*** DEBUG START ***
*** DEBUG END ***

Worlds in the looking-glass  

by
09 March 2018

Nicholas Cranfield on Van Eyck’s influence on Victorian painters

© Tate, London

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 1848-49

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 1848-49

IN 1842, the National Gallery displayed for the first time a painting by Jan Van Eyck (d.1441). To this day, his 1434 Arnolfini Marriage is among the most well-liked works in Trafalgar Square. It is perhaps somewhat rich that, in a paying exhibition, the Director attributes this popularity to the fact that it was acquired to be seen for free.

The Treasury at first rebuffed demands for £10,300 towards purchases for the nascent gallery, but relented to provide 600 gns. for the Van Eyck, having “reason to believe . . . it desirable that the picture should be acquired”. This proves to be the somewhat dubious claim, now long dismissed, that Van Eyck was the father of oil painting in the West.

The late Carola Hicks told the vicissitudes of the painting’s ownership, and its meaning, in her immensely readable 2011 Girl in a Green Gown. It was seized in 1813 from the Spanish royal collection by a Scots officer, and hung for 13 years on a friend’s bedroom wall, where it was seen by many, “none of whom deemed [it] worthy of any particular notice”.

private collection © Photo courtesy of the ownerWilliam Holman Hunt, Il Dolce Far Niente, 1866  

But it was soon popular, despite a particularly dreadful woodcut of it, drawn by the sons of John Linnell, appearing in the in-house guide to the gallery in 1843 as Interior of a Room with Figures, a “perfect speci­men of the colouring of this old German [sic] painter”.

Art students who had come to reject the monumentality of the likes of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Sebastiano del Piombo found refreshing the equality of focus, in which individual brushstrokes could not be identified and in which every object portrayed was given attention worthy of emulation. They were fascinated by the colour, and by the inclusion of a mirror, as Velàzquez had been.

Members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood such as Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Millais took up the style with enthusiasm. This was not always accepted without criticism, then or now; my cathedral stall is named for Charles Dickens, who, in 1850, dis­paraged the well-known painting Christ in the House of His Parents by Millais as “mean, odious, revolting and repulsive”, an antipathetic view I would share.

What would he have made of the 1848 Rossetti Girlhood of Mary Virgin (Tate), in which Joachim strains to pick grapes off a trellis while St Anne teaches the Virgin to embroider lilies? An angel has piously placed a pot of lilies on a pile of six worthy tomes, each labelled with a virtue (Faith, Hope, Prud­ence, etc.) for later instruction.

I enjoyed the satire of The Awakening Conscience, painted in 1853 by the 26-year-old Holman Hunt. It is tempting to see this as a young woman getting out of the clutches of her Harvey Weinstein. But the clue is in the music: the sententious song sheet of Tennyson and Edward Lear lies discarded on the ground, as they have been sing­ing the Scots air “Oft in the stilly night”, which looks back on the lost innocence of our twenties.

Visitors need to be aware that there is now a differential system for buying tickets, and weekend tickets cost more. How the Trustees can justify charging the disabled the steepest price-hike (20 per cent, taking the admission charge to a staggering £12) will make for interesting reading of the annual report. To add insult to possible injury, I reckon that all bar six of the pictures come from public collections, including the Tate, V&A, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Manchester and Leeds Museums, which are free.

“Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites” is at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2, until 2 April. Phone 020 7747 2885. www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Browse Church and Charity jobs on the Church Times jobsite

Church Times Bookshop

Save money on books reviewed or featured in the Church Times. To get your reader discount:

> Click on the “Church Times Bookshop” link at the end of the review.

> Call 0845 017 6965 (Mon-Fri, 9.30am-5pm).

The reader discount is valid for two months after the review publication date. E&OE

Forthcoming Events

Women Mystics: Female Theologians through Christian History

13 January - 19 May 2025

An online evening lecture series, run jointly by Sarum College and The Church Times

tickets available

 

Festival of Faith and Literature

28 February - 2 March 2025

tickets available

 

Visit our Events page for upcoming and past events 

The Church Times Archive

Read reports from issues stretching back to 1863, search for your parish or see if any of the clergy you know get a mention.

FREE for Church Times subscribers.

Explore the archive

Welcome to the Church Times

 

To explore the Church Times website fully, please sign in or subscribe.

Non-subscribers can read four articles for free each month. (You will need to register.)