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The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
brought notoriety to British art
in the 19th century.

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Bursting into the spotlight
in the mid century,

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they shocked their peers
with a new kind of radical art.

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This programme explores how they
began a new chapter
in the history of art,

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transforming landscape painting
with a microscopic examination
of the natural world.

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I think all artists working
at this time would have been
aware of natural history.

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So it was important
that their paintings did
reflect something of this interest

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and this curiosity about the natural
world, and wanting to understand it.

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The idea of painting
the landscape as it really is

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with a kind of scientific fidelity
was at the heart of this.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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By 1850, the Industrial
Revolution was at its height,

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coinciding with a revolution that
was taking place in British art.

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The Pre-Raphaelite's founding
members John Everett Millais,
William Holman Hunt,

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and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had
created a critical storm by bringing
a new realism to British art.

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And now with the expanding rail
network offering quick travel
to the countryside,

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they ventured outside London

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and turned their attention
to a landscape that had only just
become accessible to them.

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Painting all details outside
was new, and predated the
Impressionists by ten years.

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Traditionally,
landscape painting was executed
in the studio from sketches.

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But the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
was a group who embraced
experimentation.

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Although embarking on such an
excursion demanded preparation.

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First,
they had to prepare their paints.

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Powdered coloured pigments
were grounded with a glass muller,

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then mixed together
with an oil based matter.

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The paint was then put into
a pig's bladder for transportation.

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They would then have to
find protection against any
inclement weather conditions.

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Only then could they pack
their easels and canvases
and board the train.

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Millais and Hunt in particular
were eager to paint what was real
with a new microscopic precession,

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so in 1851 they took advantage of
the south east rail line extension

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and set off for Surrey, with
Millais deciding on Hogsmill River
for the setting of his picture.

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It was to become one of THE most
famous paintings in British art,

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and one that transformed
the landscape genre - Ophelia.

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It's based on Shakespeare's play
Hamlet on the scene where Gertrude,

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Queen Gertrude describes
the tragic death of Ophelia.

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Ophelia is Hamlet's betrothed.

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She's been rejected by him and, after
the death of Polonius her father,

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she's been driven out of her mind
and it shows her pathetic
and tragic death

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when she's singing songs,
gathering flowers, slips into a brook

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and is dragged by the weight
of her garments underneath
the waters to her murky depth.

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It goes against the rules
of composing pictures.

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Usually we read images in the West
from left to right,
but of course the flow of the river

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is from right to left so he's
actually doing something sort of
quite counter-intuitive in a way

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and perhaps in doing so is inviting
us to look at this image

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as being a very disturbing image,
which indeed it is.

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He's the first artist
to actually show Ophelia
in the process of drowning.

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Millais was quite concerned
to relay the natural elements
to the story of Ophelia

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so a lot of attention has been
spent on the natural specimens.

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The Dog Rose, that obviously eludes
to the rose in the Gertrude speech.

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You also have the long purples
Shakespeare refers to

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indicated here by this Loosestrife
on the right-hand side.

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You have these daisies
scattered in the composition.

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So obviously he starts off
with Shakespeare's text,

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but goes beyond that
to include flowers

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which really relate symbolically
to the plight of Ophelia.

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A professor of botany thought it
was better to teach botany to his
students from Millais' painting

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than it was in taking them
on a field trip into the country

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so accurate and precise was his
depiction of natural phenomena.

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So you could actually read this
as a pre-Darwinian image, really,
that it's a struggle for existence.

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All these plants here are struggling
for survival on this riverbank.

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Ophelia's one of these specimens,
but being the weaker of the species,

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she's doomed to die
rather than survive

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so he's obviously looking
at human history, even though
it's a pre-Darwinian image.

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Once Millais had painted all the
landscape, he went back to London
to sketch the figure of Ophelia.

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This in itself reversed
the normal practise.

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His model was the 19-year-old
Elizabeth Siddal

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who had already posed for a number
of Pre-Raphaelite pictures.

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Lizzie posed for Millais
lying in a tin bath,
heated by just a few candles.

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But so preoccupied was he
that he didn't notice when
the candles went out.

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Afraid to mention anything,
Lizzie remained in the pose,
getting numb with cold.

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It was the last time
she sat for Millais.

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But despite this the painting
was exhibited to huge acclaim.

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Ophelia's a really important
painting for Millais because it
really marks the breaking point,

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from being an enfant terrible,
someone who's desecrated by the
critics, the subject of opprobrium.

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Suddenly, people see this picture
and they think, "Wow!"

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This artist is doing something
completely new and different,

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but rather than alienating
his audience he's eliciting
the sympathy of the spectator.

