The Pre-Raphaelites Come to Canberra
Last weekend, following the Lifeline Book Fair, I also went to an exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia of Pre-Raphaelite artists (the exhibition was called 'Love and Desire', which is an unfortunate title for such an exhibition if you ask me, but they didn't).
Because Christina Rossetti and her family were involved with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood I have read some about them and have William Rossetti's book. It was amazing to actually see one of Dante's portraits of Christina, and the exhibition in entirety was so wondrously beautiful I could have stayed in there all day. I know paintings like Waterhouse's The Lady of Shallot are now 'greeting card' material, but there is after all a reason why such art becomes universally known (no-one can dispute that The Lady of Shallot is a fine artwork, or Pachelbel's Canon is a fine piece of music, even though we like to roll our eyes and call them cliche these days).
I was particularly taken with the large works of John Everett Millais (without people in them you won't realise how large some of these paintings actually are but they take up an entire wall), which seemed to glow with an inner light of their own. The Vale of Rest, capturing the glow of the setting sun, I found particularly mesmerising.
I could write on and on, but the glory, and indeed the purpose, of visual art is to communicate without words, so I'll show you some pictures. I didn't take my good camera and later regretted that, so these are just phone photos on my old iPhone 5S, but here they are.
