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Indepth Arts News:
"The Blue Bower: Rossetti in the 1860s"
2000-10-27 until 2001-01-14
Barber Institute of Fine Arts
Birmingham, ,
UK United Kingdom
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82) is best known for his early Pre-Raphaelite
paintings, his poems and his small, delicate watercolours. His later career, however,
pioneered a new kind art devoted to idealising and idolising beautiful women. His
paintings of the 1860s are large, richly decorative works in oil which explore the
theme of feminine beauty and its power over men. These works mark a high point in
his career and introduce to his art the enduring phenomenon of the stunner.
This exhibition brings together twenty works of art by Rossetti and focuses on his
masterpiece of the period, The Blue Bower (1865). These works are displayed in
context with paintings and drawings by other nineteenth-century artists, including
Courbet, Whistler, Burne-Jones, Leighton and Munch, revealing Rossetti’s links
with aestheticism and the idea of “art for art’s sake”. The exhibition also examines
the wide range of interests reglected in Rossetti’s art, from contemporary literature
and poetry to the Venetian Renaissance and the cult of the femme fatale. And last,
but not least, it features the women who inspired him, among them Lizzie Siddal,
Fanny Cornforth, Alexa Wilding and Jane Morris.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of lectures, a concert, a study day and a
fully-illustrated catalogue. It is also supported by an exhibition guide and events for
families. IMAGE:
Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
The Blue Bower
© The Barber Institute of Fine Arts
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