Chapter Seventy Two - "Reflections"

            On the afternoon of Saturday, 27^th January, I returned to the National Gallery for their latest exhibition – Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites.

            The main feature of the exhibition, if there can be one, was Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ (1434), a perfect example of the oil painting technique which established van Eyck as a master of this method. This portrait, with its use of symbolic imagery, bright colours and particularly the use of mirrors to play with the observer’s sense of perspective, would initiate and greatly influence the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Its style and influence would reach from the Netherlands, where it started life, to sixteenth century Spain, where it was known to Velázquez, influencing his work ‘Las Meninas’. In his ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ van Eyck’s brush strokes are indiscernible – it was his desire that paintings would be read like books, with all objects being given equal weighting.

            We begin the exhibition with a look at the Pre-Raphaelite thinking, wanting to break away from the somewhat unoriginal expressions and Romish masculine form seen in Renaissance art, such as that of Raphael. Their inspiration was the earlier Italian and Netherlandish art of the fifteenth century, hence ‘Pre-Raphaelite’. The defining characteristics of their art, which was seen in the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’, were (1) first hand observation, (2) the depiction of ordinary objects for symbolic purposes, (3) meticulous technique, (4) bright, almost luminous, colours, and (5) a new way of presenting real and illusory space. The founder members of this movement, the ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’, were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, coming together in 1848, shortly after the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ was acquired by the National Gallery in 1842. This exhibition ultimately looks beyond the Pre-Raphaelites, to the end of the nineteenth century, where the influence of the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ can still be felt.

            So, to the man who started it all, Jan van Eyck. He painted his ‘Portrait of a Man’ in 1433. This is likely a self portrait due to the way the subject looks out at the observer (as someone looking in a mirror), and van Eyck’s motto on the frame – ‘Als ich can’, meaning ‘As well as I (Eyck) can do it’.

            But van Eyck was not just a portrait painter. In 1422 he worked with his brother, Hubert, to reproduce the famous Ghent altarpiece, finishing the work after his brother’s death. This used a chromolithographic print technique for colour reproduction. In a change to the original, the figures of Adam and Eve were omitted as their nakedness was considered inappropriate for contemporary observers.

            In van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ the figures were not idealised, setting them apart from Raphael’s. As such, people seemed more interested in the story being told. In the portrait Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife are surrounded by various objects (oranges, discarded shoes, dog…), but though these have some small symbolism, the main emphasis is on the couple’s relationship with the guests (seen reflected in the convex mirror on the back wall). The inscription, translated as ‘Jan van Eyck was here’, hints as to the identity of one. The observers, and particularly the Pre-Raphaelites, were impressed by the use of colour, light and attention to minute details. As mentioned previously, the mirror would also feature in  many Pre-Raphaelite works, to powerful effect.

            Rossetti’s ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ (1848-9) exhibits Pre-Raphaelite characteristics, with realistic faces (the Virgin Mary being modelled by his sister), and van Eyck’s influence can be seen in the luminous colours and delicate precise technique. There is also symbolism – the lily represents Mary’s purity, while the Palm branch and thorns point towards Christ’s Passion.

            Millais’s oil painting ‘Mariana’ (1851) incorporates many allusions to the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ with the placement of the window and bed, as well as the use of luminous colours and symbolism in the stained glass. This work also combines the modern with the medieval, seen in the style of dress that Mariana wears, in vogue in the 1800s.

            The exhibition next looked to the use of mirrors in the Pre-Raphaelite works, particularly round convex mirrors, popular in the 1850s. Mirrors were versatile, and could be used to hallucinatory effect, as well as to intrigue, or hint at the mysterious (in fact, this was one of the things that drew me to choose this exhibition). Artists Holman Hunt and Brown used mirrors to reflect and intensify the real world, while Rossetti and Burne-Jones sought to explore the strange aspects of legendary subjects.

            In Holman Hunt’s ‘The Awakening Conscience’ (1853), symbolism abounds as a young woman rises to contemplate her future, from the lap of her gentleman lover, seeing spiritual significance in the open window looking into a bright garden (as we see reflected in the mirror). On the floor there is tangled yarn, hinting at an uncertain future, a dropped glove, suggesting discarded mistresses, and a cat toying with a bird, as her lover appears to toy with her. The inscription of the frame is fitting, ‘As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart.’

