Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites – National Gallery, London
Let me save you the trouble of reading reviews when deciding whether to go and see this small exhibition at the National Gallery. Critics don’t like it. This review in the Guardian is particularly entertaining, and likens Pre-Raphaelite art in the UK’s regional gallery collections to a fatberg (I love a vicious review, don’t you?). I thought it was a fairly good outing though, for the following reasons:
1. It was reasonably informative from a historical point of view.
The premise of the exhibition is the debt owed by the artists later known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Burne Jones, Millais, Holman Hunt and the like) to the National Gallery’s acquisition of The Arnolfini Marriage by Jan Van Eyck. Once the property of the Spanish royal family, it exited this collection thanks to a Bonaparte, ended up in the hands of a Scottish soldier (not sure how) and was thence acquired by the National Gallery in 1842 as its first Netherlandish painting.
It turns out that, at the time, the students of the Royal Academy were housed in the other end of the National Gallery building, and were therefore able to come and study such works with ease. The curators present some archival information on the painting’s reception and impact on artists, as well as a quote from Burne Jones himself, to make the argument that this very painting gave the rascally young Pre-Raphaelites something to study when rejecting the perceived constraints of the art of the Renaissance and beyond. Some of the evidence is quite tenuous, for example the fact that both used mirrors and reflections in their paintings, but the detail about technique was interesting. I’ve seen Mariana by Sir John Everett Millais several times, for example, but learning about the media used and the preparation of the wood as a painting surface lent my viewing experience new depth. Also interesting (as a favourite theme of mine) is the life history of The Arnolfini Marriage itself, travelling from the Netherlands to Spain to influence Velasquez, and from there to the UK to become a favourite with the public and artists alike.
2. I quite like Pre-Raphaelites
Ok so this is more of a personal preference, but I do. The touring of the Tate’s Pre-Raphaelite exhibition to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2003 or thereabouts was a formative moment in my interest in art history, and several of these paintings are old friends from that show. I find the characters of Morris, Rossetti, the wives and girlfriends and so on to be endearing if sometimes a bit ridiculous, and I rather like the rich colours and textures and romantic legends of their paintings. So that was reason number two.
3. I didn’t have to pay to get in
ICOM cards (International Council of Museums) are a wonderful thing. It makes a world of difference to one’s enjoyment of an exhibition (or at least to my enjoyment) whether a substantial entry charge has been handed over or not. This particular exhibition costs £10 on weekdays and £12 at weekends (not a pricing model I’ve seen before, and hopefully not a new trend), which seems a little steep for a display mostly of works from the National Gallery itself and from the Tate. There was another exhibition downstairs of Degas pastels which was a similar size and calibre but completely free, which seemed to me more reasonable.
If, like me, you want to get your money’s worth in a cultural outing, you may wish to wait a month and see The Arnolfini Marriage when it goes back out into the normal galleries, take special note of the mirror, and imagine yourself to be a young art student railing against the tyranny of Italian Renaissance art. I imagine it will give much the same effect but be easier on the pocket.
So, dear readers, go to this one if you also like Pre-Raphaelites and are reasonably interested in the formation of historic collections, and particularly if you can get in for free. If not, you could give it a miss, and read some of the reviews instead for entertainment!
Until 2 April
