The Pre-Raphaelites At Home

Pamela Todd

Editions

Review

In his volume of reminiscences, William Michael Rossetti explained the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as “a thoroughly informal association.  We had monthly meetings at the houses, successively of all the members – meetings which consisted of good-fellowship, talk and the ventilation of projects, the consideration of any works of art which the host of the evening might be minded to show, and a very moderate allowance of refreshment and of tobacco for those who smoked.”

Most of the stories of the PRB, in both its incarnations, are pretty well-known to us and the consideration of them in the context of their homes is an ingenious way of telling their tale, for amongst them were some of the great painters, furniture and textile designers of the day and looking at them in their domestic environment enables us to reflect on their relationships to the models, mistresses and grudgingly perhaps their wives, as well as their contribution to art.

The first dwelling of consequence in their mutual lives was in Red Lion Square, where at various times Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones and William Morris lived with their various women, who came and went.  Morris later had built by the architect Philip Webb, the only house of any real distinction, ‘The Red House’, at what is now Bexleyheath, where he and Janey, the ultimate PBR ‘stunner’, lived out the dream existence common to all of them, young men in revolt against the common trends of mass production, longing for hand made artefacts and the restoration of the dignity of the craftsman.

Of some interest too, I suppose, was Gabriel Rossetti’s house in Chelsea which according to Michael was a “gloomy, quaint old place”, which is still somewhat forbidding, and whose dark, opulent furnishings were well captured in Henry Treffry Dunn’s moody watercolour sketches.  There, in the immense garden with its notorious menagerie, most of the photographs which pepper these pages were taken, a fascinating glimpse of the group whose activities, with their complicated emotional geometry, still fascinates.

For those who prefer a deeper approach, I recommend Jan Marsh’s magisterial biography Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter And Poet hbk £25, but Pamela Todd handles her material with panache. - review by Stewart Grimshaw

John Sandoe [Books] Ltd
10 Blacklands Terrace, Chelsea, London SW3 2SR
Tel: 020 7589 9473 Fax: 020 7581 2084
sales@johnsandoe.com