Saturday 29th April 2023
Visit to The Rossettis Exhibition at Tate Britain, London. This major exhibition is devoted to the radical Rossetti generation, through and beyond the Pre-Raphaelite years: Dante Gabriel, Christina and Elizabeth (nee Siddal). The Rossettis will take a fresh look at the fascinating myths surrounding the unconventional relationships between Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris. Join us to explore the paintings, drawings, photography, poetry, design and more of the Rossettis and their associates.
Programme
8.30am. Depart from St. Philip’s Cathedral, Colmore Row, Birmingham.
Coffee break en route.
12.00 pm (approx.) Arrive at Tate Britain, Millbank, London.
Free time for lunch etc. Refreshments available at Tate Britain.
1.00pm. Entry to The Rossettis exhibition.
5.00pm. Depart from Tate Britain, Millbank, London.
8.00 pm (approx.) Arrive back in Birmingham.
Cost: (includes coach travel, admission to the exhibition and admin fee)
Members and Friends: £54.95
Concessions: £52.95 Art Fund Member: £43.95Art Fund Concessions: £42.95
Travel directly to the Tate, in good company, and avoid the Rail Strikes.
Friends are welcome.
If you require further information about this visit please contact Chimaine Ross on 0121 694 5737 or 07411 672498 or email eventsprsoc@gmail.comPlease note that events/entrance tickets are not issued in advance of the visit.
Tickets can be purchased online at www.ticketsource.co.uk/pre-raphaelitesociety OR by cheque.
Please make cheque payable to ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Society’ and send to: Chimaine Ross, Events Secretary, 25 Mappleborough Rd, Shirley, Solihull, Birmingham B90 1AG before 15th April 2023.
Contact on the day of trip: Mobile: 07411 672498 or email: eventsprsoc@gmail.com
Saturday 27th May at 11.am
Wightwick Manor and the 13 (+1) Women Artists who Shaped its Stories. Lecture via Zoom by Hannah Squire
With more artworks created by professional female artists in its collection than the National Gallery, London, and a collection mostly acquired by the Mander family after the house and its contents (with a healthy endowment) was given to the National Trust in 1937. These artworks were acquired specifically, and rather uniquely at the time, to be exhibited to the public by art historian and writer Rosalie Mander and her husband Sir Geoffrey Mander in this Wolverhampton Museum and their home. As well as the delightful oil paintings, the collection also features watercolours, drawings, sketchbooks, embroideries, letters and books. The Manor is teeming with women’s artistic and poetical genius, and now also boasts a gallery space dedicated to the art of Evelyn and William De Morgan.
This talk will explore the creations of women from Marie Spartali Stillman to May Morris, Elizabeth Siddal to Lucy Madox Brown and the lesser-known Winifred Spencer Stanhope and Flora MacDonald Reid, among all the others - including a potential Christina Rossetti painting - Is it? Isn’t it?
Hannah Squire, B.A., M.A., M.Res (University of Birmingham), is an Art and Literature historian, researcher, writer and freelance curator. Hannah previously worked as an Assistant Curator, National Public Programmes at the National Trust, working on national campaigns to create curatorial content focused on inclusive histories. Before this she worked at Wightwick Manor for over three years, where she led the 2018 Women and Power progamming and the 2017 Prejudice and Pride programming exploring the work of female and queer artists stories in connection with the Manor. As part of this programming, she curated the second only solo exhibition of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal’s art and poetry, Beyond Ophelia in 2018 and in 2019 co-curated the Look Beneath the Lustre exhibition of Evelyn and William De Morgan’s work, which you can still visit at Wightwick. She also co-hosts the Pre-Raphaelite Society podcast, and co-leads on the Society’s social media, as well as contributing to its journal.
This lecture will take place online via Zoom at 11am. Login details will be emailed during the week prior to the event.
PRS Member ticket price - £5.00.
Non-Member ticket price - £8.00
If you require further information regarding this lecture please contact - Chimaine Ross 0121 694 5737 or 07411 672498 or email eventsprsoc@gmail.com
Tickets can be purchased online at: www.ticketsource.co.uk/pre-raphaelitesociety OR by cheque.
Please make cheques (1 cheque per event please) payable to ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Society’ and send to: Chimaine Ross, Events Secretary, 25 Mappleborough Road, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands. B90 1AG, before 20th May 2023.
Saturday 10th June at 11.am
‘The People I was Born Amongst’: Edward Burne-Jones and Birmingham, lecture by Dr. Andrea Wolkrager, at The Birmingham and Midland Institute, 9 Margaret Street, Birmingham B3 3BS. This is a face to face lecture
In 1891, Edward Burne-Jones presented the city of Birmingham with the monumental watercolour, ‘The Star of Bethlehem’. Pointedly crafted to address not only the place of his birth, but also one of the epicenters of British industrialization, Burne-Jones transformed the traditional iconography of the Adoration of the Magi into a salient condemnation of luxury, materiality and power. In dialogue with his stained glass windows for St. Philip’s, now Birmingham Cathedral, this talk will elucidate Burne-Jones’s engagement with themes of witness, radical egalitarianism, and the manifestation of the divine in collective humanity and the natural world. From his origins in Birmingham to his international preeminence as a leader of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, this talk will illuminate how Burne-Jones dedicated his life to the visual arts as a form of secular ministry.
Dr. Andrea Wolk Rager is the Jesse Hauk Shera Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Ph.D from Yale University and held a Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the Yale Centre for British Art. In 2012, she served as co-curator with Angus Trumble for the exhibition ‘Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century’, and co-edited the accompanying catalogue. Her most recent book The Radical Vision of Edward Burne-Jones, was published in 2022 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and distributed by Yale University Press.
