Skip to main content

Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites



National Gallery

2 October 2017 – 2 April 2018

“The finest picture in the world” – Edward Burne-Jones in 1897 about 'The Arnolfini Portrait'

This autumn, one of the most celebrated paintings in the National Gallery,


  • Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni (?) Arnolfini and his Wife and ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’, 1434 (detail). Oil on oak, 82.2 x 60 cm. National Gallery, London © The National Gallery, London.
Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait, will be exhibited for the first time alongside works by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its successors. Focusing on the profound influence this 15th-century masterpiece had on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Reflections will shed light on the different ways these young British artists of the 19th century responded to the painting and one of its most distinctive features, the convex mirror.

Featuring key loans from Tate’s Pre-Raphaelite collection, including



http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T07/T07553_10.jpg

 Sir John Everett Millais’s 'Mariana' (1851),

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Girlhood_of_Mary_Virgin.jpg

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 'The Girlhood of Mary Virgin' (1848–9),

William Holman Hunt’s 'The Awakening Conscience' (1853), (below) and William Morris’s 'La Belle Iseult' (1858), (below) the only completed easel painting he produced, this landmark exhibition provides a unique opportunity to view these paintings next to the work that inspired them.

Co-curated by Susan Foister, Deputy Director and Curator of Early Netherlandish, German, and British Paintings at the National Gallery and Alison Smith, Lead Curator of British Art to 1900 at Tate, the exhibition will show a wide range of exhibits from public and private collections, including one of the convex mirrors owned by Rossetti (Kelmscott Manor, Gloucestershire, UK), another used by William Orpen (Private Collection), as well as early photographs (Wilson Centre for Photography), drawings, archival exhibits surrounding the acquisition of 'The Arnolfini Portrait', works on paper, and a Victorian reproduction of



van Eyck’s masterwork 'The Ghent Altarpiece' by the Arundel Society (1868–71, The Maas Gallery, London).

Acquired in 1842, when the National Gallery was just 18 years old, 'The Arnolfini Portrait' captivated the Victorian audience, as is demonstrated in an article dedicated to the painting in 'The Illustrated London News'. At that time the work was a rare example of Early Netherlandish painting that could be seen in this country – to this day, the National Gallery remains the only UK public collection that holds works by Jan van Eyck.

In 1848, disenchanted with the contemporary academic approach to painting they had been taught as students at the Royal Academy School of Art – which was at that time situated in the east wing of the National Gallery building in Trafalgar Square – a group of young artists founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The name reflected their preference for Late Medieval and Early Renaissance art that came ‘before Raphael’.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Van_Eyck_-_Arnolfini_Portrait.jpg

William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti all became fascinated with 'The Arnolfini Portrait' which hung just a few rooms away from where they studied. The refined oil painting technique and its use of a mirror inspired these artists to the extent that critics of the day dubbed the Pre-Raphaelites the ‘pre-Van Eycks’ acknowledging the transformative effect the picture had on their art and vision.

The convex mirror, which in 'The Arnolfini Portrait' famously shows a reflection of van Eyck himself, left a lasting impression on the Pre-Raphaelites. They adapted the device as a means of exploring ideas of distortion, doubling, and reflection, but also as a way to convey a complex psychological drama. The exhibition bringstogether paintings featuring this artistic device, including

 https://uploads1.wikiart.org/images/william-holman-hunt/the-awakening-conscience-1853.jpg


Hunt’s 'Awakening Conscience' (1853, Tate), which depicts a woman and her lover – here the mirror is used to reflect a view out of the window, an allusion to the woman’s possible redemption from a life of shame. Many of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s paintings feature female figures in interior scenes that incorporate the mirror device, such as

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/N/N03/N03063_10.jpg

Rossetti’s 'Lucrezia Borgia' (1860–1, Tate)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/William_Holman_Hunt_-_Il_Dolce_far_Niente.jpg

and Holman Hunt’s 'Il Dolce far Niente' (1866, Private Collection).

The Arthurian legend of 'The Lady of Shalott' captured the imagination of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which became especially popular thanks to the poem of the same title by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Depictions of the story in which the heroine is cursed to only look upon the outside world through a mirror, were frequent among Pre-Raphaelite painters, and 'Reflections' will feature interpretations by Hunt (about 1886–1905, Manchester City Art Galleries) (below),

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/The_Lady_of_Shallot_Looking_at_Lancelot.jpg/451px-The_Lady_of_Shallot_Looking_at_Lancelot.jpg

John William Waterhouse (1894, Leeds Art Gallery),

 https://artshers.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/tumblr_nvg7xzuq7z1roagc8o1_1280.jpg?w=924

and Elizabeth Siddall (1853, The Maas Gallery, London).

Other motifs from 'The Arnolfini Portrait' appropriated by the Pre-Raphaelites include a pair of pointed slippers in

 

William Holman Hunt
The Lady of Shalott, about 1886-1905
Oil on wood
44.4 x 34.1 cm
Manchester Art Gallery
© Manchester City Galleries/Bridgeman Images
Hunt’s 'The Lady of Shalott' (1886–1905, Manchester City Art Galleries)



and the hanging bed drapery and oranges in William Morris’s 'La Belle Iseult' (1858, Tate).

Morris was passionate about Early Netherlandish painting and in particular, van Eyck. He referenced the punning inscription on the frame of



van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), a possible self-portrait which entered the National Gallery Collection in 1851 and is displayed in the exhibition, which reads ‘Als Ich Can’ (As I can). Morris adapted this as: If I can and featured it in one of his earliest embroideries and even had it inscribed on the stained-glass window of his home, Red House, in Bexleyheath.


