“Spreading Pre-Raphaelitism through Photography in America.”

	During the 1860s, artists living in New York and Boston began to adopt Pre-Raphaelite principles. Chief among the “American Pre-Raphaelites” were Charles Herbert Moore, William Trost Richards, and Thomas Charles Farrer, the last of whom studied in England and absorbed Pre-Raphaelite principles through direct contact with the art and artists of the English Pre-Raphaelite movement. Their works were known primarily through the Artists’ Fund Exhibition in New York (1864) and the Exhibition of the National Academy of Design (1865-1870).
	The American Pre-Raphaelite artists were noted less for their figure work than for their landscapes and still-life studies of natural elements such as fruits and branches, adopting the Pre-Raphaelite minuteness of observation and desire to work from nature, and adapting the English school’s techniques to the American environment. After 1865, the press in the northeastern United States took note of the American Pre-Raphaelites, and, with the establishment of small art- and literary magazines like the New Path, began, by association, also to debate the merits of the original English Pre-Raphaelite school. Until the Exhibition of British Art held in New York in 1857, few people in America had been able to see the original Pre-Raphaelite works for comparison with their American cousins’ canvases--most people knew the products of English Pre-Raphaelitism through printed descriptions, if at all.
	An early American promoter of many Pre-Raphaelite artists, the agent of the Goupil Gallery in New York, Michael Knoedler was quick to capitalize on the Exhibition of British Art and the Artists’ Fund Exhibition of 1864 (the Knoedler Gallery, founded in 1846, is still in business, and is New York City’s oldest art gallery). The materials and processes associated with photography rapidly became less expensive between 1860 and 1870, and Knoedler imported or commissioned photographic reproductions of many popular or controversial works, helping to bring early Pre-Raphaelite paintings to the attention of American art patrons and the general public.
	Knoedler also created assemblages of Pre-Raphaelite and other subjects, cutting out and pasting photographs of figures from several paintings onto a vaguely medieval-looking background to create an early example of “sofa art,” designed to decoratively fill a parlor wall without being overly expensive. The figure below is one of Knoedler’s photo-montages from the late 1880s, currently in a private collection.

	In the April 1869 issue of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, the art and literature critic Clarence Cook talks about the impact of Knoedler’s photographs of English Pre-Raphaelite paintings, especially Millais’s Lorenzo and Isabella (1849). Below is the entire/an excerpt from the text of Cook’s review that deals with Knoedler, from the “Table Talk” column (pages 511-514). Note that, although the impetus for the article is the photograph on display at Knoedler’s gallery, the reviewer takes pains to map out the canvas, since Putnam’s did not include illustrations until the late 1870s. Thus, this article is an excellent example of the way in which photographic reproduction was beginning to gain hold, but had not yet supplanted or changed the traditional methods of art criticism which focused on detailed description.

