Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Found (Compositional Study) 1854 – 1855I was reflecting again today on Manet's depiction of a prostitute in "Olympia" and how topical the subject was in late 19th century Paris. The I remembered that the subject of female virtue (and loss thereof) was also an obsession of British artists and writers during the same period. The British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were, in many ways, the counterparts of the Impressionists in France. Despite the fact that many of their subjects were taken from medieval history and literature (Shakespeare was a particular favourite) and sometimes tend towards the mawkish, they also revolutionised the use of colour through painting on a white ground (as opposed to the dark red ground favoured by academic painters) which had the effect of making colours glow on the canvas. The best PRB paintings also deal with contemporary issues like work, emigration and, in the case of this work and the related finished painting, prostitution.
Here, a man from the countryside recognises a former sweetheart who has moved to the city to find work. She has turned, out of poverty, to prostitution and turns her ahead towards the wall in shame. This preparatory study, along with many other PRB works, can be seen at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I remember spending many a happy afternoon here in my youth but it's been a while since I was able to see the magnificent PRB collection at first hand. Fortunately, our favourite designers TAK! (the guys responsible for creating the front end of the Thomas Tallis School website) have completed an online PRB resource which displays all the PRB works and supplies related learning resources. Each of the images can be explored in fine detail using the amazing Silverlight application from Microsoft. Once you've downloaded the program, you can zoom in as far as you like to check out the incredible details.
Here, a man from the countryside recognises a former sweetheart who has moved to the city to find work. She has turned, out of poverty, to prostitution and turns her ahead towards the wall in shame. This preparatory study, along with many other PRB works, can be seen at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I remember spending many a happy afternoon here in my youth but it's been a while since I was able to see the magnificent PRB collection at first hand. Fortunately, our favourite designers TAK! (the guys responsible for creating the front end of the Thomas Tallis School website) have completed an online PRB resource which displays all the PRB works and supplies related learning resources. Each of the images can be explored in fine detail using the amazing Silverlight application from Microsoft. Once you've downloaded the program, you can zoom in as far as you like to check out the incredible details.
I really recommend this site, especially the thoughtfully written and brilliantly illustrated thematic collections. My particular favourite is the Gender and Sexuality set of resources. Rossetti's image above is part of the "Working Women" section, for obvious reasons. I'm very keen on the kind of art history that attempts to place works of art in their historical and political contexts and uses contemporary research and theoretical perspectives to re-read art works that may appear well-known but have, in fact, been partially understood. This quality online resource is a brilliant example of how new technologies can add even more value to the experience of re-discovering great works of art.
Why do you think prostituion was such an important subject for late 19th century artists? How would you compare Rossetti's treatment of the poor prostitute in this study with Manet's depiction of "Olympia"? Can you find any other famous examples of works of art featuring working women?
2 comments:
We'll respond to this in detail after we've had chance to recover from the BBC's Desperate Romantics series. Probably absolute tosh from an Art History perspective, but thrilling stuff nevertheless. I'm sure it captures some of the spirit of the PRB, particularly their facination with 'the fallen woman'.
I'm afraid I haven't been watching. I presume there were some lingering shots of Lizzie Siddal fully dressed in the bath? I think the Pre-Raphaelites were probably only reflecting the late 19th century obsession with prostitution. It was the same, if not even more all-consuming, in Paris and other European cities. Something to do with the heady combination of rapid urbanisation, the movement from the countryside to the city of impoverished country folk, mercantile profits, increased leisure time and repressive morality. The divorce laws in England had a dramatic effect on the lives of married women who had affairs. Unlike their husbands, who no doubt were just as guilty of extra-marital relations, they were thrown out of the streets with not a penny to their names. There's a famous Triptych by Augustus Egg which depicts just such a situation in a rather brilliant way. This could possibly be the subject of a future post about narrative.
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