The Westwoods Centre, Bassett Road, Northleach GL54 3JQ
We are delighted to welcome Daphne Lawson to our Day of Special Interest.
PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTING
Thursday 27th March 2025 – doors open at 10.00 a.m.
Daphne Lawson has an MA by Research and Thesis from the University of Kent on Degas’s Public and Private Spectacle and a BA in Art History from London University. Since 1994, until she retired, she was the full time Art History Lecturer for The Bader College, Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, the European Campus of Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. There, she taught Art History courses ranging from French Impressionism, European Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite Painting to the survey programme spanning the period from Greek Sculpture to Contemporary British Art. She also published a chapter on Van Gogh in 2014 in The Edinburgh Companion to the Bible and the Arts. Her first career was as an actress. She was trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in theatre, film and television as an actress until her thirties when she had three children.
This Day of Special Interest comprises 2 morning lectures and one afternoon lecture on the following topics:
10.30 A.M. PRE- RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD
This first talk centres on the early years of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1848 three very young students from the Royal Academy Schools: Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt led a group of seven to rethink the nature of painting. They felt that the worst thing that had ever happened to art was the Renaissance, epitomised by the style of Raphael.
What they wanted was truth and realism and a primitive and natural art as opposed to an ideal depiction of Italianate art which had grown stale over the last three hundred years. So we study the initial breakaway art by Millais using his new Wet White Technique and look at ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’, the first Pre-Raphaelite painting, and also ‘Christ in the House of his Parents’, a religious work which caused such a huge scandal at the Royal Academy that Queen Victoria had it sent to her so she could view it in private at Osborne House.
We also look at Rossetti’s early ‘Annunciation’ and Holman Hunt’s ‘Claudio and Isabella’ and, most famous of all the paintings from this early period: Millais’ ‘Ophelia’. The landscape for it was painted in the open air, twenty years before French Impressionism, and Lizzie Siddal modelled for ‘Ophelia’ in a tepid bath in Millais’ studio and caught pneumonia. We see how these early beginnings led to the flowering of Pre-Raphaelite art and a revolution in painting that paved the way to modernity in Britain.
11.45 a.m. Pre-Raphaelite Women: Madonnas, Magdalens and the Femme Fatale
This talk explores the role of women in mid Victorian England through Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Idealized images of women as man’s companion and helpmeet, submissive but supportive, are seen in stark contrast to the stereotype of the ‘Fallen Woman’ in Hunt’s iconic ‘Awakening Conscience’ or Rossetti’s prostitute, who has literally fallen to her knees in the painting ‘Found’. This talk poses the possibility that the chaste image of domesticated femininity, “the angel in the house,” needed the Fallen Woman, cast out from the domestic hearth into outer darkness, to complete her role. The femme fatale emerges in the 1860s, when a series of Pre-Raphaelite paintings feature their famous models as unattainable sirens full of distant allure. Such women are often shrouded in medieval myth; an imaginary world where men were either strengthened by women’s faith and courage or beguiled by their false enchantments. These roles are explored in relation to the Victorian social history of the period.
2.00 p.m. Edward Coley Burne-Jones: the Last Pre-Raphaelite
This talk examines the possibility that Burne-Jones was not actually a Pre-Raphaelite at all. Although he begins as one, his style moves up and away by the late 1860s and transforms into the huge paintings that relate to the vertical fifteenth century altarpieces that he absorbed on his four visits to Italy, the first two accompanied by John Ruskin. It was Burne-Jones that took English art back to the spirit of medievalism, and it was through his love of myth and legend that the late Victorians rediscovered the middle ages. In this talk, his relationship to the art market is also explored, especially his impact on the newly formed Grosvenor Gallery, when London and especially the Kensington elite was totally swept away by his avant-garde style. His friendship with William Morris and the importance of the decorative arts to his paintings is also discussed, and the talk concludes with an in-depth analysis of his series paintings: ‘The Legend of Briar Rose’ and ‘The Perseus Series’, and the dialogue that operated within them between masculine endeavour, shown in the cold grey palette and vertical movement, contrasted with the Sleeping Beauty who inhabits a still mute world of luxurious overgrown nature.
georgie@uppersidd.co.ukTel: 01285 658235 / 07722 652886
Georgie Hayward, Gastons Barn, Siddington, Cirencester, Glos GL7 6HL
We have a maximum of 64 places so please apply as soon as possible as places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Please note no refunds will be issued but in the event of a member being unable to attend and if there is no waiting list, he/she may find a replacement who does not need to be a member of the Society. Please inform me if you are transferring your place to someone else so a new booking form can be completed. If you have any dietary requirements which are not listed on the online form, please let me know.
Click Here For booking form please
THERE ARE LIMITED PLACES FOR THIS DAY OF SPECIAL INTEREST SO PLEASE BOOK EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT!
The doors to the hall will open at 10.00 a.m. when coffee and flapjacks will be served. The first lecture will start at 10.30 am prompt, there will then be a 15 minute break (coffee will not be served during this period). The second lecture will start at 11.45 a.m. Lunch will start at 12.45 a.m. and will finish at 2.00 p.m. when the final lecture starts which will end at c.3.00 p.m.
NB - the timings for the day are different from previous DSIs
The cost will be £48 to include morning coffee/tea, hot lunch and second cup of coffee/tea. You may bring your own alcohol but there will be a small corkage charge payable to the Westwoods Centre.