The Pre-Raphaelites & the Oxford Museum

Learning more... Pre-Raphaelites and the Museum The Pre-Raphaelites & the Oxford Museum by Dr John Holmes When Henry Acland told his friend John Ruskin that the Gothic John Ruskin architects Deane and Woodward Ruskin (right) was had won the competition to build the the leading art critic new Oxford Museum, Ruskin was of his day and the ecstatic. He wrote to tell the artist champion of the Pre- and designer Lady Pauline Trevelyan: Raphaelites. The main thing is—Acland has got his With his museum—Gothic—the architect a friend of encouragement, mine—I can do whatever I like with it … I several artists got shall get all the pre-Raphaelites to design involved in the one each an archivolt and some capitals— plan to design and decorate the new and we will have all the plants in England museum, working closely with the and all the Monsters in the museum. architects, masons and scientists to create a building that is a work of art The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was and a vision of nature in its own right. founded in 1848 by seven young artists— the painters William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and James Collinson, the sculptor Science and the Arts Thomas Woolner, and the art critics Frederic George Stephens and William Pre-Raphaelite art Michael Rossetti. Together they launched was to be a form a revolution in the Victorian art world, of investigation, a insisting that art should show people the serious study on truth about the world around them, not just scientific lines. repeat the conventions of the old masters. As Frederic George Stephens (left) put it: What is ‘Learning more’? ‘Learning more’ presents a series of articles about the Museum and its The sciences have become almost exact collections. It is designed for older within the present century. … And how students, teachers, researchers, has this been done but by bringing and anyone who wants to find out greater knowledge to bear upon a more about particular aspects of the wider range of experiment; by being Museum’s work and its history. precise in the search after truth? If this ‘Learning more’ articles are free, and adherence to fact, to experiment and available to all for educational, non- not theory,—to begin at the beginning profit purposes. Unless otherwise and not fly to the end,—has added stated, the Museum retains copyright so much to the knowledge of man in of all material used in this leaflet. science; why may it not greatly assist the moral purposes of the Arts? © Oxford University Museum of Natural History 2013 Page 1 Learning more... Pre-Raphaelites and the Museum designing several of the statues of scientists Nature in the Museum planned for the central court. While the Pre-Raphaelites looked to Over the next two years Rossetti would science as a model for their art, the bring in two more sculptors from the Oxford scientists looked to the Pre- very early days of the Pre-Raphaelite Raphaelites for how to represent nature Brotherhood to work on the statues: in the fabric of their new Museum. In Thomas Woolner, a founder member of a lecture on the Museum, Acland paid the P.R.B., and John Lucas Tupper, whose tribute to them: sculptures took Pre-Raphaelite principles even further than the Pre-Raphaelites had We have sought to hinder all ornament, themselves. Ruskin set to work making unless that ornament be free from designs for the windows in consultation vicious carelessness; and to stop all with Woodward, Rossetti and Munro, while professing transcript of Nature, unless Woolner took on designing the archway for it be painstaking, sagacious, and honest. the main door, first on his own and then in Herein, we owe just debt of gratitude to collaboration with John Hungerford Pollen. the young school of Artists, called, half Pollen had been working with Woodward, in jest, Pre-Raphaelites. Rossetti and Munro on another of their projects—the building and decoration of the Each piece of carving in the museum was Oxford Union Society debating chamber to be carefully studied from nature. At (now the Union library). Another of the the same time, like a scientist, the artist team of young artists who worked at the was to bring his own insight to bear. Union, Richard St John Tyrwhitt, painted Together, the artists and scientists would the murals in the geological lecture room create a vision of nature that was at (now the Director’s office). once rigorously scientific and beautifully crafted. All told, nearly all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle were involved in the decorations for the Museum one way The Pre-Raphaelites get involved or another. Ford Madox Brown advised In December 1854, just after Acland Woolner on his statue of Francis Bacon. told him the good news, Ruskin