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And there's a wonderful view of
this painting by Tom Taylor in Punch.

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He says it brings tears to his eyes
that he is an artist who has actually
managed to make dying beautiful.

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Just as Millais was examining the
landscape with the eye of a camera,

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William Holman Hunt was also
applying his own detailed vision
of the natural world

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in a field close by,
painting The Hireling Shepherd.

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Hunt was keen to get a sense
of the luminosity of nature as it
actually looked under the vivid sun.

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To achieve this he departed from the
norm of painting onto a dark backing

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by preparing his canvas
with a white ground.

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This had the effect of illuminating
the colours far more brightly.

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He would then use a very fine brush,
more like a watercolour brush
to paint the minute detail.

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Every blade of grass,

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each eyelash.

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Such precision would often mean
only an inch of canvas
could be completed in a day.

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This scrutiny and demanding work
chimed with the Victorian obsession

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with technological progress
and scientific thinking,

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which was eagerly promoted
by the art critic and ardent
geologist, John Ruskin.

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Ruskin said simply you should go to
nature in all singleness of heart

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rejecting and selecting nothing,
and believing always in the truth.

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So the idea of painting
the landscape as it really is

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with a kind of scientific fidelity
was at the heart of this.

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Ruskin saw how Millais's scientific
fidelity had achieved a sense
of majesty in its detail.

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So he commissioned him
to paint his portrait.

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But this was to be
no ordinary portrait.

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Under Ruskin's guidance,
Millais was to turn
his formidable technical skill

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in painting the detail
of the Scottish landscape.

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Historic landscape painting,
as Ruskin called it.

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So off they all went.
This is Ruskin, his wife, Effie,

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who he'd married in 1848, same time
as the Brotherhood was formed,

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and, um...Millais',

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and Millais' brother, Wiliam Henry,
who's also a painter, and, of course,
Ruskin's manservant, Crawley.

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They went up together and stayed
in this tiny - and I mean tiny -
little sort of farmhouse

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at the little village of
Brig O' Turk

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in Glenfinlas in the Trossachs.

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At Brig O' Turk Ruskin and
Millais found the perfect site.

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At the bottom of a steep ravine, a
stream ran over some ancient rocks.

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The view had no horizon - this
in itself would be an innovation
in landscape portraiture,

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but would give Millais
the setting to which he could
turn his camera's eye.

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I think one of the reasons Ruskin
was attracted to this particular
site was because of the rock.

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The rocks he was passionate about
are what he called
the "slatey crystallines",

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the prime example of
which was this gneiss rock.

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He loved this because of its banding,

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how it was composed
of different minerals.

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It's quite interesting
how he wants to be associated
with it in this portrait.

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The idea that this rock
has this ennobling effect.

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So he's presented in the portrait
standing on the rock,

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the idea that there are parallels
between the two.

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Between his steadfast, fixed gaze
and the firmness of the rock.

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So the idea is,
the rock's are to be read
in ethical and moral terms.

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RUNNING WATER

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And whilst Millais painted
the details of the landscape,

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Ruskin, a fine draftsman and water
colour artist in his own right,

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sketched the rock in the background
of the portrait, keeping a watchful
eye on what Millais was doing.

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RUNNING WATER CONTINUES

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Ruskin focuses in on a patch
of rock in the distance.

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It's quite interesting comparing the
way the two artists approach this.

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Millais is obviously fascinated
with the surface.

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He attends to the lichen
on the rocks, the textural patterns.

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I think Ruskin is far more
interested in the structure,
the gneissic banding.

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He picks out these quartz veins
in the rock which you don't get
in Millais' composition.

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So, as an artist,
he is far more aware of how
these rocks have been formed,

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the movement of water,
and how they came to be.

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Years and years ago when the molten
rock cooled and hardened as part
of this particular process.

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Ruskin was very keen
on this portrait.

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He obviously saw it as being
a collaborative process.

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He was instructing Millais
in geology,

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and, in turn, Millais was instructing
him about painting out of doors.

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The relationship between Millais
and Ruskin was not the only one
developing during this holiday.

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Whilst living together in the
confined space of the cottage,

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Millais discovered he was falling
in love with Ruskin's wife, Effie.

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When she revealed that,
despite five years of marriage,
she was still a virgin,

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Millais, at first shocked,
began to see an opportunity
for them to be together.

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Evident in some of his
sketches of the time.

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We brought this rather
beautiful drawing here, which is
of angels forming a gothic arch.

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Of course they are Effie.

