Pre-Raphaelites revealed as first modernists in Tate blockbuster

 
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17 April 2012

Tate Britain is to mount a landmark exhibition uniting Pre-Raphaelite art with their crafts for the first time — and showing them as Britain’s first modern art movement.

Far from merely being seen as sentimental Victorians, the show will reclaim the likes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais as true radicals, the organisers said today.

Curator Alison Smith said the show would draw on research — with themes including the Pre-Raphaelites’ forward-thinking views on women, class and empire — carried out since the last major survey nearly 30 years ago.

The exhibition will then become the first Pre-Raphaelite blockbuster to be seen in Washington DC, where Americans have previously resisted the work, and in Moscow.

Dr Smith said: “There’s been a lot of interest in the Pre-Raphaelites in recent years with television documentaries, feature films and a number of exhibitions on various aspects. This is the first to look at them in their entirety.

“It’s the first time we have actually united their productions in fine art with applied art. What made them so radical was they set out to obliterate distinctions between media and make art central to life.” Even though the Impressionists work in the open air has long put the focus on France as the beginning of modern art, the Pre-Raphaelites were doing that a decade earlier, she added.

The exhibition, covering half a century from 1848, includes classics such as the Tate’s Ophelia by Millais as well as masterpieces rarely seen in the UK such as Rossetti’s Found and Holman Hunt’s psychedelic version of The Lady Of Shalott — both coming from the US.

Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, the summer home of William Morris, is lending his bed, designed and made with wife Jane and daughter May. Other exhibits will include stained glass and carpets.

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde runs from September 12 to January 13, 2013, admission £14.

For more ideas on what to do and the latest exhibitions and events check out our Going Out pages.

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