Amazing Convergence

History is studded with amazing convergences of individuals meeting at the right time and place, so as to make events seem predestined. In the mid-1850s, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris traded in their theology studies for artistic ones, joining with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founding member of the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.In the previous decade, the Brotherhood reacted against the contemporary Classicism promoted by the Royal Academy and its first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, by championing a return to the artistic values and working processes exemplified in the art of the Middle Ages and the early Italian Renaissance. High-keyed palettes, a lyrical use of line, and profuse detail were high points which, the Brotherhood believed, the principles of Classism had corrupted.Opposition to industrialization and mechanization were also at the socialist/utopian roots of the Brotherhood. Ironically, industrialization created the affordable goods that the “masses,” supposedly championed by the Brotherhood, could afford. William Morris’ handmade crafts came with a price tag that placed them well beyond the average purse.The Metropolitan Museum’s new exhibit, “The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design,” presents 26 selections from its permanent collection along with several loans. Drawings, paintings, textiles, ceramics and other crafts by Rosetti, Morris, Burne-Jones, and others assess the achievements of the Pre-Raphaelites during the early and transformative years of the 1860s to the 1890s.The individual works are, not surprisingly, very beautiful. Several drawings stand out for their delicacy of line and tone, and for the individual expression of their subjects. “Study of a Female Head,” is a very fine portrait by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in whispered tones of yellow, red, and green pastel over thread-like black lines on earth-red paper. In her strong contours, heavy-lidded gaze, and bow-like lips there is an ethereal androgyny.Eight other works by Burne-Jones, along with two others he collaborated on, tilt this exhibit in his direction. His magical “The Love Song,” part of the Metropolitan’s permanent collection, along with its highly finished preparatory drawing, are on display together. His lyricism, grace, and poetry are on full display here in an homage to the Renaissance.Other fantastic artists are also shown at their best here. Rossetti’s “Lady Lilith,” in watercolor and gouache, looks like pastel somehow. The reclining form of the bare-shouldered woman curves upward from the lower left as she combs her long hair amid blossoms of pink and white. Before an garden window she admires her beauty in a hand-held mirror, a figure of sexual desire and danger.In William Morris’ “Bird,” is everything that we love about the consummate designer. Against a intricate, stylized leaf pattern of slightly grayed out blues and greens are two repeating sets of birds placed mirror-opposite each other. One pair looks over its shoulder at its mate while the other faces its mate in mid-flight. Each set repeats horizontally in bands amid blossoms and wreaths of quiet yellow hues.A “Charger” by William de Morgan illustrates rotund fish with deep, metallic reds, surrounded by a pattern of fish and leaves along the dish’s broad lip. An evident persian influence imbues his “Plate,” its palette of deep blue, turquoise and white depicting highly stylized dragons and flowers, as an odd-looking bird peers out, wall-eyed, from the center.Simeon Solomon’s “The Evening Star,” is a fine example of an earlier, traditional watercolor technique expressing form and mood. In Frederic, Lord Leighton’s “Lachrymae,” a female figure dressed in somber purples and grays laments against a column as the evening sun dies out behind a cypress grove. Her melancholy foreshadows the passing of an age, Leighton’s own death in 1896, and a coming century of world wars, mechanization, and destruction.“The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design” is on view through Sunday October 26, 2014, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.orgMore information about Mr. Bullock’s work can be found at bullockonline.com.

Amazing Convergence

Amazing Convergence

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