Ford Madox Ford: Memoirs

On Pre-Raphaelites and the Aestheticists:


Pre-Raphaelism in itself was born of Realism. Ruskin gave it one white wing of moral purpose. The Æstheticists presented it with another, dyed all the colors of the rainbow, from the hues of mediæval tapestries to that of romantic love. Thus it flew rather unevenly and came to the ground. The first Pre-Raphaelites said that you must paint your model exactly as you see it, hair for hair, or leaf-spore for leaf-spore. Mr. Ruskin gave them the added canon that the subject they painted must be one of moral distinction. You must, in fact, paint life as you see it, and yet in such a way as to prove that life is an ennobling thing. How one was to do this one got no particular directions. Perhaps one might have obtained it by living only in the drawing-room of Brantwood House, Coniston, when Mr. Ruskin was in residence. —

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