wrote Pauline Trevelyan, William Bell Scott and back to say that he hoped ‘to get Millais Lizzie Siddall worked on designs for the and Rossetti to design flower and beast stonework. Holman Hunt, a good friend of borders’. Acland’s, may well have put his old studio- As it happened, Ruskin mate Henry Hugh Armstead forward to was no longer on the carve the statue of Aristotle. Hunt and best of terms with Woolner made a point of coming to Oxford Millais—his wife for the meeting of the British Association Effie had left him for for the Advancement of Science when the the painter earlier Museum opened, while Stephens wrote that year—but he a very favourable review of the Museum soon introduced for Macmillan’s Magazine, praising the Woodward to capitals carved by the O’Shea brothers Rossetti (left), and and their nephew Edward Whelan in the the three of them main court as ‘infinitely above the level of began enthusiastically similar modern works’. Unfortunately none preparing for the of them commented on the ‘Great Debate’ building. Rossetti introduced between the Bishop of Oxford and T. H. Woodward and Ruskin to the sculptor Huxley over Darwin’s theory of evolution if Alexander Munro, who set to work they heard it. © Oxford University Museum of Natural History 2013 Page 2 Learning more... Pre-Raphaelites and the Museum Sadly too, the story told by Georgina Burne- Jones, the widow of the painter Edward Burne-Jones, that Rossetti and William Morris had each carved a capital for the court is not true, but their contemporary William Tuckwell recalled later that Morris and Burne-Jones were among the Oxford students drawn to the beauty and originality of the Museum, and they went on to join Woodward, Rossetti and the others in decorating the Oxford Union. Pre-Raphaelite art at the Oxford Museum Thomas Woolner’s original design for the entrance porch (British Museum) As well as being one of the most daring 1. The entrance arch, by Thomas and influential buildings of the Victorian Gothic Revival, the Oxford Museum Woolner and John Hungerford as a whole is one of the greatest Pre- Pollen Raphaelite works of art. Thomas Woolner Woodward (right) was and Acland given the job of embraced designing the Pre-Raphaelite carving for the principles main entrance throughout the to the Museum. Museum. This His original can be seen in design (above), now E. A. Skidmore’s in the British Museum, shows the Fall ironwork (right) and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from and even more Eden. This design was never used, perhaps in the O’Sheas’ because it put too strong an emphasis beautifully on the Bible and showed the pursuit of vibrant and intricate stone carvings knowledge itself in a bad light. (left) modelled directly on The next design specimens from (left), drawn by the University’s John Hungerford Botanic Gardens. Pollen, probably [To read more in collaboration about the with Woolner, still architecture of the includes Eve, but Museum and the its symbolism is carvings in the court, see the Learning more optimistic, More… articles on ‘The architecture of representing the the Museum’ and ‘The stonework of the growth of knowledge Museum’.] There are also several places up to an angel at the in the museum where you can see works top of the arch, with more angels above in by the Pre-Raphaelites themselves. heaven. This was the design used in carving the arch itself, though it was never finished. © Oxford University Museum of Natural History 2013 Page 3 Learning more... Pre-Raphaelites and the Museum 2. Ruskin’s windows The entrance John Ruskin did several designs for the arch of the windows on the façade of the Museum. Museum Ten of his working drawings are now today in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The window on the left of the main entrance on the ground floor But there were key changes. Adam, who is (see below missing from the design, was reinstated for left) was the carving itself. He is shown holding back carved to Ruskin’s finished design, a bloodhound, representing sin restrained now in Birmingham, by James O’Shea. by morality. Acland later claimed that O’Shea also adapted several details the plants growing in curves up the sides from Ruskin’s drawings as they worked of the arch were a symbol of evolution, together on the window immediately but the presence of Adam and Eve show above it (above). that, when the building was first built, it enshrined a Christian vision of nature as created by God. Even so, the angel at the top of the arch, who holds two books in the design, now holds one book and a living cell, showing that, while the Bible was still important to the Victorian scientists in Oxford, modern biology was an equal partner in the search for truth.

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