here has been a great deal of controversy amongst scholars as to what exactly constitutes Pre-Raphaelite sculpture in the first place, or whether it is even a useful or legitimate term. Professor Michael Hatt, in his lecture "Can Sculpture Be Pre-Raphaelite?" given at "Today and Tomorrow," the Pre-Raphaelite Symposium held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on 9 March 2013, indicated the quandary: "A sculptor can definitely be a Pre-Raphaelite. As to his work I am less certain." The eminent critic of Victorian sculpture, Benedict Read, in his chapter asking, "Was there Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture?" in Pre-Raphaelite Papers, quoted a passage by W. M. Rossetti on John Lucas Tupper's bas-relief Beryn and Syrophanes Playing Chess that elicited further thoughts on the subject:
It is at the extremest edge of P.R.Bism, most conscientiously copied from nature, and with good character. The P.R.B. principle of uncompromising truth to what is before you is carried out to the full, but with some want of consideration of the requirements peculiar to the particular form of art adopted. According to all R.A. ideas, it is a perfect sculpturesque heresy, whose rejection - especially seeing that it is the introductory sample of the P.R.B. system in sculpture - cannot be much wondered at, though certainly most unjustifiable. [Rossetti, Letters and Diaries 305]
Read then stated: "In spite of some qualification on the writer's part about half way through, the passage could be said to indicate not only that there was a sculptural context within Pre-Raphaelitism, but also that there were quite specific Pre-Raphaelite values that could be applied to sculpture" (97).
Left to right: Thomas Woolner's Puck, 1845-47, with its Shakespearean subject and its leafy base, which tells a story. (b) John Lucas Tupper's Linnaeus, 1856, with his coat, and the plants around his feet, highly detailed (c) Alexander Munro’s Young Romilly, 1863, in which the minutely realised ferns are so prominent. [Click on the images to enlarge them, and for more information about them.]
There definitely were a number of sculptors associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood including not only Thomas Woolner, one of its seven founding members, but also Alexander Munro, John Hancock, John Lucas Tupper, and Bernard Smith. Of these Woolner and Munro had by far the most successful careers. William Holman Hunt, when considering whether Thomas Woolner should be accepted as a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, recorded:
Rossetti, whose enthusiasm for our principles grew with greater familiarity, talked much of Woolner as one to whom he had explained the resolution of Millais and myself to turn more devotedly to Nature as the one means of purifying modern art, and said that Woolner had declared the system to be the only one that could reform sculpture, and that therefore he wished to be enrolled with us… The many indications of Woolner's energy and his burning ambition to do work of excelling truthfulness and strong poetic spirit expressed in his energetic talk were enough to persuade me that Rossetti's suggestion that he should be made one of our number was a reasonable one. [Pre-Raphaelitism,112, 128].
Read certainly considered the Pre-Raphaelite qualities of a combination of "High Seriousness and Naturalism" to have been features inherent in Woolner's major Ideal works for the rest of his career (108).
Sculptors have been considered as Pre-Raphaelite in their work for a number of reasons, but the principal question is what are the "specific Pre-Raphaelite values that can be applied to sculpture?" (Barringer and Rosenfeld 12). One criterion that has been suggested is a similarity with the P.R.B. painters in terms of inspiration, with subjects taken from sources like the Bible, Dante, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. Examples would include Woolner's Puck, as well as Alexander Munro's Paolo and Francesca of 1852, which is the three-dimensional equivalent of D. G. Rossetti's early watercolours on this subject taken from Dante — a work which, when "viewed from any angle presents pointed outlines, precisely rendered detail and the atmosphere of youthful ardour familiar from early Pre-Raphaelite drawing and painting" (Rosenfeld, Pre-Raphaelites Victorian Avant-Garde, 112).
Stylistic similarities to the PRB. Left: Paolo and Francesca, by Alexander Munro, 1852. Right: John Hancock's Beatrice, 1854.
