Dreams No Longer Deferred

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). LadyLilith, 1866-68 (altered 1872-73). Oil on canvas, 38 x 33 1/2 inches. Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.

After a long absence, the Delaware Art Museum welcomes back the renowned Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art after a long tour of the United States and England. In addition to a series of exhibitions and programs and a special website to celebrate the return, the Delaware Art Museum now reissues the 2004 catalogue, Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum. In addition to presenting beautiful reproductions of the art itself from the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art anywhere outside Britain, the catalogue analyzes the all-encompassing passion of Samuel Bancroft in his pursuit of the art and the stories and people behind it. Works such as Lady Lilith (above) fascinate Bancroft not only for their beauty and the artistry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but also for the history and life of the model, Fanny Cornforth, who evolved from model to mistress of Rossetti after the death of his wife, model, and fellow artist Elizabeth Siddal in 1862. Bancroft found Fanny and hounded her and others for the romantic, often lurid, and even macabre tales of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the most soap opera-esque of all art movements. Through these works, Bancroft relived the Pre-Raphaelite dream of pure imagination, a dream now returns to the Delaware Art Museum in its fullest sense.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, (1828-1882). Found, begun c. 1869. Oil on canvas, 30 x 35 inches. Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.

“It would be ‘Rossettianism’ that intrigued and seduced Samuel Bancroft from the moment he set eyes on Fiammetta in 1880,” writes Stephen Wildman in his essay, “A Vision Realized: Pre-Raphaelitism in the Bancroft Collection.” Rossetti rightfully takes center stage in the Bancroft Collection with works ranging from his early 1848 painting Bottles to the late Mnemosyne of the 1880s. In between, works such as Found (above), the only “modern moral subject” Rossetti painted, trace the trajectory of Rossetti’s amazing career. Rossetti’s lighter side appears in the drawings he sent to Fanny Cornforth, the model for the woman in Found, in which he draws her as an elephant in a play on the name “Fanny.” Bancroft collected letters and personal effects of Rossetti in his relentless drive to “penetrate the surface of Rossetti’s disarming and frustrating personality” and “vicariously enter the personal world of the Pre-Raphaelites.” Rossetti died in 1882, just as Bancroft began collecting the Pre-Raphaelites, and this near miss haunts all his efforts.

Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927). Love's Messenger, 1885. Watercolor, tempera, and gold paint on paper mounted on wood, 32 x 26 inches. Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.

Although Bancroft had rough, sometimes condescending encounters with some of the female Pre-Raphaelites, his collection allows a glimpse into that forgotten aspect of the movement. Examples of Elizabeth Siddal’s work allow us to see her as not “purely in the role of an attendant figure to Rossetti, as his model and pupil, mistress and wife,” but also as “a significant poet and artist, and in her determination to lead a life independent from the circle into which she was drawn, a laudable rather than a tragic figure.” In “Dreaming Awake: Marie Spartali Stillman and Pre-Raphaelite Images of Women,” Deborah Cherry contrasts the women of Rossetti and the male Pre-Raphaelites, “enfolded in reverie or rapt in contemplation, … dreaming awake,” with the women painted by Marie Spartali Stillman and other female artists of the movement. Stillman modeled for and studied under Edward Burne-Jones, developing her conception of the ideal woman within that of the Pre-Raphaelite circle itself. In this essay, Cherry recovers the lost feminism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which was a Sisterhood as well, going all the way back to Rossetti’s support for women’s suffrage and his “innovative” insistence on a balance of male and female artists in exhibitions of the 1850s. In works such as Love’s Messenger (above), Stillman takes the stereotypical “stunner” of the Pre-Raphaelite images and adds an introspective touch, a mind stirring beneath the idealized exterior.


Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). Lancelot and Guinevere, 1873. Photograph, 13 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches. Acquired through the Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1979.

The Bancroft Collection at the Delaware Art Museum reveals the Pre-Raphaelite movement in all its variety and complexity. The influence of the Pre-Raphaelites on the nascent field of children’s book illustration rises in the works of Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway, among others. Julia Margaret Cameron’s Pre-Raphaelite photography (such as Lancelot and Guinevere, above) opens up a whole new conception of the school as an early modern movement, something often forgotten in their fascination with medievalism. Stained glass, pottery, tiles, silverware, and even furniture (such as the chair painted by William Morris and Rossetti, titled The Arming of a Knight, below) display how Pre-Raphaelitism became an all-encompassing way of life for these artists and their patrons. Looking at the magnitude and variety of these artworks, one easily understands how Samuel Bancroft fell in love with this world and longed to join it in every way possible.

