards which I have been leading is this: Henrietta Barnett’s narratives of the Whitechapel Exhibitions bear analysis precisely because they articulate class and gender in their lived experience, their structures of inclusion and exclusion, and, in turn, the vexed idea of progress. From ‘pictures for the people’ to ‘the artist’s gallery for everyone’: the fact that a permanent art gallery in Whitechapel exists today is due in no small part to Henrietta Barnett and her ‘inconvenient knowledge’. Looking forward, she was involved in the planning and fundraising for the new gallery, she was appointed to the Board of Trustees, and she was part of ‘the trio who for many years united their strength and knowledge to bring beauty into the lives of London’s workers’.64 Looking backwards, she was co-founder and co-director of a social experiment that parsed spirituality in the broadest sense through art for the service of individual and national regeneration. As the former director of the Whitechapel Gallery, Iwona Blazwick, clarified: ‘[O]ur founders made a deliberate statement. … Great art can and must belong to everyone. Wherever you come from, however difficult your circumstances, art has the power to nourish, inspire and transcend.’65 These could almost be Henrietta’s words—they certainly bear the imprint of her unflinching belief in the power of art on Sundays.

Bibliography Barnett, H.  O. ‘Pictures for the People.’ Cornhill Magazine 47 (March 1883), pp. 344–352. Barnett, H.  O. Canon Barnett. His Life, Work, and Friends, by his wife. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1918. Barnett, S. A. ‘The Universities and the Poor,’ The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review XV (Jan–June 1884): pp. 255–261. Barnett, S. A. ‘Our Picture Shows,’ St. Jude’s Parish Magazine (January 1889).  CBII, p. 163.  The ‘trio’ here referenced were Henrietta and Samuel Barnett and Charles Aitken (the first director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery). 65  Katrina Schwarz and Hannah Vaughan, eds., Rises in the East: A Gallery in Whitechapel (London: Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Ltd., 2009), p. 9. 63 64

12  ART ON SUNDAYS: HENRIETTA BARNETT AND THE WHITECHAPEL FINE… 

307

Barnett, Samuel and Henrietta. Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform. 2nd ed. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894. Borzello, Frances. ‘An Unnoted Speech by William Morris.’ Notes and Queries 25:5 (1978): pp. 314–316. Borzello, Frances. ‘Pictures for the People’ in Ira Bruce Nadel and F. S. Schwarzbach, eds. Victorian Artists and the City: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: Pergamon Press, 1980, pp. 30–40. Borzello, Frances. Civilizing Caliban: The Misuse of Art 1875–1980. London: Faber & Faber, 1987. Briggs, Asa and Anne Macartney. Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Conlin, Jonathan. The Nation’s Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery. London: Pallas Athene, 2006. Cook, E. T. ‘Fine Art in Whitechapel.’ The Magazine of Art 7 (1884): pp. 345–347. Ginn, Geoffrey A. C. Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London. London: Routledge, 2017. Hartley, Lucy. ‘From the Local to the Colonial: Toynbee Hall and the Politics of Poverty’, Victorian Studies 61:2 (2019): pp. 278–288. Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Jones, Gareth Stedman. Outcast London: A Study of the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Koven, Seth. ‘The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions and the Politics of Seeing’ in Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff, eds. Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp. 22–48. Koven, Seth. ‘Henrietta Barnett (1851–1936). The (auto)biography of a late Victorian marriage’ in Susan Pedersen and Peter Mandler, eds. After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain. London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 31–53. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Lowell, James Russell. The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell, with a critical preface by William Michael Rossetti. London: Ward, Lock, & Co., 1880. Maltz, Diana. British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870–1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Matthews-Jones, Lucinda. ‘Lessons in Seeing: Art, Religion and Class in the East End of London, 1881–1898’, Journal of Victorian Culture 16:3 (2011): pp. 385–403. Meacham, Standish. Toynbee Hall and Social Reform 1880–1914: The Search for Community. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Morris, May. William Morris. Artist Writer Socialist. Volume the Second, Morris as a Socialist. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936.