John Hancock's Beatrice of c. 1851 again has much in common with Rossetti's early work based on Dante. Another value linking these sculptors to the "hard-edge" initial phase of Pre-Raphaelitism is the stylistic affinities of incorporating intense detail related to "truth to nature" in their work. This is exemplified by the superbly detailed accurate foliage depicted in the base of Munro's Young Romilly of c.1863, a work that Jason Rosenfeld felt "represents the pinnacle of the treatment of nature in Pre-Raphaelite sculpture" (Pre-Raphaelites Victorian Avant-Garde, 112). Another example would be Tupper's statue of the naturalist "Carl Linnaeus for the great hall of the Natural History Museum at Oxford. William Michael Rossetti regarded this work, particularly Tupper's handling of the botanist's fur coat and the plants and flowers at his feet, as "a work of the most conscientious order in realism of intention and unsparing precision of detail" (Poems, viii-ix). Such intense naturalistic detail included in sculpture, however, was not a totally radical departure and could also be applied to the work of certain other Victorian sculptors not working within the orbit of the Pre-Raphaelites.
To be truly considered a defining work of Pre-Raphaelite sculpture it would have to be the three-dimensional equivalent of the characteristics that marked the paintings and drawings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in its early years from 1848-1851. Early Pre-Raphaelite drawings by the P.R.B., in their naïve awkward and angular "medieval style," could definitely be compared to Tupper's sculpture of Beryn and Syrophanes Playing Chess. It may therefore be pertinent that Tupper's sculpture dates to 1851. The relief certainly shows features in common with these early drawings, including its detailed severe outline and its stiff awkward gestures, probably even more than it shows similarities with early Pre-Raphaelite paintings. It is therefore no wonder that W. M. Rossetti specifically singled out Tupper's sculpture as being "the introductory sample of the P.R.B. system in sculpture."
Beryn and Syrophanes Playing Chess, by John Lucas Tupper.1851, plaster relief, 54 x 69.5 x 5 cm, Dennis T. Lanigan collection.
In his sculpture of Beryn and Syrophanes Playing Chess Tupper has carried his Pre-Raphaelite principles to the extreme. Like his colleagues amongst the Pre-Raphaelite painters, Tupper refused to accept the prevailing conventions of his time. With the sculpture's jarring stiffness, awkward gestures, and a lack of the grace normally seen in the neo-classical sculptures of the period, it is hardly surprising that this work was rejected by the Royal Academy. Tupper's sculpture is thus not merely a rediscovery but a revelation because of what it contributes to the debate as to whether Pre-Raphaelite sculpture actually existed. After studying Tupper's relief there can be no doubt that it is indeed on the "extremest edge of P.R.Bism" and for the time "a perfect sculpturesque heresy." It is certainly the only known example of what truly constitutes Pre-Raphaelite sculpture in its earliest phase.
Related Material
Bibliography
Barringer, Tim and Jason Rosenfeld. "Victorian Avant-Garde", in Barringer, Rosenfeld, and A. Smith. Pre-Raphaelites Victorian Avant-Garde. London: Tate Publishing, 2012.
Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Vol. I. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1905. 112-13 and 128.
Lanigan, Dennis T. "John Lucas Tupper's Beryn and Syrophanes Playing Chess, a rediscovery: sculpture at the extremest edge of P.R.Bism," PRS Review, 29 (Spring 2021): 47-53.
Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982. 123, 180, 235.
Read, Benedict. "Was there Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture?" In Leslie Parris, ed. Pre-Raphaelite Papers. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1984. 97-110.
Read, Benedict and Joanna Barnes, eds. Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture: Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture 1848-1914. London: Lund Humphries, 1991.
Rossetti, William Michael Ed. Poems by the Late John Lucas Tupper. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897. viii-ix.
Rossetti, William Michael (Ed.). Praeraphaelite Letters and Diaries. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1900.
Last modified 10 April 2021