Challenging/discussing The Importance Of Images In Pre-raphaelite/victorian Text

Challenging/discussing the importance of images in pre-raphaelite/victorian text

I am going to take into account and appreciate images in forms such as photographs, paintings, illustrations and their contribution to pre-raphaelite ideas and victorian text whilst challenging their importance to these texts. Arthurian legends alongside key ideologies of photography of the time will be used to determine whether images are crucial to text or if one is more significant than the other. We will find that images, whether crucial or not to text, do almost always transform a text. However, should it be seen as a medium that causes the reader to digress from the text? Or does it create a liminal space between image and text, one that not only depicts the magic of Arthurian legends or the atmosphere of victorian text, but a state of which pre-raphaelite writers aspire to achieve through their writing? These questions will be explored within close analysis of various Victorian texts such as excerpts from Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of The King, which is suitable as it is regarded as the first photo book. Within it are poems depicting Arthurian legends such as ‘Mariana’ and ‘Lady of Shalott’. This book contains Julia Margaret Cameron’s controversial daguerreotype photos alongside each text which will have its significance challenged. Furthermore, the paintings of John Everett Millais will also be compared to these photographs and the Arthurian legends of Idylls of the King, as well as determining if photography or paintings are more useful to text. Discussed in addition will be the first novel illustrated with photographs, Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach. Not only are there illustrations in this novel, but photography is one of the main themes of the novel’s story where we can see image and text merge together within the writing. Although, we’ll find that the actual illustrations which accompany the text, do not relate much to the text, yet still contribute to its atmosphere.

The pre raphaelites and their ideologies on literature and art will be useful to the exploration of the late Victorian novel Bruges La Morte. These will be introduced by Lindsay Smith’s Pre-Raphaelitism: Poetry and Painting. Within my analysis I will also be referring to Marylu Hills "Shadowing Sense at War with Soul": Julia Margaret Cameron`s Photographic Illustrations of Tennyson`s Idylls of the King which focuses on the unification and collaboration between Tennyson, Cameron and their work. In addition, I will be analysing the Impreciseness in Julia Margaret Cameron`s Portrait Photographs in the History of Photography Article by Mirjam Brusius, to help explore where Cameron’s images go wrong. Lastly, Victorian photography and literary nostalgia by Helen Groth will give us an insight into the Victorian public’s ideas and harsh opinions on Cameron`s photography by other critics of the time, including her own take on it. Amongst clashing opinions like this, I will be acknowledging the immensely creative art of depicting a text through a lens or through the power of a paintbrush, whilst meanwhile investigating if their endeavours succeed in correctly depicting a Victorian text.