308 

L. HARTLEY

Pimlott, J. A. R. Toynbee Hall: Fifty Years of Social Progress. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935. Prochaska, Frank. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Ross, Ellen, ed. Slum Travellers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912). Taylor, Brandon. Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, 1747–2001. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Wilson, Shelagh. ‘“The Highest Art for the Lowest People”: The Whitechapel and Other Philanthropic Galleries, 1877–1901’ in Paul Barlow and Colin Trodd, eds. Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 172–86. Woodson-Boulton, Amy. Transformative Beauty: Art Museums in Industrial Britain. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.

Archival Sources (All Accessed June 2022) ‘St. Jude’s Loan Art Exhibition,’ Daily News (13 April 1881). British Library Newspapers, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/Y3203112390/ GDCS?u=umuser&sid=bookmark-­GDCS&xid=b5f4730b. ‘A Social Experiment,’ Pall Mall Gazette XXXIII (4 May 1881), p.10. British Library Newspapers, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3200368357/ GDCS?u=umuser&sid=bookmark-­GDCS&xid=46d00ff3. ‘Fine Art in Whitechapel,’ The Times (21 March 1883), p.6. The Times Digital Archive, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS102548597/ TTDA?u=umuser&sid=bookmark-­TTDA&xid=8baa5d43. ‘Our Ladies’ Column by “Penelope”,’ The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury (9 April 1887). British Library Newspapers, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/ R3208358432/BNCN?u=umuser&sid=bookmark-­BNCN&xid=c5a9f5ac. ‘At the East-End “Academy.” A “Private View” at St. Jude’s Schools, Whitechapel,’ Pall Mall Gazette XLIII (28 April 1886), pp. 1–2. British Library Newspapers, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3200396232/BNCN?u=umuser&sid= bookmarkBNCN&xid=5ca82c33.

Biblical Index

Genesis 1:2-3, 201 Genesis 1:16, 205 Genesis 1:31, 205 Genesis 2:7, 52, 69 Exodus 2–32, 243 Numbers 14:23, 252 1 Kings 19:11–13, 34 Psalm 143, 115 Song of Songs 2:2, 116 Isaiah 28:16, 76, 92 Zechariah 13:6, 239 Matthew 5:3, 258 Matthew 6:24, 277

Matthew 12:31, 247 Luke 12:27, 116 John 1:17, 249 1 Corinthians 13:12, 67 2 Corinthians 12:9, 68 1 John 3:2, 69 Revelation 3:20, 17, 108, 170 Revelation 4:3, 201 Revelation 11:15–17, 197 Revelation 12, 130 Revelation 21, 90 Revelation 22:13, 204

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4

309

Subject Index1

A Analogy, 39, 102, 104–108, 113–120, 123 Angel, 2, 43, 106, 107, 129–139, 143, 154, 192, 193, 195–197, 200–202, 204, 205, 207–214, 227, 258, 272, 273 Armitage, Edward, 24, 243, 244, 251, 252 B Barnett, Henrietta, 8, 24, 27, 29, 42, 267, 283–306 Bellini, Giovanni, 1–3, 1n1, 19n42, 30, 34, 146, 147, 190 Bible, 7, 9, 11–13, 15, 17, 23, 26, 35, 37, 41, 42, 52, 53, 53n6, 67, 76, 116, 135, 210, 214, 233, 235–238, 241, 252, 264, 301

1

Brown, Ford Madox, 24, 58, 59, 237 Browning, Robert, 157–160, 301 Bunney, John Wharlton, 38, 75, 87, 87n37, 95–97, 95n55, 95n56 Burne-Jones, Edward, 8, 18, 24–27, 26n65, 30, 35, 40, 41, 165–186, 189–214 Byzantine, 75, 81, 84, 88, 90, 92, 95n56, 97, 222 C Ca’ d’Oro, 81–86, 90, 93, 94, 97 Campanile, 86–90 Carlyle, Thomas, 10–12, 11n19, 56, 59, 66, 93 Catholicism, 10, 26, 168, 180 Ceiling, 28, 43, 219–230, 265

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Beaumont, M. E. Thiele (eds.), John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4

