WHY DO I NOT LIKE THE PRE-RAPHAELITES?
The Pre-Raphaelites sought to distance themselves from the general run of nineteenth-century English art. This immediately recommends them to my imagination - a fresh start, a new angle. They will not imitate the imitators of Raphael, with their conventional triangular rules for composition, or the smooth studio light that falls evenly over all subjects. They will look at the real world, and subject it to an intense vision which will distill its essence. They will study and practice the rendering of colours and surfaces with a skill that verges on trompe l'oeil.
Living as I do in a world of art which seems to place great importance on the scratchy cartoon style I ought to find myself very receptive of PRB paintings. Yet this is not so. My immediate reaction to most of their works is one of indifference, and frequently of repulsion. I ask myself why this is so.
Like most questions in the field of the arts this does not permit of a glib answer. Take Holman Hunt's Hireling Shepherd. This ought to be a painting I find approachable. It appears to consider the nineteenth-century marshmallow approach to the rustic world, and give it a good sharp twist. This swain and maiden are possessed of earthy characteristics; their skin is rough and sweaty; whatever they are up to it is not the study of lepidoptera; they sprawl on gritty ground (albeit with an unusually fine display of native British flora). The sheep untended go wandering in a way which will take a deal of sorting out later. And behind all this, and in happy contrast to it, the calm of the countryside as seen at a safe distance charms the sentimental eye. The technical skill in the rendering of shape and texture is exquisite.
And yet I find it repellent. The fact that it is obviously intended mistily to suggest ideas of sacrificial lambs and good shepherds doesn't help - I dislike being got at. (And anyway - 'the good shepherd careth for his sheep.' But why? So that they will make a good price when they come to be slaughtered - that's why. But I wander.)
But basically I think my revulsion is due to the fundamental dishonesty of the resolution of vision. Hunt has certainly observed with precision and understanding every blade of grass, every strand of a sheep's wool, and he has rendered them with microsopic clarity. But we do not see the world like this. At any moment our mind is concentrated on a minute area of our field of vision. At the same time we are aware of surrounding concentric circles of visual images of decreasing precision, and we we constantly rapidly and unconsciously shift our concentration to other points in this vaguer penumbra. But Hunt shouts at us that we must be aware of the leaf on the shrub, the wrinkle in the stocking, the crease in the apron, the back-lighting on the lambswool, and....and....and...., all at the same time and with the same intensity. It is a hard sell, and the mind backs away. Or mine does, anyway.