William Morris (1834-1898); Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). The Arming of a Knight, 1856-57. Painted deal, leather, and nails, 55 5/8 x 18 3/4 x 19 1/2 inches. Acquired through the bequest of Doris Wright Anderson and the F. V. du Pont Acquisition Fund, 1997.

The Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Collection at the Delaware Art Museum testifies not only to the passion and vision of one collector but also to the stewardship of an institution entrusted by heirs to keep that passion and vision alive. Waking Dreams brings the Pre-Raphaelite world to life in a way that Bancroft himself would have loved. Between the festivities of this homecoming and Tate Britain’s current exhibit Millias, the fires of Pre-Raphaelite passion are still burning strong.

[Many thanks to the Delaware Art Museum for providing me with a review copy of Waking Dreams and the images from the exhibition above.]

Telling Tales

“All men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand,” wrote Benvenuto Cellini in his famous Autobiography. Born November 3, 1500, Cellini certainly lived a colorful life, but stretched the truth whenever he felt the need. Cellini always strove to break out from the pack of the great Renaissance artists, creating works such as Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa (above, from 1545) as his own grand public gesture in Florence to compete with Michelangelo’s David. Cellini took on all comers and made as many friends in high places as he did enemies.

The Salt Cellar of Francis I (above, from 1540) stands as perhaps Cellini’s most memorable work, a relatively small piece of elaborate tableware fit only for a king, in this case, the king of France. A mythological sea god and women sit upon the cellar, their legs entwined. Cellini’s male figures always stand above his depictions of women, a lacking that some see as evidence of his sexual preference. Rival sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, among others, denounced Cellini as a homosexual. A lover and a fighter, Cellini took up arms in defense of the Vatican and Pope Clement VII against the attack Charles III, Duke of Bourbon in 1527, killing the duke himself, if you believe Benvenuto’s version.

As undeniable as Cellini’s talent for art (as shown in his drawing of A Satyr, above, from 1544) is his appetite for self-promotion and self-destruction. The Autobiography abounds with tales of his bloodthirsty revenge against his enemies, complete with his cold, calculating plotting of the when, where, and how. Cellini often delves into the fantastic, calling upon devils in the Roman Colosseum to come to his aid at one moment and upon choirs of angels to protect him at another. Such fantasies inspired Hector Berlioz to compose an opera about Cellini’s life, but even the drama of the stage couldn’t match the drama inside Cellini’s imagination. By telling his tall tales, Cellini earned himself a place in art and cultural history for all time.

On the Job Training

On this date in 1512, Michelangelo unveiled the ceiling frescos of the Sistine Chapel to the world. Pope Julius II had asked Michelangelo to begin work on the ceiling frescos only four years earlier, even though Michelangelo had never done frescos before, on any scale let alone such a monumental one. In perhaps the greatest feat ever of “learning on the job,” Michelangelo not only learned the art of fresco, but redefined it, in indelible images such as that of Adam receiving the spark of life from his Creator (above), or as Sam Malone called it during one episode of Cheers, “two muscular guys touching fingers.”

Seeing the ceiling in person is an overwhelming experience. After being herded through the Vatican apartments and seeing the works of Raphael and others, including my favorite Raphael, The School of Athens (more on that later), you find yourself milling about in the open area of the chapel, shushed by the attendants incessantly as you try to look straight up without falling down in awe. I wish there was enough room to just lie down and take it all in, like the constellations on a clear night. I’ve looked at reproductions in books countless times and read about all the symbolism and narratives woven throughout the imagery, but nothing prepares you for the thing itself, there in the flesh. That experience impressed on me like none other the reality of iconography as the “bible” of the illiterate of former times. God’s grandeur oozes from every corner of Michelangelo’s frescos, truly bringing you into communion with a higher plane.

From the ground, it’s impossible to fully appreciate the fine detail of the individual figures. One of my favorites is the Libyan Sibyl (above), all torque and dynamic twist, ready to spring from the wall into three dimensions. There’s a great preliminary drawing of the Libyan Sibyl by Michelangelo in which he designed the figure without clothing. Looking at that and the frescoed version, you can almost see the muscles moving beneath the drapery. Historians once thought that Michelangelo designed his figures right on the wall, conjuring them on the spot from his mind, because of the lack of preparatory drawings that survived. They now suspect that those drawings were simply cast away after serving their purpose, sadly lost to the mists of time.