311

312 

SUBJECT INDEX

Christ, 3, 12, 17, 40, 41, 54, 68, 69, 106, 116, 144, 147, 154, 157–161, 167, 170, 172–175, 177, 178, 180–182, 184–186, 197–202, 204, 238, 245–249, 252, 263, 265–267, 271, 297 Christianity, 7, 12, 14, 17, 17n35, 18, 20, 25, 28, 30, 31n69, 32, 35–37, 54, 67, 92n47, 94, 98, 174, 178, 183, 229, 247n27, 261, 273 Collins, Charles Allston, 17n35, 20, 21n48, 24 Colour, 2, 3, 23, 26, 39, 40, 44, 45, 52, 56, 65, 78, 82, 92, 93, 95, 95n56, 97, 117, 120, 122, 131, 138, 143–161, 175, 177, 182, 192, 197, 201, 205, 206, 210, 212, 225, 276 Congregational (Church of), 175 Creation (biblical account of), 214 Crucifixion, 153, 161, 177, 185, 270 Curation, 35, 37

Drawing, 6n8, 34, 39, 40, 51, 76, 84n25, 94, 101, 108, 110, 112, 115, 117, 121, 122, 147, 155, 161, 181, 193, 196, 200, 201, 204, 205, 221, 227, 252, 289

D da Vinci, Leonardo, 54, 198, 209 Daguerreotype, 38, 75, 80, 82n23, 86–89, 86n28, 86n30, 88n40, 88n42, 92–98, 92n49 Dalziel, the Brothers, 27, 41, 233–235, 236n7, 237, 238, 240 Dante Alighieri, 40, 84, 102, 107, 108, 115, 115n23, 116, 118, 120, 121n33, 150, 151, 154, 159, 200, 214 Darwin, Charles, 41, 119, 193 De Morgan, Evelyn, 8, 24, 27, 29, 30, 41, 42, 257–279 Dickens, Charles, 8, 22, 22n53, 60n20, 64 Digby, Kenelm, 178, 180

G Gesso, 28, 43, 221, 223, 226 Giotto, 190, 265, 266 Gothic, 10, 38, 53, 55, 66, 69, 75, 77, 78, 81, 83, 88, 90, 92, 147, 175 Greg, William Rathbone, 257, 258, 260, 264n20, 275–277

E Ecology, 4, 5, 35, 38, 44, 76, 90, 123 Eliot, George, 157–160 Engraving, 41, 205, 207–209, 235, 240, 243, 244, 246, 248, 250, 286, 304 Eucharist, 134, 168, 169 Evangelicalism, 9, 10, 13, 14, 19 Exodus, 41, 233–253 F Frederic, Lord Leighton, see Leighton, Frederic Lord Frith, William Powell, 59–62, 61n21, 61n23, 62n24, 294

H Heaven, 15n28, 38, 41, 44, 51–69, 130, 131, 137, 148, 149, 177, 196, 197, 200–202, 205, 225, 257–279 Hermeneutics, 158 Hooker, Richard, 39, 102, 102n2, 104–107, 112, 118–121

  SUBJECT INDEX 

Houghton, Arthur Boyd, 235, 243 Hunt, William Holman, 8, 8n14, 8n15, 14, 15, 15n28, 17, 17n35, 20, 21, 23, 33, 35, 40, 101, 107, 108, 116, 144, 150, 151, 153, 153n14, 154, 167, 170–172, 175, 177, 181, 185, 238, 239, 265 I Illustration, 14, 24, 26, 40, 41, 53, 92n49, 170, 174, 190, 200, 200n12, 201, 204–207, 233, 235–243, 236n7, 245, 247–249, 252, 283 Imperfection, 38, 52–54, 55n9, 56, 66, 69, 76–78, 82, 94, 95, 98, 105, 190 Incarnation, 174, 178, 182 J Jowett, Benjamin, 158–160 L Leaves, 39, 44, 63n27, 74, 76, 76n11, 83, 90, 101–123, 173, 175, 181, 182, 193, 266, 286 Leighton, Frederic Lord, 38, 75, 84, 84n26, 85, 93, 96, 243, 245 Liturgy, 20, 25, 43, 169, 173n32, 239 London, 6n8, 9, 18–21, 27, 29, 33, 42, 59, 258, 276, 284, 291, 299, 304, 306 M Marlborough College, 4n6, 43, 129–132, 134 Mary (Virgin), 2, 19n42, 40, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157, 160, 161, 184