The photography for Idylls of the King done by Julia Margaret Cameron, was commissioned by Alfred Tennyson although it was known that he never was in favour of his literature being illustrated. Even when Cameron first took his photo, he described himself as looking like a ‘dirty monk’. Despite this, the poems of Idylls of the King depict Arthurian characters which were not necessarily hard to represent in a photograph as they were all well known characters of the time. Furthermore, the text paired with the imagery would guide the reader`s imagination, especially as the Arthurian legends were very much about mystical characters and magic. So in the case of this specific book, I believe he allowed himself to experiment with creating the first photobook which was indeed a risk to be taken. As stated in Hill’s article, the book was ‘completed in 1875. The collection was neither a financial nor a critical success when it first appeared’ and that could have very well been due to the risk Tennyson took with commissioning Cameron in particular to provide the images for his book. Cameron’s photography style was ‘marked by a blurred focus and an intense lighting of the face, while the background receded into darkness. The effect on these portraits is that of sudden and startling, but not necessarily precise, definition of the subject. The slight blurring further tends to give an illusion of movement to the portrait.’ The blurriness and unclarity of Cameron’s photos were often regarded as a mistake despite being intentional. In analysing Cameron’s impreciseness Mirjam Brusius says in her article ‘Cameron’s photographs falls into two parties: one considered the impreciseness to be deliberate,whereas the other regarded it as accidental’ then carries on to explain that ‘Helmut Gernsheim was first to claim that imprecision in Cameron’s photographs was accidental…He considered Cameron’s first photographs – with very few exceptions – to be failures’. Whether it was accidental or not, Cameron’s sharpness of her images were not as important to her as their spiritual effect she wanted her images to give off. Brusius also claims ‘whether the plate was covered with blemishes. Even if she dropped and cracked the negative she would still make prints from it and boldly send them to exhibitions, when any other photographer would have discarded the picture. Lacking training, she had a complete disregard for technical perfection’ Her style of work would have negatively impacted Tennyson’s image of Idylls of the King, with readers therefore assuming that messy photos meant messy writing within the book, even before reading it. According to the ideas of society at the time, ‘photography was typically driven by the aspiration to produce an exact picture, but Cameron’s portraits do the opposite’. Although her photographs were taken in unfit conditions such as having ‘no adjustment of light – every door window closed, fire lit inside the room – ice snow outside’, Cameron’s son was right in saying ‘In photography, as in other art, the process is nothing, the final result is everything’. Camerons photography should have been regarded the same as any piece of writing would, for its outcome instead of its process. In fact, Cameron’s photos were quite beneficial to the contents and atmosphere of the text itself, despite the public slander she faced. For instance the fact that she used Darregureteypes as her technique of photography, meant that she could successfully show the theme of light and darkness which was prevalent in Idylls of the King. Hill presents Victorian essayist Thomas Carlyle’s comments on daguerreotypes: “You shall have that sunshadow, a Daguerreotype likeness, as the sun shall please to paint it.” This was useful as ‘The sun’s power to reproduce an image is suggested in the first idyll, The Coming of Arthur’. An example of this is when Tennyson writes ‘Have power on this dark land to lighten it, And power on this dead world to make it live.’ Furthermore, there is clear imagery of light and shadow in the ‘Dedication to Prince Albert’ when ‘The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse, Darkening the world.’ He’s also described as ‘that fierce light which beats upon a throne’. The concept of being remembered and represented through light and the sun is how photography was understood at the time by the Victorians due to the daguerreotype. Most importantly, the mystical aura of Cameron’s images contributed to the magical nature of the Arthurian legends in their blurriness and illusion of movement. The fact that parts of the images were clear amongst the blurriness suggests the idea of liminality and creating a state between the real world and the fictional world which is where Tennyson journeys his readers to. As Well as this, the images would have fit in perfectly with pre-raphaelites vision of the time as according to Lindsay Smith, ‘Pre-Raphaelite painters’ and poets’ desire to explore intersections between the contemporary physical world and its seeming antithesis: The abstruse metaphysical realm.’ This is exhibited for example in her photo of Merlin and Vivien, where Merlin’s stark white beard is luminous compared to the background but at the same time his robe fades mystically into the background as if he is an illusion. Moreover the cracks and white marks on the photo, which could be regarded as photographic errors, do in fact give the impression of magic coming from Merlin’s hand. This of course benefits the poem as Merlin is a wizard in the Arthurian legend and therefore, these marks would not throw off the readers of the poem. As in the words of Helen Groth, ‘Not only do Cameron’s luminous faces make the previously invisible visible, her images promise the possibility of infinite returns to an unchanging and irrefutable origin’, suggesting that with the help of her images, the Arthurian legend remains timeless. Despite this, it would have been difficult for the Victorian public to open up their imaginations after being so used to a standard and ‘correct’ way of photography. As a result, Cameron herself reveals that ‘my beautiful large photographs are reduced to cabinet size for his people’s edition and the first illustration is transferred to wood cut’, suggesting regret of the collaboration from Tennyson’s side and that he was not pleased with how Cameron’s imaginative images transformed his poems into an otherworldly realm. Hence, it is believed by many that his collaboration with Cameron was ‘an act of deliberate kindness since he hated illustrations of his poem, even when he supervised them.