Legend has it that Michelangelo kept the ceiling under wraps until the unveiling, forbidding even the Pope from taking a sneak peak. It’s amazing to think that, as Michelangelo worked in the chapel on the ceiling, Raphael worked in the apartments on frescos such as The School of Athens. Raphael, the story goes, curious about his rival’s work, apparently snuck into the chapel and saw the work. Understandably impressed, Raphael returned to The School of Athens, which shows Aristotle, Plato, and other ancient philosophers debating various aspects of the universe. In the foreground of the painting, Raphael added a depiction of the philosopher Heraclitus, not only using Michelangelo as the model but also painting in the style of Michelangelo’s frescos—an homage in an homage (above). Perhaps only one genius could fittingly praise another.

Ray of Light

While the Rococo raged around him in eighteenth century France, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin painted quiet genre scenes that would continue to speak to artists and art lovers through the centuries. Born November 2, 1699, Chardin painted perhaps the greatest still life of his century, The Ray (above, from 1728), one of the greatest treasures of the Louvre. Chardin imbued the dead ray on the wall with as much life as the skittish cat on the table. Chardin’s still lives abound with beautiful textures and nuances, which gives him a timelessness absent in his more dated contemporaries, such as Fragonard and Boucher.

What’s amazing about Chardin’s paintings is how much he got out of such simple subjects. In House of Cards (above, from 1736-1737), we see a young boy in period dress playing at cards, all very plain and above board. However, Chardin models the figure so beautifully, especially in his expression, which conveys his sense of intensity while building his house of cards. Beneath this simple exterior, Chardin uses the idea of a house of cards and that house eventually falling down upon itself as a symbol of mortality, a memento mori more pleasant and subtle than the dead seafood of The Ray and other still lives. These interiors appealed to the growing middle-class of Chardin’s time, who had the leisure and money to indulge in games and patronize the arts, especially painters who reflected their lives back to them. Chardin played a big role in the non-Rococo taste of the time, the art for the masses rather than the royals, by assuming a major role in the eighteenth-century French Salon as arranger of exhibitions and later as treasurer.

“We use colors,” Chardin once said, “but we paint with our feelings.” This feeling comes across in almost all of Chardin’s work, but perhaps never as much as in his self portraits, especially The Self-Portrait With Eyeshade of 1775 (above). The aging Chardin here protects his wearying eyes from the brilliant sunlight yet still has the dexterity to depict himself in pastels at a level of de la Tour. Manet, Cezanne, and Matisse, among others, would discover Chardin at the Louvre and embrace his spirit and feeling if not his technique. Marcel Proust, the novelist master of interiors and deceptive simplicity, found a kindred spirit in the work of Chardin. Chaim Soutine went so far as to hang a ray in his studio to paint in homage to Chardin, until the neighbors complained about the smell. In the often loud world of art history, Chardin speaks softly yet echoes resoundingly in the hearts of those who know him.

Night at the Museum

School’s out! The October poll asking “If you could see an exhibition of all the major works of just one school, which one would it be?” is now officially closed. In the most popular Art Poll by Bob yet, with 56 votes cast, the Post-Impressionists (Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat) won with 17 votes. The Abstract Expressionists (Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko), Impressionists (Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir), and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones) all tied for second place with 11 votes. My beloved German Expressionists (Egon Schiele, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde) came in last, with a paltry 6 votes, but they don’t mind because they’re all about the angst.

The November Art Poll by Bob asks, “If you could be ‘accidentally’ locked overnight in one museum, free to be alone with all the works of art, which museum would it be?” The nominees are:

The Hermitage (St. Petersburg, Russia)
The Louvre (Paris, France)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York)
The Prado (Madrid, Spain)
The Tate Britain (London, England)

Any of these would be great places, but which would be the most mind-blowing one-on-one experience for you? Staring in solitude at the Louvre's Mona Lisa until the sun rises? Strolling through the Tate’s Turner gallery by moonlight? Reenacting ancient rites at the Met’s Temple of Dendur in the eerie silence of the mummies and masterpieces? Let your imagination go wild, but vote, vote, vote.