313

Materialism, 12, 25, 30, 214, 257–279 Meduna, Giovanni Battista, 79–83, 79n17, 82n23, 86, 90, 97 Millais, John Everett, 8, 15, 17, 20–23, 21n48, 33, 51, 101–104, 116, 117, 122, 144, 150–154, 153n14, 157, 238, 239, 249, 283 Modern Painters, 6, 7, 9, 15, 35, 40, 56, 58, 67, 76, 77, 101, 104, 106–108, 112, 113, 115–118, 120, 145–148, 150, 172, 181 Morris, William, 24–26, 26n65, 82n20, 84n26, 172, 185, 197, 201, 284, 288, 289, 301–303 Moses, 41, 237, 239, 241–253 N Newman, John, 9, 18, 19, 25, 168, 168n8, 169, 169n13, 173, 174, 174n34, 180n44, 249 O Oxford, 9, 18, 20, 21, 29, 32n74, 40, 101, 102, 115, 178, 189, 193, 197–199, 205, 207, 212, 302, 303 P Painting (oil painting), 144, 151, 160, 245 Pickersgill, Frederick Richard, 242–244, 249, 250 Poetry, 7, 18, 29, 33, 33n77, 35, 37, 39, 74, 155, 159, 209, 213, 214, 236n6, 259

314 

SUBJECT INDEX

Poverty, 24, 42, 57, 266, 275, 279, 284, 287, 301 Poynter, Edward John, 236, 243, 244, 247, 248, 252 Praeterita, 13, 13n22, 117 Protestantism, 12, 16, 102n2 R Restoration, 38, 74n5, 75, 79–82, 86, 86n30, 86n31, 87, 87n37, 93, 93n50, 95, 97 Resurrection, 67, 97, 161, 182 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 6n8, 8, 17–20, 19n42, 23, 25, 30, 33, 39, 40, 101, 143–161, 175, 238, 239, 260 Royal Academy, 21, 22, 61n23, 66, 145, 149, 170, 172, 236, 265 Ruskin, John Modern Painters, 6, 7, 9, 15, 35, 40, 56, 58, 67, 76, 77, 101, 104, 106–108, 112, 113, 115–118, 120, 145–148, 150, 172, 181 Praeterita, 13, 13n22, 117 St. Mark’s Rest, 87, 90n44 The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 10, 74, 77 The Stones of Venice, 7, 10, 38, 51, 53, 55, 74–76, 98n62 S St. Francis, 257, 258, 263, 265, 266, 268, 270, 271, 271n32, 278 St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, 74, 75, 77n12, 81, 88, 90–96, 137 St. Mark’s Rest, 87, 90n44 St. Michael, 43, 129–139 St. Paul’s-Within-The-Walls, Rome, 182 Scott, William Bell, 19n42, 62, 63, 63n27

The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 10, 74, 77 Socialism (Christian), 29 Solomon, Simeon, 24, 236n7, 237n10, 243–246 Spiritualism, 30, 42, 260, 261, 273, 279 Stained glass, 20n44, 26, 26n65, 40, 145, 147, 167, 172, 175, 184, 186, 190, 200, 201, 204, 207, 209, 210, 212, 213 Stanhope, John Roddam Spencer, 24, 43, 44, 131, 133, 134, 137, 138 The Stones of Venice, 7, 10, 38, 51, 53, 55, 74–76, 98n62 Symbolism, 14, 17, 26, 28, 36, 113, 151, 161, 183, 222, 223, 227 T Tintoretto, Jacopo, 15, 79, 92n47, 146, 147 Tractarianism, 9, 10n16, 18–20, 25, 33, 168, 170 Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 74, 94, 145, 146, 148, 149, 190 Typology, 23, 102, 107, 117 V Venice, 1, 1n1, 10, 15n28, 35, 38, 73–98, 131, 137, 146, 147, 196, 197, 207 Veronese, Paolo, 12–14, 146, 196–198, 214 Victorian labour, 5, 38 Victorian painting, 53, 58

  SUBJECT INDEX 

W Wallis, Henry, 24, 64, 65 Watercolour, 38, 40, 51, 62, 63, 75, 83–86, 86n31, 90–93, 96, 97, 101, 108–111, 122, 144, 145, 149–152, 157, 160–162, 176, 179, 183, 190,

315

191, 193, 201, 206, 207, 210–214 Watts, Mary, 4n5, 8, 24, 27–29, 35, 43, 44, 219–230, 277 Watts Chapel, 28, 43, 222–224 Whitechapel, 29, 283–306 Wilberforce, William, 157, 158