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From 17th October-13th February, Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Poetry at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery brings together more than 100 works to explore the rich relationship between Britain’s most celebrated artistic movement and the literature that inspired it.
Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Poetry arrives at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery from 17th October-13th February, bringing together more than 100 paintings, drawings, photographs, decorative objects and rare books to explore, for the first time, the vital relationship between Pre-Raphaelite art and poetry. While the movement is often associated with medieval and Renaissance imagery, this major exhibition reveals how writers including Dante, Chaucer, Keats, Christina Rossetti and Alfred, Lord Tennyson shaped the work of artists such as William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris.
Divided into three themes, Poems Past, Romantic Rhymes and Victorian Visions, the exhibition features significant loans from Tate, the V&A, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, the Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam Museum and the Bodleian, alongside works from the Laing’s own collection. Highlights include Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, Burne-Jones’ Laus Veneris, Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix and Millais’ The Woodman’s Daughter, while visitors can also explore The Germ, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s own literary publication. Particular emphasis is given to often-overlooked female artists and creatives including Elizabeth Siddall, Julia Margaret Cameron and Kate Bunce, alongside designers such as Fanny Bunn and Phoebe Anna Traquair, offering a fresh perspective on one of Britain’s most influential artistic movements.