Admission £9.00. Friends Welcome.
Coffee and tea will be available to purchase in the BMI Coffee Lounge from 10.15 am
Please note that tickets are not issued in advance. Pre-booking is advised. The Society reserves the right to allocate places on a first-come, first served basis, where demand exceeds capacity.
The lecture will be recorded and made available to purchase for a small fee from our website.
If you require further information about this lecture, please contact: Chimaine Ross 0121 694 5737 or 07411 672498 or email eventsprsoc@gmail.com
Tickets can be purchased online at: www.ticketsource.co.uk/pre-raphaelitesociety OR by cheque. Please make cheques (1 cheque per event please) to ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Society’ and send to: Mrs. Chimaine Ross, Events Secretary, 25 Mappleborough Road, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands. B90 1AG, before 3rd June 2023.
Saturday 8th July at 11am
Gerald Manley Hopkins and the Pre-Raphaelites. Lecture by Jordan Welsh at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, 9 Margaret Street, Birmingham B3 3BS. This is a face to face lecture
The poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was largely unknown during his lifetime, only achieving global recognition over thirty years after his death. He became revered as a visionary and modern poet with many of his works being highly complex pieces of verse grounded in a deep Christian belief and a unique understanding of the world. This talk will examine the journal entries and letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins which demonstrate how he interacted with a number of figures from the Pre-Raphaelite movement. They also provide an insight into how he regarded their works and philosophies and as such gives us an assessment of the reception of Pre-Raphaelitism by someone who was a witness and outsider to the movement’s growth. It will highlight some of the key encounters Hopkins had with Pre-Raphaelitism, his comments and critiques of the movement, as well as some of his own poetry which sought to respond to works by the likes of Christina Rossetti and others.
Jordan Welsh is a Ph.D student at the University of Essex. His thesis focuses on the influence of place and space in the depictions of religion and nature in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was awarded the BARS Stephen Copley Research Award in 2021 which contributed to his research on the legacy and influence of the Oxford Movement. His other research interests include the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, geographical influences in literature, and eco-criticism.
Admission £9.00. Friends Welcome.
Coffee and tea will be available to purchase in the BMI Coffee Lounge from 10.15 am.
Please note that tickets are not issued in advance. Pre-booking is advised. The Society reserves the right to allocate places on a first-come, first served basis, where demand exceeds capacity.
The lecture will be recorded and made available to purchase for a small fee from our website.
If you require further information about this lecture, please contact: Chimaine Ross 0121 694 5737 or 07411 672498 or email eventsprsoc@gmail.com
Tickets can be purchased online at: www.ticketsource.co.uk/pre-raphaelitesociety OR by cheque.
Please make cheques ( 1 cheque per event please) to ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Society’ and send to: Mrs. Chimaine Ross, Events Secretary, 25 Mappleborough Road, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands. B90 1AG, before 1st July 2023.
Saturday 16th September at 11am
A Fishy Tail: Gendering Pre-Raphaelite Mermaids and Sirens. Lecture by Cecilia Neil-Smith. This is a Zoom lecture
Cecilia’s Ph.D research focuses on androgynous depictions of mermaids and sirens in Victorian art and literature, exploring the possibility that they acted as a symbol for trans and non-binary communities during the latter half of the nineteenth century. This paper focuses on the works of two highly influential Pre-Raphaelite artists, Evelyn De Morgan and Edward Burne-Jones and their exploration of gender nonconformity, both in their own lives and in their artwork, but crucially through their interpretations of selected literature. De Morgan's mermaid triptych, based upon Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid (1837) will be analysed in relation to the tale itself, and to both De Morgan’s and Anderson’s unconventional lifestyles. She will argue that, through the use of the androgynous mermaid, these three images - namely ‘The Little Sea Maid’ (1886), ‘The Sea Maidens (1888) and ‘Daughters of The Mist (1914) - act both as a vehicle through which to support the ongoing fight for women’s rights, and as a symbol for gender nonconformity. Edward Burne-Jones’s two large-scale marine works, The Depths of the Sea (1886) and the unfinished oil painting The Sirens (1870-98) will also be discussed, as reflections of the artist’s progressive views on changing gender roles in the Victorian era. Cecilia will be relating the paintings to their textual sources - namely Homer’s The Odyssey which experienced a surge in popularity during the late nineteenth century, and the sea-themed poetry of his idol, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She hopes to reveal how text and image can unite to convey a message of acceptance and empowerment for gender nonconforming individuals in the Victorian era.
Cecilia is in her second year of PhD studies in Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, and her project focuses on mermaids and sirens as figures of indeterminate gender in art and literature between 1860 and 1910. She previously studied English (B.A.) and Victorian Literature, Art and Culture (M.A.) at Royal Holloway, University of London, before studying for a History of Art Postgraduate Certificate at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests include Pre-Raphaelite depictions of gender, Victorian Spiritualism and the representation of mythical creatures and monsters in British art.
This lecture will take place online via Zoom at 11am. Login details will be emailed during the week prior to the event.
PRS Member ticket price - £5.00. Non-Member ticket price - £8.00
If you require further information regarding this lecture please contact - Chimaine Ross 0121 694 5737 or 07411 672498 or email eventsprsoc@gmail.com
Tickets can be purchased online at: www.ticketsource.co.uk/pre-raphaelitesociety OR by cheque. Please make cheques (1 cheque per event please) payable to ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Society’ and send to: Chimaine Ross, Events Secretary, 25 Mappleborough Road, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands. B90 1AG, before 9th September 2023.
Created 1 April 2023