24 September 2026 - 10 Janurary 2027
We've lent our Lady of Shalott by Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) and our watercolour Jealous Jessie, by Emily Hunt (1836-1922), with the assistance of William Holman Hunt to the Fundación Mapfre and La Piscine, Roubaix.
Pre-Raphaelitism was conceived in Great Britain in 1848 by seven enthusiastic young aspiring artists who formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This group marked the beginning of an effort to modernize British art through the rejection of the cultural standards promoted by the Royal Academy. When they began exhibiting in London in 1849, their name said it all: they sought inspiration in the art created before Raphael (1483–1520), a figure revered by the dominant academic taste.
Controversy between the group’s supporters and detractors soon emerged. Throughout the Victorian era, Pre-Raphaelitism remained the subject of debate, attracted new followers, and adapted to changing artistic sensibilities. John Ruskin became its foremost advocate, while key figures included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, J. E. Millais, and W. H. Hunt. Yet alongside its male protagonists, there were also remarkable women artists who embraced the Pre-Raphaelite ideal. It was not until the rise of feminist scholarship in the 1980s that Pre-Raphaelite women artists began to receive the recognition they deserved. The exhibition presented by Fundación Mapfre is the latest expression of this reassessment, highlighting more than forty women creators associated with the movement, including Elizabeth Siddal, Joanna Boyce, Julia Margaret Cameron, May Morris, Marie Spartali Stillman, Evelyn De Morgan, and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale.
The exhibition’s curatorial approach also seeks to examine the movement from a social-historical perspective. It highlights the diverse paths that women artists of the period were compelled to navigate in their creative careers. The variety of their responses to Pre-Raphaelitism offers a fresh opportunity to appreciate the different ways in which the movement influenced Victorian art.
Curator: Pamela Gerrish Nunn