Tate Britain’s major show ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde’ opens this week and the press is aflutter with pre-Raphaelite revelling.
The show, which has taken five years to realise, aims to present scores of spectacular works of fine and decorative arts to a new generation. It has taken a break from scholarly tradition to argue that the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood were a rebellious, anti-establishment group, and constitute Britain’s first modern art movement.
The highly anticipated show has created a media storm, with articles claiming the pre-Raphaelites were the YBAs of their day and that the show uncovers the “sexy, dangerous side” of the brotherhood, to long, detailed investigations of ‘phallic symbols’ in John Everett Millais pre-Raphaelite painting ‘Isabella’ from the Daily Mail and The Independent.
The exhibition’s curator Alison Smith has given a tour of the exhibition’s paintings by female pre-Raphaelite artists, including Elizabeth Siddall, Jane Burden and Rosa Brett, for this morning’s episode of BBC Radio 4’s Woman Hour. Don’t miss our exhibition review and take a look at the hundreds of new pre-Raphaelite prints we’ve added to see what all the fuss is about!
