Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Dante Gabriel Rossetti & William Morris (review)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris have often been lionized as the leading lights of the first and second phases, respectively, of Pre-Raphaelitism, and new scholarship on their practices risks treading old ground. Elizabeth Helsinger's volume ties together the painting, poetry, and plastic arts produced by both artists. Helsinger posits their output not as an antiquarian yearning for the artistic simplicity of earlier centuries (as has often been argued), but as a modern response to the burgeoning commercial culture of mass production, industrial design, secularism, and the increasing homogeneity of Victorian-era life.

Although Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts does not explicitly focus on the periodicals of the day—all but two of the fourteen mentions in the text are to the Germ and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine—the project could not have been completed without extensive examination of the periodical record. Helsinger compares published versions of poems that appeared first in journals and magazines, follows the critical reception of paintings and poems, and demonstrates how Rossetti and Morris were perceived by their contemporaries as designers (e.g., F. G. Stephens noting in the Athenaeum Rossetti's skill as a maker of art designed to fit the tastes and rooms of wealthy clients).

Helsinger's single argument convincingly encompasses what previous scholars often separated: "modern," didactic Pre-Raphaelitism that addressed contemporary social issues, and a "medieval" valuing of trecento and quattrocento artists' methods as being simpler and truer. Helsinger claims that acts of close attention, patterned repetition, and translation (in both the textual and visual senses) helped Pre-Raphaelites to place themselves in dialogue with industrial developments and the commodification of their era. Rossetti and Morris created their "made" art objects—paintings, furniture, poems—to stand alongside new mass-produced items. By co-opting many of the elements of modern design, they addressed the decreasing distance between "high" and "mass" art due to the spread of reproduction techniques (etchings, photography) and the shrinking costs of book and periodical production. Helsinger's volume is a compelling argument that goes beyond Rossetti and Morris to create a window into how late-Victorian culture attempted to catch up with advances in technology and industry.