Playing the Part

When anyone searched for the center of the art world in late nineteenth century New York City, they didn’t need to look any further than the studio of William Merritt Chase. Born November 1, 1849, Chase’s studio was itself a work of art, as his 1882 painting In the Studio (above) shows. Chase filled his workplace and home with every exotic item he could find—rugs, furniture, clothes, musical instruments—all to help him shape the perception of what an artist’s studio should look like. Chase dressed the part, as well, sometimes even living beyond his means to create the proper impression for patrons and fellow artists. While contemporaries such as Winslow Homer kept lower profiles (Homer was once mistaken for a bank executive), Chase’s flamboyant lifestyle and personality paved the way for later American artists to play the part of the larger than life artist.

Fortunately, Chase’s talents backed up his image. In works such as Idle Hours (above, from 1894), we see Chase bringing his European training back home to America with decidedly Impressionist overtones. Chase studied in several places in Europe, perhaps most notably with Jean-Leon Gerome in Paris. Chase’s work always reminds me of that of John Singer Sargent, if Sargent had gone as consistently Impressionistic in his oils as he did in his watercolors. When John Henry Twachtman dies in 1902, the remaining members of The Ten, the anti-academic band that broke off when the American academies rejected Impressionism, ask Chase to join. Regardless of his sales or social status, Chase always remained a central figure in American art during his lifetime.

When his fortunes as a painter began to fail, Chase turned to teaching, becoming one of the most influential instructors of his time in America, second perhaps only to Robert Henri. Edward Hopper studied under both Henri and Chase, taking the best of both worlds into his unique style that would dominate the first half of the twentieth century. In the Self-Portrait of 1915, Chase seems chastened, no longer the brash showoff of the 1880s with the fancy clothes and showplace studio. The stereotypical artist of the late nineteenth century redefines himself here as the old sage, teaching the next generation how to paint. Posing beside a canvas, Chase seems ready to demonstrate for his students, with the details of his studio in the background painted sketchily for being less important than the task at hand.

Cuts Like a Knife

During the days of the Weimar Republic in Germany between the wars, Hannah Hoch created some of the most caustic, cutting images challenging the culture around her. Born November 1, 1889, Hoch critiqued in photomontage what George Grosz and Otto Dix critiqued in paint, bringing the bizarre world of Dada to bear on the bizarre world of Germany. As Germany struggled to its collective feet after the horrors of World War I and under the burden of the Treaty of Versailles, Hoch captured the festering wounds that would bloom into the Third Reich. Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (above, 1919) uses text and photos from newspaper and periodicals of the period to form a “group portrait” of the period in all its buffoonish humor and barely hidden menace. The gears and mechanical parts surrounding the faces threaten to grind them up and swallow them to feed the hungry self-destructiveness of Weimar society. To a modern viewer, Hoch’s photomontages recall the animated photomontages that Terry Gilliam created as part of Monty Python using Victorian Age images to mock the stuffiness of that age. Hoch’s uses humor as well, but the Weimar was never stuffy.

Hoch created Marlene (above) in 1930, the year that Marlene Dietrich rose to fame in the film The Blue Angel. In The Blue Angel, Dietrich’s nightclub singer, Lola Lola, seduces a professor into ruining his life for her love, using her sexuality to cruelly debase a proud man. While singing, Lola Lola wears men’s clothing and even flirts with women in the audience, which definitely caught the bisexual Hoch’s eye. In Marlene, Hoch places Dietrich’s famous legs on a pedestal with her admiring male fans gaping up from the lower right corner. Dietrich’s sexuality objectifies her, reducing her to mere body parts, but also gives her power over others that can be used to control those who wish to control her. Hoch comments here on the sexual politics of her time that were just one aspect of the decadent politics of the Weimar Republic, where life had become increasingly cheap and greater and greater thrills were sought, culminating in the “thrill” of World War II.

Amazingly, Hoch survived through the Nazi years, never facing the usual consequences of her art or her sexuality. After World War II, Hoch turned to abstraction in her photomontages, a safer choice as the victorious nations split up her homeland into conflicting political philosophies. From the early 1960s up until her death in 1978, Hoch returned to more figurative work to analyze again the issue of sexual politics of earlier works such as Marlene and Strange Beauty (above, from 1929). Even at the end, Hoch wanted to tear away the masks of “beauty” that hid the real person behind, rendering them sexual objects. Hoch’s humanity and humor make her one of the most fascinating and continually relevant Dadaists.