William Rossetti's Art Criticism: The Search for Truth in Victorian Art, and: Victorian Painting, and: After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England (review)

William Rossetti's Art Criticism: The Search for Truth in Victorian Art, by Julie L'Enfant; pp. 374. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998, $55.00, $26.00 paper.

Victorian Painting, by Lionel Lambourne; pp. 512. London: Phaidon, 1999, £39.95, $59.95.

After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England, edited by Elizabeth Prettejohn; pp. 265. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, $55.00, $26.00 paper, £47.00, £16.99 paper.

William Rossetti's Art Criticism is the first book that has ever been devoted to surveying the whole body of the art criticism produced during nearly forty years by William Michael Rossetti, who has typically figured as a background member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a supportive cheerleader to the career and reputation (even posthumous) of his brother Dante Gabriel.

After introductory remarks on Rossetti's famous family, Julie L'Enfant, in Chapter One, considers the function of periodical reviews during the Victorian era, a period that witnessed a dramatic increase in both the number and especially the importance of art critics. Hitherto, many who wrote about art exhibitions merely described their contents, not unlike modern publicity releases, but William Rossetti was among a crucial wave of writers who transcended "purple prose" and analyzed the innovations and intentions of artists. While influenced by John Ruskin, the great cultural arbiter of the time, Rossetti in style and tone was not a clone. This distinctiveness ultimately proved to his credit, for Rossetti's lean prose stands in marked contrast to Ruskin's didactic, often florid, and occasionally hyperventilating tones.

The second chapter considers Rossetti's "warmup" as a judge and champion of Pre-Raphaelite art, first as an editor of the Germ and then as a defender in the Critic and the Spectator. His formulations of events and their critical reception reached American shores in the mid-50s in the pages of the Crayon; even today his insights on Pre-Raphaelitism remain central to scholarship in the field.

In Chapter Three the author tackles the significance of Rossetti's exposure to French artists vis-à-vis his criticism and focus on style, reflecting his maturing vision of both British and French art at the Universal Exposition of 1855. His reactions to the realism and naturalism of artists such as Gustave Courbet, J. A. D. Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, as registered in the Spectator, will surprise some readers; it definitely affected Rossetti's attitude to the PRB's "plain facts" and sincerity of style, which he questioned in articles appearing in Fraser's between 1861 and 1864. At this point, he had already established a career as a critic, generating reviews of both British and Continental art in the Saturday Review, the Reader, the London Review, Macmillan's, and the Fine Arts Quarterly Review, in the process expanding the range of his critical voice.

L'Enfant traces, in Chapter Four, what for some readers may be another revelation: Rossetti's increasing enthusiasm for and knowledge of Japanese art, which the 1862 International Exhibition introduced to England on a large scale. Japonisme not only had an impact on Rossetti's personal taste, but also affected his critical standards in evaluating the avant-garde goals of James McNeill Whistler.

Chapter Five contrasts Rossetti's later mixed responses to aestheticism and the revival of both medievalism and early Renaissance art in contemporary forms. Rossetti particularly favored Gothic influence but was more guarded about neoclassical leanings. This variety of artistic forces covered a considerable scope of art production--from the history painting of Ford Madox Brown (his father-in-law) to the medievalism of Edward Burne-Jones, to the individual talents of Albert Moore, Simeon Solomon, Frederic Leighton, George F. Watts...