In the 17th century 'The Arnolfini Portrait' belonged to the Spanish Royal Collection and is likely to have been seen by Velázquez providing inspiration for his monumental

http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/l54j4lkj.png?resize=1100x740

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Las_Meninas%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez%2C_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg/890px-Las_Meninas%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez%2C_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg

'Las Meninas' (1656, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid).



John Phillip’s Partial copy of ‘Las Meninas’, (1862, Royal Academy of Arts, London)

 https://static.artuk.org/w1200h1200/WMR/WMR_RAA_PL001737.jpg


depicts a cropped view of the Infanta Margarita and her maid of honour, and hanging above them is a rectangular mirror reflecting a double portrait of the King and Queen of Spain.

By the 1860s the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had disbanded as the artists began to diversify their individual interests, some adopting a more painterly style similar to Old Masters such as Velázquez. However, van Eyck’s convex mirror remained an important source of inspiration for the next generation of artists, including Mark Gertler, William Orpen, and Charles Haslewood Shannon.


These artists continued to incorporate the mirror into their self-portraits and in domestic interiors well into the early 1900s, as seen in

 

Orpen’s 'The Mirror' (1900, Tate)

 https://static.artuk.org/w944h944/WYL/WYL_LMG_100021.jpg

and Gertler’s 'Still Life with Self-Portrait' (1918, Leeds Art Gallery).

Co-curator of the exhibition Susan Foister says:
“This fascinating story has never before been presented in an exhibition and needed extensive collaboration between two institutions, the National Gallery and Tate, to make it happen. It has been a real pleasure to work with co-curator Alison Smith, Lead Curator of British Art to 1900 at Tate, who first proposed the idea for this exhibition.”
Director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi says:
“Van Eyck’s 'The Arnolfini Portrait' had a mesmerising effect on the young Pre-Raphaelites who saw it at the National Gallery. Fascinated by its truth to nature and its elegant symbolism, they brought about a revolution in British painting.”



  • Simeon Solomon, 'A Youth Relating Tales to Ladies',  1870

Exhibition organised by the National Gallery in collaboration with Tate Britain.

Publication

Title: Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites
Author: Alison Smith, with Caroline Bugler, Susan Foister, and Anna Koopstra
104 pages, 48 colour and 16 black and white illustrations, 270 x 210 mm (portrait)
Paperback
Published by National Gallery Company. Distributed by Yale University Press

Fascinating review

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Món ăn làm đẹp da, chống nếp nhăn, trị nám da hiệu quả nhất

Yến sào hầm nước dừa, hạt sen -Công dụng: Nhuận phổi ngưng ho, giảm béo, trắng da, trị nám da hiệu quả. -Nguyên tố vi lượng: Calci, acid amin, chất nhựa. Protein trong yến sào tự nhiên chiếm khoảng 50%, thành phần còn lại là calci, acid amin, sulfor. Vậy làm sao hằng ngày chúng ta có thể hấp thu được lượng sữa uống? Điều quan trọng là, trong yến sào có chứa phân tử sinh trưởng biểu bì và hormon thúc đẩy quá trình phân chia tế bào, thúc đẩy sự tái tạo mới, tăng cường sức đề kháng cho cớ thể, khôi phục nguyên tố, cho bạn một làn da trắng và mịn màng. -Nguyên liệu: Yến sào 30g, nước dừa 200ml, đường phèn, hạt sen 60g. -Cách làm: 1. Yến sào ngâm vào nước khoảng 4 giờ, loại bỏ tạp chất, lông vụn, rửa sạch, để ráo nước, chuẩn bị sẵn. Hạt sen ngâm mềm, loại bỏ tim, để sẵn. 2. Bỏ đường phèn vào 600ml nước để sooim cho đường tan ra, sau đó cho yến sào và hạt sen vào, đậy nắp lại, chưng cách thủy khoảng 1 giờ 30 phút, rồi cho nước dừa vào nấu 15 phút. -Mẹo nhỏ: 1. Yến...

Turner and the Sun

The Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre 5 August – 15 October 2017, Sainsbury Gallery, Willis Museum, Basingstoke 21 October – 16  December 2017,    In the weeks prior to his death, J.M.W. Turner is said to have declared (to John Ruskin) ‘ The Sun is God’ –  what he meant by this, no-one really knows, but what is not in any doubt is the central role that the sun played in Turner’s lifelong obsession with light and how to paint it. Turner and the Sun , an exhibition curated by Hampshire Cultural Trust, will be the first ever to be devoted solely to the artist’s lifelong obsession with the sun. Whether it is the soft light of dawn, the uncompromising brilliance of midday or the technicolour vibrancy of sunset, his light-drenched landscapes bear testimony to the central role that the sun assumed in Turner’s art. Through twelve generous loans from Tate Britain – the majority of which are rarely on public display – this focused exhibition...

Sotheby's IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART 14 November 2017 Updated

IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE  Auction 14 November 2017  Works from the Mellon Family Collection are led by    Claude Monet’s Champ d’iris à Giverny, painted in 1887 during a period of respite from the artist’s extensive travels in Holland, Brittany and, finally, his newly- established permanent studio at Giverny (estimate $3/5 million) . The idyllic , pastoral subject matter of this work encapsulates the central focus of Monet’s oeuvre toward the end of the 19 th century, when he divorced himself from painting urban scenes of Paris and devoted himself fully to his beloved countryside in Giverny.  The present work was acquired by the Mellons in 1953 and has remained in the family’s collection since .  Jeanne dite Cocotte, et Ludovic Rodolphe Pissarro sur un tapis is one of the remarkable compositions in which Camille Pissarro turns his at ention to his own family as the subject for his art (estimate $800,000/1.2 million...