The Majesty of Nature; Objects and Settings in Pre-Raphaelite works.

Initiated in 1851, ‘Found’ teased Rossetti throughout his painting life. He struggled with perspective and the technical challenges of painting from nature and the work was never fully completed. The painting depicts a surprise encounter between a drover driving to market and his former sweetheart, now shamed, a fallen woman. Poignant and dramatic, the painting remained true to Pre Raphaelite doctrines with the artist travelling to study a wall in Chiswick to finesse detail and spending long hours at Ford Maddox Brown’s perfecting the image of the calf. This painting is unique in that it…

This Woodpecker tapestry depicts a bird and a woodpecker sitting in a tree garlanded with flowers and swirling leaves. The subject is taken from the Latin poet Ovid's Metamorphoses: a sorceress turns King Picus into a woodpecker when he refuses to become her lover. The texts (from Morris’s poetry) lament that ‘I once a king and chief now am the tree bark’s thief’ ‘ever twixt trunk and leaf chasing the prey’.

It was woven at Merton Abbey under Morris' supervision. It was originally hung in the billiard room of 24 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury and is now on display at the…

This ‘Snakeshead' design was designed by William Morris and printed for Morris & Co. by Thomas Wardle in 1876. It shows a repeat pattern and floral motives used in earlier medieval fabrics which greatly influenced Morris's style. He was also influenced by intimate medieval gardens or ‘herbers’, enclosed and filled with sweet-scented flowers and herbs. Morris preferred native species and those that had been in cultivation for centuries, such as lilies, larkspur, tulips, irises and hollyhocks and chose fragrant climbers including roses, honeysuckle and jasmine.…

This brooch represents a songbird surrounded by a heart-shaped olive branch. The colouring suggests a kingfisher. It is bejewelled with coral, turquoise and with a ruby inset for the eye.  It was designed by Burne-Jones for his daughter and made by Mark of Cario Giuliano in 1884.  

The kingfisher is said to be the first bird to fly from Noah‘s ark after the flood, supposedly receiving the orange of the setting sun on its breast and the blue of the sky on its back. Burne-Jones may have wanted to represent the vibrancy of nature particularly in summer, as well…

John Everett Millais clearly illustrates the Pre-Raphaelite`s early involvement with Nature in his painting of Ophelia. The intricate botanical perfection seen in its depiction of botanical features - the plants and flowers of the riverbank where Ophelia lies drowned – were seen as being even more accurate than those shown in early forms of photography, developing at this time. Realistic depictions of flowers and foliage such as pansies, violets, nettles and willow are shown with great attention to detail (although one criticism was that they could not all bloom at the same time). Millais…

The subject of this painting by John Everett Millais was a young woman from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, who also featured in Tennyson's poem of the same name. In many ways, she represents a Victorian ideal of femininity: chaste, pure, doing a domestic task in the private sphere of a domestic setting, a 'moated grange' in this case. The painting mediates nature through the elements of the domestic interior: note the floral design of the tapestry and the wallpaper. The stained-glass window leads through an enclosed garden or 'Hortus conclusus', a feminine space where…

In this painting Millais captures the wistful innocence of a group of beautiful young girls gathering Autumnal leaves.  The seasonal choice hints at the transience of life, casting the shadow of death over their youthful innocence and ignorance. The expressions on the girls’ faces are haunting and mesmerising, a perfect example of the Pre-Raphaelite interest in painting in and from nature. Succinctly described in an 1857 review, this painting exudes ‘a feeling of melancholy […] very poetically expressed’. 

Autumn is represented by a kneeling woman eating an apple, activating the theme of temptation, suggesting that she is in a lush paradise, surrounded by apple tree branches and bordered with green leaves and orange fruit or nuts.

This hand-painted tile is inscribed with the title ‘Autumn’. It was part of a full seasonal set which decorated a plant stand and a cabinet by Kimbul and Cabus, an American furniture maker who carved in the Gothic style. The tile was made in London by W B Simpson & Sons between 1870-1885.

British Museum, 1980,0307.153

This painting represents Jane Morris reclining in traditional Icelandic garments brought back to her by her husband William Morris after a trip to the Nordic country. The model preferred the comfortable, more flowing lines of the blouse compared to the fussy style of Victorian fashion.

The PRB were known for challenging contemporary femininity. In this portrait we see Jane Morris staring directly at the artist, with nothing demure or downward-looking in her stance or facial expression. The challenging nature of this portrait is further fuelled by the fact that Morris had a turbulent…

This portrait of Thomas Combe, known in PRB circles as ‘the patriarch’ after he grew this impressive beard, was painted by William Holman Hunt in 1860.

Thomas and his wife Martha, a maternal figure for the younger PRB’s and nicknamed ‘Mrs Pat’, were great patrons of the movement. Thomas was a well-known philanthropist who made his fortune as a senior partner in charge of the ‘Bible’ division of Oxford University Press. The Combes presided over a ‘good-humoured salon’ at their home in the Jericho area of Oxford, which was frequented by both Millais and Collins and became an important…