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We took the back of that drawing
to get it conserved, and on the back,
hidden since the 1850's, was that.

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Instead of two angels
are Millais and Effie caressing.

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I suppose it's wishful thinking,
but it's very beautiful.

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Well, not so wishful.

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A year after the Scottish trip,
Effie attained an annulment
to her marriage

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on the grounds of
non-consummation with Ruskin.

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And, in 1855, she married Millais.

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The relationship between Ruskin and
Millais, that also changed, really.

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Millais couldn't stand
the sight of him,

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and he couldn't understand
why Ruskin was almost supine in
the face of all these accusations.

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The only spark that Ruskin showed was
when the marriage was being annulled,

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he offered to prove to the court,
bizarrely, his manhood,

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and it's very difficult to imagine
how he could have done that,
but he offered it.

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I've no idea, it would have been
fascinating if the judge had said,
"Yes, Ruskin, you really should."

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Such public humiliation made any
future working relationship between
Ruskin and Millais impossible.

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So Ruskin, perhaps for spite,

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diverted his patronage to the
third founder of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

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Ruskin was much taken with
Rossetti's watercolour,

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The First Anniversary
Of The Death Of Beatrice.

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Dante drawing the angel,
painted in 1853.

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Rossetti's interests were diverging
from those of his fellow brothers.

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While they were pursuing "realism",

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the earlier Pre-Raphaelite
interest in medievalism
was dominating his work.

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Ruskin offered Rossetti first
refusal on all his works, which
freed him from the need to exhibit.

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He also offered Rossetti's mistress,
the Pre-Raphaelite model
Lizzie Siddell,

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featured in Dante Drawing An Angel,

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an annual income in support of her
own ambitions to become an artist.

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Elizabeth Siddal was just over
a year younger than Rossetti

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so she had been working
I think in the fashion trades

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for quite a few years

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before she became the PRB's
sort of favourite model.

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And she posed for a whole sequence
of paintings by other members
of the group.

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And then she went
to pose for Rossetti.

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At that moment, her own dreams
began to be realised

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because it turned out she had
artistic ambitions of her own.

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And at this moment,
Rossetti transformed Lizzie

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from an ordinary model into
his sweetheart and his student.

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He believed that Lizzie's talent
was best served

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by allowing her to draw and paint

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in the naive manner,
without any instruction,

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which explains why her drawings
have a very child-like character.

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They're very intensely emotional,

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but the drawing and particularly
the anatomy is very primitive.

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And whilst Rossetti and Lizzie
explored the medieval fantasy world,

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the other members of the
Pre-Raphaelites continued
with their fascination

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of the burgeoning sciences
of Victorian Britain.

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All artists working at this time
would have been aware
of natural history.

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The text they would've been aware
of was Charles Lyle's Principles
Of Geology, which was widely read

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and was really a wonderful survey
of geological formations and
structures in the British Isles.

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I think they wanted
to be part of that culture.

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They were modern British artists.
They were painting for
a contemporary audience.

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So it was important
that their paintings

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did reflect something
of this interest,

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and this curiosity about the natural
world, and wanting to understand it.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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Holman Hunt's curiosity
led him to board the train down
to Hastings in 1852

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to paint land scientists were
beginning to classify as a prime
example of coastal erosion.

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He showed it in his painting
Our English Coasts, or Lost Sheep,
as it's also known.

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Hunt has painted very carefully
the geological formations
of the coastline,

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and it's not a grand, magnificent
cliff like Dover Cliffs.

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It's actually a piece of collapsing
coastline and so the actual
geology of the rocks

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seem to express the anxiety
that we see in the lost sheep,

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and this relates to research that's
going on in this time into geology.

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Our English Coast depicts
these extraordinary cliffs
at Covehurst Bay near Hastings,

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and assembles sheep at
the very brink of these cliffs

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as a metaphor for what is going on
in Britain at this time.

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This is exactly the moment Napoleon
III has come to power in Paris,

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when there is a feeling that there
might be a renewal of the hostilities
of the Napoleonic Wars.

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Hunt expresses this idea
with the idea of the lost sheep
standing at the edge of the cliff.

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Hunt stresses the modernity
of that scene

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with the tiny steamship which travels
across the horizon in the background,

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so that he turns the landscape
with all its extraordinary detail

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into a much richer picture
that becomes a kind of condition
of England picture.

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We see one sheep here who's caught in
the brambles and who looks straight
at us in a kind of appealing way,

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very typical technique of Hunt
to get us involved in the painting.

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We see the shadows,
a blue shadow lengthening across
the green fields in the background

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in a slightly ominous manner. The
painting is painted at the end of
the day to add to the atmosphere.

