Art Chowder September | October, Issue 17 | Page 37

B
etween October 2, 2017 and April 2, 2018 the National
Gallery in London held an exhibition entitled Reflections: Van
Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites. The online reviews (I found
seven 1 ) offer a good idea of what was in the show and a range of
viewpoints, from the smart aleck opinion that the Pre-Raphaelites
are unworthy to be considered in relation to the old masters in the
first place (a generic anti-Victorian sentiment), to the observation
that the curatorial thesis regarding Van Eyck as a significant
influence on Victorian British painting, is thinly supported.
The centerpiece was Jan Van Eyck’s well known Arnolfini
Marriage Portrait, which the National Gallery had acquired
in 1842 — its first major acquisition of an early Netherlandish
painting — it was put on display in 1843 to record crowds.
Founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (P.R.B.),
John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William
Holman Hunt, saw the painting as students in the Royal Academy
School, which at the time was in the same building. Hunt and
Millais reportedly met there in 1844 when Hunt was 17 and
Millais only 14. Rossetti was admitted to the Academy a year
later.
Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896)
Ophelia
1851-1852
oil on canvas
30 x 44”
Tate Gallery, London
As for their early impressions of Van Eyck, in his 1905
recollection Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood 2 , Hunt put it this way: “The works of the Van
Eycks (Jan and his older brother Hubert) showed the first
achievements of perfect realisation of natural form and
colour” and, specifically concerning the Arnolfini piece,
that it “Became dear to me, as (one among a few other) an
example of painting most profitable for youthful emulation.”
A little later in his memoir, telling of the time when he
and Rossetti traveled to the continent together to see its art
treasures close up, Hunt reports that when in Belgium, “We
studied attentively the works of … Van Eyck; the exquisite
delicacy of the workmanship and the unpretending character
of the invention made us feel we could not overestimate the
perfection of the painting.”
September |October 2018
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