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Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 4
Lesson 2: The Pre-Raphaelites and mid-Victorian art- A Beginner's Guide to the Pre-Raphaelites
- The Aesthetic Movement
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Millais's Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Portrait of John Ruskin
- A Portrait of John Ruskin and Masculine Ideals of Dress in the Nineteenth Century
- Sir John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms)
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- John Everett Millais, Bubbles
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts
- Hunt, the Awakening Conscience
- Hunt, The Awakening Conscience
- William Holman Hunt, Isabella or the Pot of Basil
- William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott
- William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death
- William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Ford Madox Brown's 'Work'
- Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini
- Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
- Rossetti, Proserpine
- Wallis, Chatterton
- Wallis, Chatterton
- William Powell Frith, Derby Day
- Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Sleeping Beauty — but without the Kiss: Burne-Jones and the Briar Rose series
- Burne-Jones, The Depths of the Sea
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Sir Edward Burne-Jones, four stained glass windows at Birmingham Cathedral
- Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott
- William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street
- William Morris, The Green Dining Room
- William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
- Pre-Raphaelites
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Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England, 1855, oil on panel, 82.5 x 75 cm (Birmingham Museums Trust).
A conversation with Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(soft music) - [Narrator] We're in Birmingham looking at one of the
most famous paintings by Ford Maddox Brown. This is "The Last of England." - [Narrator 2] Brown was associated with the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and that group sought to
create a kind of painting that, as the art critic Ruskin said,
"Involved truth to nature." And in this painting
of an immigrant family on a ship leaving England, we can really see Ruskin's
idea of truth to nature. - [Narrator] You can see
it in the careful handling of the light that you would find on a bright, but overcast day, and the way that that light infuses different kinds of surfaces. - [Narrator 2] Making this
truthful to what this looked like was important to the artist. He painted portions of it outdoors. In fact, there's a passage from
his diary where he is happy that it's very cold, 'cause
that allows him to paint the way that one's skin
turns a bit blue in the cold. - [Narrator] And you can see that in the right hand of the
man in the foreground. - [Narrator 2] There was
a wave of immigration in the 1840s and 1850s, where many people sought a better life in the United States or in Australia. And Brown himself thought
about immigrating to India. It's important to remember that the decade before this, was called
the hungry forties. A decade of tremendous
conflict between the classes, widespread unemployment, of
strikes, of people going hungry. And so this kind of
hardship would lead one to think about leaving one's home country to have a better life for one's family. - [Narrator] The
seriousness of the situation of the primary figures could
not be more directly expressed. - [Narrator 2] Although
we're meant to read them as a typical middle class couple
forced to take this voyage, they are modeled after the artist himself, and his wife, Emma. - [Narrator] You can
just make out the hand of the child that she
holds under her wrap. And in fact, just the
turn of the child's head, and the child's sock peeking out. In a sense, we also have references to the tradition of religious painting. This is, in some ways, a
representation of the holy family, and the artist has
created almost a halo-like series of concentric circles
that surround the woman's head. Her braids, her ribbon, and her bonnet. - [Narrator 2] We're also
looking at Brown's ideas, and Victorian ideas of the way that men and women differently
experience the world. She has got her family,
therefore all she needs. And I think that that's, for me, most poignantly shown in
the hands, the child's hand that grips its mother,
but also her gloved hand, which holds her husband's hand so tightly, that his fingers get squished
a little bit together. And so you feel her reliance on him. He is the strength of the family. He is what keeps the family together. - [Narrator] So this painting is a product of 19th century
ideas of patriarchy, of family, and of gendered roles. - [Narrator 2] And this
is also a commentary on the problems faced by
artists in the mid-19th century. - [Narrator] But this is also a painting that's meant to invite close looking, because the artist has lavished on it not only tremendous
attention to the light, but also to the textures,
to the complex environment of a small ship where
people are forced together. And, in this case, where people
of different social classes are brought together. - [Narrator 2] Brown
has made it very clear that the couple are
slightly higher in class than the other figures behind them. We see what he described
as a grocer's family, the little girl eating an
apple, a man smoking a pipe, and then two men who look slightly drunk. One who's shaking his fist as
he looks at the white cliffs of the shoreline of England,
a man who Brown described as shaking his fist at his country, and blaming his country
for not providing for him. Behind that, a figure who's unloading
groceries onto the boat. So this kind of chaotic group of figures who are coming together. - [Narrator] The level of
detail is tremendously precise. The enormous amount of
time that the artist took to render this oil on panel is evident in the fabric of the woman's
cloak, of the man's coat. You can make out the
individual droplets of water on the rope or on the cabbages
that the passengers will eat during their journey, or the way in which the
spray from the waves are gathering in droplets on
the outside of the umbrella. And then there's the way in
which the woman's ribbons are being whipped around by the wind, and a series of beautiful
compositional echoes. You see an arc made by the string that ties the man's hat to his button, so that the wind won't make off with it. That arc is echoed by his shoulder, echoed again by the pipe,
echoed again by the arm that holds the life
raft in the background. There are a series of formal relationships that the artist has carefully constructed in order to make sure that
the image remains unified for all the chaos that he's displaying. - [Narrator 2] And my favorite
passage is the tassels on her gray, woolen chal, which
are painted with such care. And this reminds us of this
pre-Raphaelite principle of truth to nature, of
painting what one sees, moving away from the academic style, which generalized forms, which
used loose, open brushwork, which relied on academic formulas that had been in place
since the Renaissance. - [Narrator] And so we're
left with this image of this family that is
facing a cold, dark, windy, storm-tossed sea, trying to protect
themselves from this weather just as they're trying
to protect themselves from the economic storm that they found themselves in in England. (soft music)