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We can even see the light
coming through the sheep's ear.

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Capturing such naturalistic light
effects interested another painter
associated with the Pre-Raphaelites,

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Ford Madox Brown, in his painting
of 1852, Pretty Baa Lambs.

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So he takes up some of
the Pre-Raphaelite ideas

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about responding to nature

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and he applies his own particular
interest in light effects.

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He doesn't just paint the landscape
out of doors, he actually poses
his figures out of doors

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and paints the entire scene
so there's consistent conditions
of light, bright sunlight,

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over the figure
as well as the landscape.

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Now as far as I know that's the first
time it's been done in painting.

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So Ford Madox Brown is actually
doing something really novel

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by making his model stand out
in the hot sunshine, you can see
her cheeks are pretty red.

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The painting is the first to
represent figures in the open air

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and in the conditions of sunlight
that are particular
to a specific moment.

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That is really the middle of the day.

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Another way in which it's the first
is observing all of the details,

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such as the coloured shadow.

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The baby is holding
a little sprig of foliage,

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which casts a blue shadow
on its white dress.

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Again, this is an innovation that is
definitely observed from nature.

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Shadows are coloured,
they're not just dark.

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He's not painting according
to the rules of painting,

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he's actually painting
by fresh, new observation
of what's before his eyes.

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That I think is the idea
behind it being a new chapter,
a new event in the history of art.

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Ford Madox Brown was slightly older
than the other Pre-Raphaelites.

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He was never a fully-fledged
member of the Brotherhood,

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but rather a close associate
and supportive elder brother

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whose work both inspired
and drew inspiration from them.

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But in contrast to Millais and Hunt,
Brown wasn't interested
in using the steam train

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to travel for his
landscape painting,
he'd much rather stay at home.

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In 1852, Ford Maddox
Brown moved to Hampstead,

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which was then just outside London.

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And for my money, the most
extraordinary Pre-Raphaelite
painting of a landscape

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is the work he completed out of the
window of his lodgings in Hampstead
looking over Hampstead Heath.

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An English Autumn Afternoon.

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Begun in 1852, and he worked
on it solidly for three years,

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Every single detail that was visible
out of that rear window
can be seen in this canvas.

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It completely contravenes
every rule in the book.

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It doesn't look like any landscape
painting ever made before.

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It's panoramic in scope,
but it has no vertical features
to disturb that flat horizon.

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It's also microscopic in it's
examination of the natural world.

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It's like a work of science,
on the one hand, a kind of treatise
on the life of North London in 1852,

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and on the other hand,
it's this incredibly evocative
and poetic account

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of the way Maddox Brown feels
about this landscape as well.

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He manages to be both
deeply objective and deeply
subjective, at the same time.

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The shape of the canvas
is an unusual one.

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It looks like a great eye,
it's an oval, and I've always
imagined that as a metaphor

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for some great optical apparatus,

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and it's worth thinking,
these paintings come from
the early years of photography.

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It's almost as if
Maddox Brown's saying,

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'The camera can represent this
world, but only in sepia and white,

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The camera can show us details,
but only the artist can actually
see the detail represented

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and interpret its meaning.

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This is one of
the great, poetic paintings

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as well as one of the great
representations
of reality in British art.

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So in An English Autumn Afternoon,
Maddox Brown shows us
a very familiar scene,

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and we're invited to identify the
two figures down to the bottom left,
a young girl and her friend.

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It's 3pm, and he particularly
wants you to notice the effect
of colour in the sky,

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the kind of duck egg blue sky just
before the sun sets over Hampstead
Heath in that moment of the day.

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You can see that colour reflected
on the shiny top of the boy's hat.

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If you look in more closely at what
is going on in the middle ground,

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you can see people picking apples.

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You can see cockerels and hens,
which are being farmed on the Heath.

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In the foreground there's a dovecot
with just the activity
of birds coming and going.

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Remember, these things had never
been painted like this before.

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I think that immediacy, which would
be an important claim made later
by the French Impressionists,

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but that immediacy of vision,
almost a photographic process,

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is what makes this painting
so absolutely striking to us
even today.

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It was this immediacy of vision
seen in all the Pre-Raphaelite
landscape paintings,

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in the colours,
the truth to nature,

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that made their work
admired at home and abroad.

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The Pre-Raphaelites had engaged with
the scientific thinking of the age,

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taken advantage of the expanding
railroads to visit new pastures,

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and, in the process,
revolutionised landscape painting
with the eye of a camera.

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They were all still only in
their '20s, but had propelled
British art in a new direction.