However, whilst Cameron was adding pre-raphaelite magic into Victorian texts, others such as John Everret Millais who would go down the safer route of painting an image, were misconstruing the story lines of Arthurian legends. John Everett Millais` well known painting of Mariana painted with oil on mahogany in 1851 is a spectacle to look at by itself, yet if connected to a text such as Tennyson’s Mariana, then they are two opposing works of art, none being relevant to the other. First of all, Mariana is painted by Millais, wearing a bright blue, regal dress. She’s well dressed with neatly made hair and is also leaning back in a pose of relaxed contemplation. Millais has clearly romanticised the character of Mariana in his painting whereas in Tenysson’s poem in Idylls of the King, Mariana exclaims ‘My life is dreary’ and ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’. Here we see signs of visible mental distress and suicidal thoughts, ones that cannot be interpreted from Millais painting as she is presented as a well maintained and content individual. There is also a clear image of sad destruction and pessimism in the lines ‘The rusted nails fell from the knots’ and ‘The broken sheds looked sad and strange’. The colours in this painting are too vivid to depict the poem`s pessimistic nature and perhaps Cameron`s monochromatic, dark colours in her daguerreotypes are a better fit for a text like this. Her photograph of Mariana 1875 in particular, provides a more accurate feeling of the poem as Mariana looks tired, depressed and has unmade hair. Also the yellow and brown colours of the image symbolise the appropriate wornness and deterioration, two emotions that Mariana is going through. Further faults in Millais painting include the white lily painted in the window which is a symbol of purity, yet there is nothing pure about the poem`s dark atmosphere. As for the stained glass window, it is probably the most unrelated part of this painting as there is no mention of religion in the poem. It is unclear why Millais has added a colourful and hopeful stained glass window, as well as a religious shrine sitting behind Mariana, however, religious imagery was indicative of the Victorian time and prolifics did have a habit of drawing them. Even though it may be an attempt to represent Victorian beliefs, it is not useful in representing Tennyson’s actual storyline. As mentioned previously, Tennyson was not in favour of his work being illustrated and Millais’ painting is a visual result of why he did not like it. The only depiction of destruction in the painting may be the dead mouse in the room and the fallen leaves coming in through the open window. Whilst these details do depict a ‘lonely moated grange’, compared to the rest of the painting, they are miniscule and not the centre of attention when one looks at it. We could conclude that Millais’ paintings are not a beneficial medium of representing texts as he embraces his artistic licence too much to the point where it does not relate to Tennyson’s story. However, if we compare Millais’ painting of Ophelia to Cameron’s Tableau vivant of Tennysons ‘The Lady of Shallot’, Millais painting gains more importance. There are parallels between the Lady of Shallot and Shakespeare`s character of Ophelia, including both women’s connection to nature, their detachment of reality and the curses that they cannot escape resulting in them drowning in the river. Therefore, any depictions of them in images should also be as similar as the stories. Starting with Millais’ oil painting of Ophelia, we see her laying pale and lifeless in the river however covered in vividly bright flowers as expected from Millais typical use of saturated colours. Even though she is dead, the natural setting around her is full of life with beautiful greenery and overgrown bushes. The tall pond plants represent that her soul is not dead and still flourishes as it is connected with nature and of course there is a symbol of hope and purity from the white lilies that Millais has added into his painting yet again. Although there are dead and dry branches in the top left, upon closer inspection there is a robin perched on one of the branches symbolising rebirth and freedom of her tortured soul. Overall the beautiful setting is romanticising her death and so is Tennysons ‘Lady of Shallot’ in the lines ‘Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden-wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by’. Millais has accurately presented her floating by a ‘garden-wall’ and in addition to this, her pale face and outstretched arms suggests she is some sort of a mythical being. This is important as the poem says ‘There she weaves by night and day, A magic web with colours gay’, presenting an ethereal presentation of the woman. On the other hand, Cameron, when producing one of her photographs of ‘Lancelot and Elaine’ which are the characters in Lady of Shalott, uses a completely different approach. She has Elaine lying on a bed instead of a river with the only essence of nature being the few flowers scattered on her lap. Furthermore in this tableau vivant, her body is covered with a dark blanket with Lancelot watching over her, erasing the feminine energy of the poem which is unlikely coming from Cameron and her obsession with capturing female beauty. However, maybe she wanted to show female justice and empowerment as this particular image was rejected from the Idylls of the King and produced on her own accord. As Groth says ‘the seemingly infinite supply of Victorian images of elegantly tragic women, prepubescent girls, cherubic children, idyllic pastoral scenes, imperial landscapes, and fanciful dressings up, the history behind their production often tells a far less romantic, yet no less compelling, tale of ambition’ linking to Cameron’s struggle in gaining approval in the industry. Despite this, I don’t believe this represents the romanticization of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ which Tennyson was aiming for and the use of tableau vivant, whilst representing the repeated refrain at the end of each paragraph, having Elaine in a frozen state does not suggest the natural motion of nature which Millais flowing river and budding plants do.

