Lush Landscapes of Love and Desire

Posted on 12 December, 2018

Where can you find masterpieces of the most romantic kind as well as the nation’s best head of hair?

The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) has unveiled the most ambitious exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces ever shown in Australia. And Osher Günsberg is in town to mark the occasion, hosting a special Summer Lovin’ event next month which will focus on the heady romance of the new blockbuster.

Love and Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate brings to Australia an unprecedented collection of 19th Century works of art from London’s Tate Gallery.

The exhibition includes more than 100 works by 21 artists including loans from private collections and institutions in Britain and Australasia. It presents an exclusive insight into the rebellious and revolutionary world of the ground-breaking art movement.

Exploring themes of love and desire, modern life, literature and romance, myth, portraiture and the femme fatale, the exhibition also illustrates William Morris & Co’s lasting impact on design.

In a world-first, the Tate has temporarily parted with both John Everett Millais’ Ophelia and John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott to be shown together at the NGA. These destination paintings have never left the walls of the Tate at the same time – such is their star power – and it is an Australian first for them to be on show.

John William Waterhouse The Lady of Shalott 1888 oil on canvas Tate © Tate

Judith Nesbitt, Director of National and International Partnerships at the Tate, said that the famous British gallery – which attracts around seven million visitors a year – had worked well with the NGA on the last Turner collaboration in 2013.

“Our experience of working in partnership with the NGA…was so rewarding that we were really ready to do something equally ambitious when the opportunity came along,” she said. “Nonetheless, you will understand that the decision to lend some of our most treasured painting is not one we take lightly.”

“The Pre-Raphaelites were radical, controversial and truly contemporary. They spoke to the anxieties of their age – creating strange, unsettling, and compelling images and we certainly hope they create a stir here in Canberra over the coming months.”

NGA Director Nick Mitzevich said “Never before has a 19th-century exhibition of this scale and calibre been seen in this country. The Tate has lent destination works of art in order to share them with all Australians, continuing a strong relationship between Britain’s foremost art institution and our National Gallery.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The beloved (The bride) 1865-66, oil on canvas, 82.5 x 76.2 cm, Purchased with assistance from Sir Arthur Du Cros Bt and Sir Otto Beit KCMG through the Art Fund 1916, Tate, © Tate, London 2018.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr noted that “‘Exclusive exhibitions such as Love and Desire are further proof why record visitors from Australia and overseas are coming to Canberra.”

Meanwhile, Canberra can expect some celebrity sightings as TV host and author Osher Günsberg and singer Sarah Blasko celebrate the exhibition.

Osher will host his Summer Lovin’ party on Saturday 19 January. It will be held in the NGA’s stunning Australia Garden where guests can purchase a traditional or posh picnic for this enchanting garden party with friends, food, entertainment, while they hear love advice from the country’s resident romance expert. The ticket price of $55 (or $75 for the posh picnic) includes exhibition entry.

Sarah Blasko will transform the Love and Desire exhibition into an immersive experience on Friday 8 February for an exclusive audience when she reimagines her songs of love inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites. Intertwining angelic voices and acoustic instruments, the event is limited to winners who enter the competition here.

the essentials 

What: Love & Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate
When: 14 December to 28 April 2019
Where: National Gallery of Australia
Tickets: Adults $25. Children under 16: FREE
More information: nga.gov.au/lovedesire

One last thing

If you want to understand why this is such an important exhibition, the NGA has provided this fact sheet.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was born at the cutting edge of the industrial revolution in London. The leading figures of the movement Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais met in 1848 when they were all art students of the Royal Academy. Frustrated with the traditional academic teachings indebted to the old masters, they championed an avant-garde approach of new realism and relevance. They recruited like-minded fellow students Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner, James Collinson and Rossetti’s brother William Michael. Also instrumental—although not officially in the ‘Brotherhood’—were artist, model and muse Elizabeth Siddal and the poet Christina Rossetti.

The name Pre-Raphaelite comes from the group’s rejection of the teachings of the Royal Academy, preferring to idolise the early 14thand 15th century artists instead of Raphael and the High Renaissance. Considered Britain’s first modern art movement, the original seven figures of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood reinvented art and life for modern times. Initially exhibiting under the secret society insignia, ‘PRB’, and publishing a manifesto journal, The Germ, their anti-establishment, controversial ethos was reflected in their extreme techniques, newly invented paints and dazzling paintings, depicting taboo subjects in extreme detail.

They tackled modern love, marriage, heartbreak, death, religion, myth, nature and labour with unflinching realism. Gone was the idealised nature of female beauty, as the Pre-Raphaelite women—modelled on the inner circle—broke the mould with unbound hair and flowing gowns; the Pre-Raphaelite’s ideas similarly saw a reinterpretation of Christ as a muscular working man, no longer held aloft but rendered close up and familiar to the viewer; while Arthurian and Shakespearian literature offered commentary on the modern fate of women.

The Pre-Raphaelites lived their experimental values; their convictions, relationships and lifestyle were as radical as their art. They eschewed advantageous marriages, pursuing relationships for love to the detriment of their position in society.  They eventually became celebrities, pioneering international careers, harnessing the power of the printing press to expose their art to new mass audiences and embracing world travel. Their previously scorned and critically panned work went on to become lauded by the art world, and in high demand globally, with reproductions and tours making many of them rich.

Their work inspired another generation, with William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones amongst others defining the second phase of the movement as Aestheticism championed modern beauty and the expression of inner thought and feeling through symbolism.

Australia was not immune to the cult of the Pre-Raphaelites, albeit a little later than the rest of the world. In 1906, William Holman Hunt exhibited The light of the world in Australia to more than half a million people, pioneering modern marketing and offering prints after the painting to the public, at the same time redefining Christ for the modern day—human, vulnerable and accessible.  The exhibition presents Hunt’s earlier version of the painting.

Feature image: Love and Desire NGA John Everett Millais Ophelia 1851-2 oil paint on canvas Tate collection presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894 © Tate