	Mr. Knoedler (Goupil & Co.), has had on exhibition for several weeks a remarkably fine and large photograph, made by Bingham of Paris, from Millais’ picture “Isabella and Lorenzo,” the “poor, simple Isabel” and the “Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye” of Keats’ “Pot of Basil.” This work has a double interest arising from the excitement it caused when it was first exhibited in the Royal Academy, in 1849, that year forever dear, to the lover of art. For, this was the year in which the noble band of English painters who had styled themselves, half in sport, half in earnest, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, made their first determined attack upon the stronghold of British conventionalism, and came off conquerors, and more than conquerors. In this same year, Holman Hunt exhibited his first picture painted under the new influence, “Rienzi vowing to avenge the death of his brother,” and with this and Millais’ “Isabella and Lorenzo,” the battle was fairly begun. On the end of the bench upon which Isabella sits, may be seen carved the initials “P. R. B.,” a signature which may have been used by these artists often, but which we do not remember having seen on any other work of theirs. This picture is also signed J. E. Millais 1849, with the letters P. R. B., in a monogram. In the original, the remainder of the carving on Isabella’s bench, the subject “The marriage of the Virgin,” is to be made out, but it is not easily discernable in the photograph. We are not quite sure whether this photograph is taken from the original picture or from a repetition of it, made by the artist, with some slight modifications. We somehow, carried away from the original, an impression that the composition was not well balanced; that the table [512] with its occupants was too much crowded to the left-hand side of the canvass, leaving an open, unoccupied space at the right. But as seen in the photograph there is no such defect, and most likely, a seven years’ memory,—for, on this point, our notes say nothing,—has played us a trick. The subject of the picture is not drawn directly from the poem; that is to say, there is no warrant for the scene the artist shows us, in the words the poet uses, but it is a scene which the painter’s imagination easily makes possible for us, although serious fault has been found with the main incident, on the score of taste and probability. We are shown a room hung with damasked tapestry and, at the right, a large marble triple arch—opening—we see half the central arch with its cusps, and the smaller side arch at the left, and through these openings we look out onto the open air. At the left hand of the canvass is a table with twelve people—the face of one is hidden—and with the exception of three, Lorenzo, Isabella, and a servant, all these heads have the tapestried wall for a background. The others are drawn upon the sky. The table is placed at right angles to the wall, but the spectator is supposed to be standing at the left, and in consequence, we get a rather better view of the people on the right hand, than we do of those opposite them. One object of this arrangement was, evidently, to bring Isabella and Lorenzo into the middle of the picture, and their heads against the sky. Isabella, then, sits at the end of her side of the table, the last of a row of eight—there appear to be only four on the opposite side—and is such a way that we see her whole figure. Her head comes partly against the sky, and partly against the slender marble column that divides the large central arch from the smaller one at the side, and the passion-flower vine that wreathes this column has set one blossom so that it shows directly over her head like a fatal star. She is dressed in a pearl-gray, damasked silk, with plain, tight sleeves, and has her hair done up curiously in a long rope, wound about with black and gray. She is, to our thinking, very far from being an adequate representative of Keats’ Isabel. She has but little beauty, and, apparently, little force of character. We are afraid, if Thackeray had seen her, he would have called her what he called “La Belle Jardinière.” With her left hand she caresses her hound, who presses against her knees, seeking refuge from the spiteful teasing of her brother; with her right she takes half of the orange which Lorenzo has cut, and which he offers her upon a plate of Indian porcelain. Lorenzo’s face expresses earnest passion; he is too much absorbed in Isabel[la] to take note of the angry brothers on the other side of the table, but both he and the lady are no match for these strong, wily, cruel men. Lorenzo, who has on a tunic of rose-colored silk, is painted against the opening the little arch, and a spray of roses thrown off from that side, is his symbol, as the passion-flower is Isabella’s. On the same side with the lovers, are ranged six other personages. Next Lorenzo is the old nurse, sitting absorbed in her devotion after meat; her withered hands are laid across. Then, a man who, with a demure, downcast look, wipes his mouth with a napkin. Next him, a bright young girl who playfully eats a plum. Then, a man who pares an apple, sitting upright, and holding the apple on a level with the table. By his side a plump, fair woman, of a type familiar to us in the earlier Italian pictures. She sits still, and neither eats nor speaks. Last in this line of characteristic heads, a man seated next this fair phlegmatic drains a glass of wine, with protruding lips that seem to wish to prolong his throat. The only figure on this side of which we have not spoken, is the servant. He stands behind Isabella, and plays awkwardly with his napkin. He is a weakling, most admirably pictured. The other side of the table is occupied by the brothers, of whom Millais, following Bocaccio rather than Keats, has made as we think, three, and not two. “There lived then at Messina,” says Bocaccio, “three young merchants, who were brethren.” “With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,” sings the English poet who, in other more important matters, does not follow his Italian original. But we can hardly doubt that Millais, either confounding Keats and Bocaccio, or taking the liberty of correcting his brother English poet, as he was welcome to do, has meant to show us the three brothers in these three men sitting by the side of one, his face not seen, who may be their father. Furthest from the spectator is one whom we take to be the youngest brother. You think at first he has a pleasant countenance, but, on looking longer, it comes out a cruel, godless face. He is watching Lorenzo and Isabella and smiles, but it is an evil smile. He may not be plotting their death, but he will laugh when he hears of Lorenzo’s murder, and will sneer at his sister’s grief. Next this youngest son sits, perhaps, the old father, and then the eldest of the three brothers. He wears a hat and a doublet of rich damask-silk; looking across the table at [513] the poor lovers, he bites his finger-nails nervously, and holds up a glass filled with wine which he forgets to drink. On the back of his chair is perched his hawk who, like her master, dreaming of cruel deeds, tears in pieces a dove’s feather in mere wantonness. Last in this line, and nearest the spectator, is the most striking of the three brothers. He leans forward tilting his great chair and stretching out his splendid silken leg to its utmost length to enable him to reach Isabella’s dog with his toe. He cannot hurt it for that would make a disturbance. He merely wishes to tease them both. His own dog sleeps securely under his chair. His handsome teeth are set, and with a strong action he cracks a nut with his nutcracker wishing it were Lorenzo’s head. In the energy of his movement he has upset the salt-cellar, of old an evil omen, and always, in ancient art, associated with Judas, at the Last Supper. This action of the elder brother’s foot connects the two side of the picture in a striking and significant way, but it may reasonably be questioned whether the picture is elevated, either in its refinement or its truthfulness, by the introduction of such a motive. As for this company of people it is to be observed that a profound silence reigns at the table. Yet it is the hour when talk and jest should abound; the feast has been renewed, and dessert is being trifled over. But there is no light-heartedness here, no joyous person unless it be the little girl who eats the plum; the rest are all absorbed in themselves, or feel the weight of the passions that brood over the chief actors in the scene. Perhaps, with this deep devouring hatred on the one side, and this deep devouring passion on the other, it would not be possible for after-dinner talk to flow with much prosperity.
	We do not know for what sum this picture was originally sold, but in 1862, thirteen years after it was painted, we happened to be present at the sale of Mr. Windus’ collection, when it fetched 650 guineas. We presume that it would easily bring a thousand guineas if it were offered for sale to-day, for it is almost impossible now to get Millais’ pictures at any price; he paints but few, working, like Hunt, Rossetti, Brett, Hughes, and the rest of the school, if, indeed, it can any longer be called a school, with a diligent painstaking that will not be hurried, and that counts all labor spent in perfecting his work, as play. For it is a principle with all these men to paint every object in their pictures, living or still-life, whenever it is possible, from the object itself.