The Cult of Beauty

Since visiting The Cult of Beauty exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum last week I've had fun copying my favourite pictures from Google images and pasting them into PowerPoint.

I've been a fan of the Pre-Raphaelites since school days and have seen a great many of their paintings around the country over the years. But I'd never before seen any of the pictures here before - they've been loaned from private collections and galleries far afield. I didn't know what to expect and it was a real treat to find so many treasures there.

Clockwise from top left: Esther (Millais), Veronica Veronese (Rossetti); Peacock (Burne-Jones), Laus Veneris (Burne-Jones), Sluggard (Lord Leighton), Bocca Baciata (Rossetti).

The embroidered gown worn by Millais's Esther is bright yellow on the canvas. He borrowed the gown from General Gordon (of Khartoum fame) who got it in China. Millais had his model wear it inside out, so he painted the reverse side of the embroidery rather than the pattern.

Rossetti's 'Bocca Bacaiata' was one of the paintings used in the 'Desperate Romantics' series on TV a year or two ago. The model is Fanny Cornforth.

Not everyone's cup of tea, I know, and the English aesthetic movement went up a bit of a blind alley compared to the mainstream movement in modern art on the continent. That's partly what is so interesting about it.

Pictures of the PowerPoint slides are on Flickr:

Slide 1

Slide 2