Tate Britain's survey is pretty much a greatest hits compilation. Arranged into thematic rooms, with little sense of narrative direction, the show won't do much to change anybody's preconceptions of the movement. Those who already love the stylistic mannerisms will delight in the accumulation of works here, but there is nothing presented to challenge the preconceptions of the audience.
It is simply and straightforwardly a chance to see all these works together. This is a missed opportunity to craft a narrative, to frame and re-present the Pre-Raphaelites in a new light, to address those who might be ambivalent about the movement, to offer something to those who hate the work, to really surprise those who love it. Instead we have a steady and polite gathering of many works already owned by Tate, together with many more that are on loan from other public collections in the UK, which can usually be seen for free. We are offered a rather cynical blockbuster show, lacking in imagination and ambition.
However, hidden in plain sight are pieces of the Pre-Raphealite world that are less familiar. Introducing the show is a display of drawings, 'friendship portraits' of the artists by each other, presented as tools for forging identity through the creation and sharing of images. In the same room is a drawing in pen and ink by John Everett Millais, who is represented by many paintings in the show, including, of course, Ophelia.
However, the glamorised naturalism in which Millais excels is rejected in his drawing The Disentombment of Queen Matilda from 1849. The small work is sparse, yet packed with eventful detail. The scene takes place in L'Abbaye aux Dames in Caen, Normandy. The old gothic world is ransacked, as Calvinists loot the tomb of William the Conquerer's wife. In the centre of the image, the leader of the men has discovered a ring of gold and sapphire, presented to the queen at her coronation.
Yet upon taking the ring, he is subject to the wrath of abbess, who condemns his actions. He is beset by remorse, and presents the ring to her, a small gesture of defiance and submission amidst the violent chaos of desecration and defacement. This oblique sequel to the Bayeux Tapestry, synthesising the pictorial forms of different eras in the graphic writing of dramatic history, doesn't glorify saints, martyrs or battles, but the actions of real women.
The inclusion of women as practitioners, rather than as idealised visions of beauty and virtue, is the most interesting and worthwhile achievement of the show, and the closest we might get to a Victorian Avant-Garde. Unfortunately, it is a small gesture, limited to a single wall. The few works by Elizabeth Siddel, the model for many of the paintings here, are particularly fascinating. Her interpretation of The Lady of Shallot shows a woman who looks not at us, or for us, but for herself. With a few lines of ink, Siddel opens up a world of graphic narrative, in which women have agency, interiority, and are the centre of their own stories, not soft-focus sex objects bound by the Pre-Raphealite's fantasies of virtue and chastity.
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at Tate Britain until 13 January 2013