On the subject of images being unrelated to the text, the first photo novel Bruges La Morte may prove this to be a benefit to Victorian text. George Rodenbach’s eerie novel follows the story of a man consumed with the obsession of his deceased wife. Photography in relation to memory and mourning plays a key part in this book as of the time. The photographs, yet unrelated, still manage to preserve a memory and provide a connection to the text through their atmosphere. Marylu Hill states that ‘the photograph as a medium embodies just such a transitional zone of reality, which Roland Barthes refers to as a reality of “having been there.’ The pre-raphaelites and many spiritualists of the nineteenth century, would have started to embrace the idea of photography’s powers of communicating with the other side. As Lindsay Smith writes ‘In his links with Rossetti, Ruskin also realised a profound psychological connection through love and loss, through mourning and desire for resurrection. These motives haunt both men and underpin aspects of Pre-Raphaelitism.’ Moreover, ‘Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers came together initially to work creatively on the intersections of image and text, opening up new ways of thinking about the material and the metaphysical’. The ‘metaphysical’ that Smith is referring to could be inferred as the afterlife, which is what the protagonist in Bruges La Morte feels connected with and in turn so does the reader with the power of the novel’s photographs. The photographs in question were actually chosen quite impersonally as they were not taken specifically for this novel and were supplied by Parisian image banks. This is quite ironic as the photographs did give an excellent sense of Bruges, Belgium and the setting of the novel even though they were the equivalent of modern day stock photos. The novel contains thirty five photographs and the majority of them depicted the streets of Bruges and its canals, with many of the pictures focusing on the reflection of the water which could be a symbol of searching for human spirit amongst our reflection. Only twelve of the photos depicted people in it and that may be because people distract one`s soul searching journey as shown in the protagonist getting rid of his mistress because she does not give off the same essence as his dead wife. It is also interesting how the landscape almost turns into its own ‘metaphysical’ being which we get attached to as we would to a human character as the photos are presented just as prominently as the characters in the text are. In the same way, experiencing the atmosphere of the landscape so often allows the reader to immerse themselves into the story and is versatile to their own spiritual journey as it is a landscape, whilst creating multisensory experience for them. Essentially what adds importance to the text is photography’s way of preserving memory. For example the landscape in the novel is described differently to how it’s presented in the photograph, with the descri ption of ‘Twilight is coming on, day is getting dark’ juxtaposing with the bright and sunny landscape of the photo. That clash between the reader`s imagination and what they are actually seeing, in itself symbolises the idea of passing and the ever evolving state of memories that we cannot hold onto forever. In the same way, falling in love with a woman who bears resemblance to his past wife, reflects how the photographs are similar to the descri ption but not identical. As a result, this makes us empathise with the character’s feelings of trying to hold on to a passing memory and adds to the haunting nature of the novel as the uncanny resemblance of the woman to his dead wife is unsettling. Further adding to the novel’s eeriness, there is a liminal state created by the aforementioned images of the water`s reflection the water is always there throughout his life but it`s also moving, creating a parallel between stillness and movement. This symbolises the fixation of preserving a memory amongst change, which is achieved by the photographs, making them extremely beneficial to the text. Preservation of memory is also highly prominent in Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography in Idylls of the King. Referring back to the ‘Dedication to Prince Albert’, Marylu Hill explains how the poem ‘introduces the central theme of loss and remembrance. Like In Memoriam, the Idylls is first and foremost an elegy, engaged in mourning for that which has irretrievably vanished. In that function, the Idylls offers an intriguing counterpart to the medium of photography. Photography is marked by an aura of pastness, even for the living subject as Susan Sontag notes, each photograph chronicles our march to the grave.’ As well as reminiscing the past, Cameron has a way of bringing the dead back to life for example in Tennyson’s ‘Lancelot and Elaine’, she ‘illustrates all three of these scenes and the illustrations suggest the chilling resemblance of sleep to death as seen in Tennyson’s descri ption of Elaine: that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled’. This is important as Cameron and Tennyson would have felt a duty to keep these characters of the Arthurian legends alive, they were so prominent and still are to the public and Cameron`s photographs ensured they are remembered as heroes. The way she turns death into a new form of life is the same way how Rodenbach’s sunny landscape photos breathe new life into the gloomy, mournful text, adding an element of hope and newness to what was once lost. Both these texts seem to rely on photography to preserve the soul of the dead which of course can be achieved by painting an image too, yet capturing what is not there in real life through a lens, is perhaps more impressive. Though paintings as we have seen are useful to text in different instances.

