The New Renaissance; or, The Gospel of Intensity [pp. 453-460]

THE NEW RENAISSANCE.
cle of absurd conceit. It is easy to be wise after
the event; we can all see that failure was certain, now that failure has occurred. But, as I
have said, the movement was undoubtedly honest, and as undoubtedly in the right direction.
Let it be mentioned, too, in passing, that it gave
us some of the grandest pictures of this century.
When we think of the "Ophelia," the " Eve of
St. Agnes," "The Scapegoat," "The Light of
the World," "The Huguenots," and "The Finding of Our Saviour in the Temple," we are forced
to acknowledge that, were it only for the production of such works, we should owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Messrs. Millais and
Hunt.
But far more was accomplished than this, for
perhaps one of the greatest influences for good
which have touched the art of the present day
sprang from the book illustrations which were
executed at this period by the pre-Raphaelites,
and, above all, by Mr. Millais. Not to speak of
his illustrations to the "Parables" (because of
the comparative smallness of circulation of that
book), the drawings made by this artist for Mr.
Anthony Trollope's three novels of "Framley
Parsonage," " The Small House at Allington,"
and "Orley Farm," probably laid the foundation
of the enormous progress in wood-engraving
and book-illustration which ultimately gave us
such work as Pinwell's and Frederic Walker's
drawings for Jean Ingelow's poems and Thackeray's " Philip." Indubitably these works by Mr.
Millais form some of the very finest art of the
age. Manly and powerful in the extreme in their
treatment of the subject and enforcement of its
meaning; simple, as befits such work, with a
frank simplicity which omits no essential point;
with a grasp of character and power of depicting emotion which the present writer, at least,
has never seen equaled and rarely approached;
gentle in the highest sense of the word, giving a
portrait of English gentlemen and English ladies
such as we might well be proud to think them;
essentially true to the spirit of the author's work,
and yet as free and spontaneous as if they sprang
alone from the artist's imagination-with all these
merits, and many more, which it is beyond our
province to dwell upon here, these works form,
rightly understood, the strongest testimony that
could be given to the perfect health and right
intention of the early pre-Raphaelites. And it
is the more necessary to remember this, as the
movement was soon to change its character.
What happened after a while is perhaps best
expressed shortly by saying the cause was given
up, though probably no specific yielding ever
took place. Mr. Millais, the healthiest, if not
the greatest genius of the three, gradually
worked less and less in his early manner, till he
became practically the same in method as the
ordinary run of academic painters. Mr. Holman
Hunt, touched with the ambition of painting
great religious pictures, and confining himself
more and more to problems of light and color,
set up his easel in the sacred city itself, and
faded from the view of the majority of the picture-loving public. Mr. Rossetti, from causes
which it would be impertinent to dwell upon, retired from public exhibitions altogether.
The brotherhood, as a brotherhood, was at
an end; the cause, in so far as it hoped to propagate itself, was lost, and all that remained was
the bray of the ferocious criticism which had
been roused by the young artists' work, and the
effect which had been produced upon contemporary art. Such was the first stage of preRaphaelitism: something at least had been
achieved; men's minds had been shaken roughly out of the conventional grooves in which they
had long traveled with sleepy contentment. New
vistas of natural beauty and new phases of
thought and feeling had been laid open to artists; above all, the first brunt of the battle of
unconventionality had been borne, and the way
was made comparatively smooth for innovators
of less boldness or less ability.
Probably the society never had had much life
in it as a society; the elements were too incongruous, the individualities of the founders too
strong, to work together with much unity of
purpose. A common bond of discontent with
art as it was and the teaching they received
had united them for a brief space; but probably
no two ways of looking at life and art were
more thoroughly opposed in spirit than those of
Messrs. Millais and Rossetti, and Mr. Holman
Hunt had little in common with either. The
future direction of the movement, or rather of
the results of the movement, was mainly determined by the influence of a group of Oxford
men, who in the three lines of painting, poetry,
and criticism allied themselves to the dying
cause, and who, though they entirely forgot the
idea with which it had been started, and perverted its main doctrines, succeeded in endowing
it with new life.
At this moment pre-Raphaelitism died as an
instrument for regenerating art, and was at the
same time re-born as a phase of artistic life, and
furnished by the exertions of two or three poets
and critics with new formulas. Many artists, too
eccentric, too earnest, or to self-confident to work
in the old methods, found a ready resting-place
under the new banner, and it soon grew to be
considered a sufficient claim to be a pre-Raphaelite if the artist's work showed a disregard of
ordinary artistic principles and an adherence to
archaicism of treatment. In fact, at this moment
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