Pictures from The Cult of Beauty

Many thanks to Daniel Silveira for allowing me to share these wonderful images from the Cult of Beauty event


Lincoln Faulkner Smith and Jane Xavier Dougherty

William Morris laughs as his portrait is painted:
Inspired by Waterhouse's Ophelia (my favorite painting)

Like an Alma Tadema painting:

Autumn Adamme is like the Cult of Beauty exhibit catalogue incarnate:

Raymond Ernest Andre III:

Autumn Adamme and Corey March:
Vienna La Rouge:
Fun for the whole family!

And a Stained Glass Window...

Raine has done it again, and I laughed so hard at this one, I have to share.

For those of you who don't know, there is some whispering of rumor that Topsy and Georgie might have secretly had an amorous and never acted-upon admiration for each other. Goodness knows as much as I love Ned, his wandering eye deserves a bit of a ribbing....

Artist's Salon Hosts Cult of Beauty Event

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Artists Salon, the same group responsible for the P.R.B. artistic performances at Dickens' Faire every year, are having another event! If only I lived closer to San Francisco!

I quote from the announcement on their Facebook page:

Visions of Beauty – Inside the Victorian Artist Salon: “Cult of Beauty” – March 11, 2012 Legion Of Honor San Francisco between 12:00 and 3:00 PM

On March 11, 2012, at the San Francisco Legion Of Honor, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Artist Salon (Dickens Faire Adventurers’ club members) will be hosting a program called “Visions of Beauty – Inside the Victorian Artists Salon” in galleries 8 and 12.

The museum has advertised for this event. Please see the link below:

http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/legion/calendar/visions-beauty-inside-victorian-artists-salon-studio-presented-partnership-dark-gard

We will perform from 12:00 Noon until 3:00 PM in two separate rooms.

In Gallery #12 “Grosvenor Gallery”, we will be hosting an Artist Drawing Studio. This will involve three tableaux and a life drawing lesson by Virginia. The three tableaux will be as follows:

• Midsummer by Albert Moore
• Ophelia by John Waterhouse
• Girl in White by James Whistler

Drawing pads and pencils will be provided.

In Gallery #8 “Cheyne Walk”, we will be hosting an Artist Salon. Poets, Artists, Models, Actors and Actresses, and other noted Aesthetes will engage our guests in topical banter and present noted works of poetry, plays and music. See George Frederic Watts paint his famous portrait of William Morris. Hear great singers perform works from Gilbert and Sullivan, Hear exerts from Oscar Wilde’s newest play and witness the drama between James Whistler and John Ruskin. The program includes:

• Fireworks at Cremorne Gardens
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• Short on Patience
• Visions of Beauty Poetry
• Meet the Aesthetes

Each of our two programs will run 90 minutes and then repeat so that visitors won’t have to miss either performance. Re-actors for this event include; Julie Margaret Cameron, Fanny Cornforth, Edward William Godwin, Frederick Hollyer, Lillie Langtry, Rose La Touche, Lord Frederic Leighton, Effie Millais, John Everett Millais, May Morris, William Morris, Dante Rossetti, Lizzie Siddal (Rossetti), Lucy Maddox Brown Rossetti, John Ruskin, Mari Spartali (Stillman), Algernon Swinburne, Ellen Terry, Lady Waterford, George Frederic Watts, and James Whistler. We should also mention that Dark Gardens Corsetry will also be performing in Gallery 10.

We hope everyone can join us for this exciting event. If you want to come in costume, we are playing the period from 1870 to 1900. Bustle gowns or Aesthetic Dress are good.

Fairyland Lustre Ware

Many thanks to Kathryn Frearson on the Facebook page for Domythic Bliss for making me aware of the phenomenal artist, Daisy Makeig-Jones, and the Fairyland Lustre Ware she produced in the early 1900s for Wedgwood. I am not that familiar with early 20th c. pottery and vessel-ware, though I do know Rookwood and of course the de Morgans. I was blown away by the work of this phenomenal artist, and now I can't get enough of the stuff!!

Here's an excellent article on Makeig-Jones shared by Kathryn.

And some gorgeous examples from auction sites:






The piece below was featured in a delightful blog post from SurLaLune:





The figures on this last vessel immediately reminded me of Thomas Cooper Gotch's The Child Enthroned.

Join the Sisterhood!

Join the movement-of-awesome that is the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Official T-shirt.


Awesome blogger and author of Stunner, Kirsty Walker, has one!

Creator of the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood and lovely Stunner herself, Stephanie Pina has one!

And your Pre-Raphaelite-addicted and somewhat unhinged webmistress of The Beautiful Necessity has one!

Join the club!

Michelle Hill's Award Winning Morris Quilt

I believe I might have mentioned Michelle Hill here before, author of the amazing William Morris in Applique, and her newer More William Morris in Applique. Well, Michelle has outdone even the most amazing of her wonders in this quilt, which won best of show in the Quilter's Guild of South Australia show.

She started with an unfinished William Morris design sketch from a trip she took to Kelmscott:


And decided to try finishing the design:






Um...yeah. I'd say she did a pretty decent job. Don't you? ;)

Happy 200th, Dickens!

Today marks the bicentennial of Charles Dickens birth. I'm sure it will be noted with celebration and discussions of the author's outstanding body of work. However, many of us who love the Pre-Raphaelites balance out any appreciation of his writing (as outstanding as it may be) with confusion toward his passionate hatred toward the artists we so adore.


Dickens was extremely outspoken in his dislike toward the works of the Brotherhood at their inception. In fact, the outright hostility of his reaction seems to beg the question of just why they seemed to stir his ire so completely. It is hard to read his description of their work even today. In speaking of Millais' classic Christ in the House of His Parents, Dickens said:

You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest ginshop in England. Two almost naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint Giles’s.

....Ouch. Very very ouch. It is hard to imagine any critic who would be willing to be quite so cruel in their expression of distaste for a modern piece. The only word to use for Dicken's distaste toward the Brotherhood is one I've already used: passionate. He hated their work passionately...so passionately that it truly does beg the question of whether Dickens was allowing some personal bias or reflection to cloud his professional and artistic judgment when he viewed the art of the Brotherhood.

The old saying goes that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but with no real advocate yet on the side of the Brotherhood, Dickens stinging words bit badly. Ruskin may have stepped in to save the day with his glowing review of the Pre-Raphaelites, but until that time, Dickens was the voice of God to the public, and his tainted words tainted their opinion of these beautiful works.

The members of the Brotherhood were also disappointed because they considered the works of Dickens to be an inspiration. Hunt's The Awakening Conscience was inspired by David Copperfield. Dickens painted word-images of modern England that had no other rival for their grit and authenticity. The Brotherhood sought to do the same with their artwork: Truth to nature.

Just a few short years later, Dickens had an opportunity to meet Millais in person, and showered him with praises for his "genius"...in fact, Dickens' own daughter, Kate Dickens Perugini, modeled for Millais' painting The Black Brunswicker.



And on the death of Dickens, Millais came "to do a death cast, but settled for a pencil drawing." How strange that such a passionate denial of their talent should transform into an enthusiastic friendship. Hunt and Millais both left memoirs in which they described Dickens as a great talent, great friend, and great pain-in-the-backside.


I truly wish there was a way to know for sure the source behind Dickens' initial vehement and passionate hatred for the Brotherhood. But as another famous author once said, "all's well that ends well." Happy 200th Birthday, Mr. Dickens. Thank you for a lifetime of writing masterpieces. And thank you for changing your mind about the Brotherhood.


(Many thanks to an article by Thomas J Tobin for much of the information in this post)