In conclusion, the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron contain a whimsical feeling of movement and enchantment, qualities which were useful to Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of The King. Though he may have not been in favour of Cameron’s photography, there is no denying that even without his text, her images perfectly depict the Arthurian legends analysed above. It is also apparent that any backlash received on her photographs was instilled by ignorant ideas of sticking to the safe, non experimental way of photography. These ideas did not embrace the modernity of the pre-raphaelites ideas which Cameron depicted through her images. Proceeding with the creative paintings of John Everett Millais, his paintbrush favoured vivid colours and positive settings which did help in glorifying Arthurian legends in text, yet steered away from the seriousness of their storylines. However, whilst a painting was something that could be fixed and adjusted easier than a photograph was at the time, perhaps that makes paintings a more suitable fit for depicting Victorian text as far as collaboration between author and writer went. Photographs, on the other hand, were always unpredictable in the way they would turn out, making it a riskier option, which Cameron proved it to be at times. The photographs used in George Rodenbach’s Bruges La Morte at first glance seem to be unrelated and unbeneficial to the text, yet they unexpectedly immerse the reader further into the story by depicting a bright atmosphere of Bruges which is not present in the story. This therefore makes the reader empathise with the protagonist`s confusion of the world moving on after his wife`s death. Having juxtaposing images to text, as well as all the imagery concerning the reflection of water, creates a state of continuation yet stasis for the reader, which is exactly what the protagonist is feeling during his grieving process. This photonovel in a way is a grieving process for the reader yet shows how memory can be preserved, just as Julia Cameron’s images do. Lastly, it is clear that the essence of a text, and an image can co-exist to an extent, yet as they are types of mediums, they cannot be identical in what they depict and can be useful to a Victorian text to a certain extent. The gap between them is up to the reader to fill with interpretation of text and image, merged together.

Becker, K.H. (1931) Idylls of the king (Alfred Tennyson). Belmont, N.C,: Outline Co.

Brusius, M. (2010) “Impreciseness in Julia Margaret Cameron`s portrait photographs,” History of Photography, 34(4), pp. 342–355. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2010.513281.

Hill, M. (2002) “shadowing sense at war with soul: Julia Margaret Cameron`s photographic illustrations of Tennyson`s idylls of the king,” Victorian Poetry, 40(4), pp. 445–462. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/vp.2003.0004.

Rodenbach, G. and Mosley, P. (2007) Bruges-la-morte: A novel. Scranton: University of Scranton Press

Smith, L. (2013) Pre-Raphaelitism: Poetry and Painting. Tavistock, United Kingdom: Northcote, British Council.

Whitworth, M.H. (2006) “Helen Groth. victorian photography and literary nostalgia. pp. XII+244. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ,” The Review of English Studies, 57(228), pp. 134–136. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgl016

The Passing of King Arthur, Julia Margaret Cameron,1874, Albumen silver print from glass negative

Vivien and Merlin, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1874, Albumen silver print from glass negative

Lancelot and Elaine, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1875, Albumen silver print

Mariana, Julia Margaret Cameron,1874, Albumen silver print

Ophelia, Sir John Everett Millais Oil paint on canvas

Mariana, Sir John Everett Milais, 1851, Oil on panel