            Ford Madox Brown’s ‘Take your Son, Sir!’ (1856) uses the mirror in a very different way. We see his wife, Emma, passing him their newborn son, Arthur Gabriel, as the artist himself is reflected in the halo-like mirror, likely a homage to an idealised motherhood as with the Virgin Mary. Sadly, the painting was unfinished as the couple’s son tragically died the following year.

            William Morris so admired van Eyck’s work, particularly his ‘Arnolfini Portrait’, that he adopted van Eyck’s motto as his own. In ‘La Belle Iseult’ (1857-8) numerous allusions to van Eyck’s work can be seen, in the placement of the bed, dog, oranges, and slippers, as Isolde laments her absent lover. A mirror is present, but not used to the same effect as in van Eyck’s painting.

            As mentioned earlier, mirrors did not only reflect the details of the room around them, but allowed artists to express their own personal responses to their subject matter. In Simeon Solomon’s 1870 work ‘A Youth Relating Tales to Ladies’, the obscure reflection of the mirror suggests a dreamlike quality of introspection, in keeping with the theme.

            Holman Hunt’s ‘Il Dolce far Niente’ (roughly ‘Sweet idleness’) in 1874-5 is a study of beauty, which incorporates a mirror in the background – however, the mirror reveals some subtle inconsistencies, lending the work a sense of dreamlike ambiguity.

            As these works show, the use of mirrors adds to mystery and introspection, but how much of this goes directly back to van Eyck is uncertain, considering that these items were now very fashionable and decorative.

            Burne-Jones paints a haunting portrait of his daughter, Margaret, in 1885-6, doubling the mirror as a halo, and alluding to her purity by her blue dress, often associated with the Virgin Mary.

            ‘Les Marmitons’ (1897) by Charles Shannon uses the mirror’s haziness to echo the transitory nature of the passing moment.

            Now on to my favourite section of the exhibition, looking at the various depictions of the tragic Lady of Shalott, from Tennyson’s 1832 poem. The artwork in this section strongly showed the Pre-Raphaelite engagement with the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’.

            Three depictions of the Lady of Shalott were displayed, capturing the moment at which the mirror cracks and her loom breaks, as per the third part of the poem – Holman Hunt (1886-1905), Elizabeth Siddall (1853) and Waterhouse (1894). The first is very different from van Eyck’s work, in the turmoil and movement, but shows similar details in the candles and slippers. The second work, by Siddall (the wife of Rossetti) gives a more calm and measured version of the subject. The third, in the Post Pre-Raphaelite age, was painted with a square brush, less strictly adhering to the Pre-Raphaelite traits, but more closely linked to them than to van Eyck’s work.

            My undoubted favourite piece of the whole exhibition was Sidney Meteyard’s ‘I am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott’ (1913) which shows the lady, wearied at the sight of two young lovers newly wed, closing her eyes to the mirror, before Lancelot arrives. The predominant deep blue colouring that pervades the whole picture is mesmerising, almost hypnotic, as is the beauty of the lady, with her lovely face (as spoken by Lancelot in the closing lines of the poem), dark hair and fair skin, not seen in the other works. The sense of hopeless longing and despair is evoked, as she turns her head away, giving a gently sad tone to the work. I keep finding myself revisiting it, with a feeling akin to sympathy.

            The final section of the exhibition looked at the impact of the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ on Velázquez in the seventeenth century, and other domestic portraits. John Philip copies a portion of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ in 1862, focusing on the mirror motif.

            In the early twentieth century, William Orpen directly alludes to van Eyck in his use of the mirror – ‘The Mirror’ (1900) and ‘A Bloomsbury Family’ (1907), in which the mirror reflects the artist.

            Mark Gertler paints a ‘Still Life with Self Portrait’ (1918), referencing ‘memento mori’ through his Japanese imagery and an extinguished candle. This reminds us that just as the artist can, in a sense, give life, all life must eventually end.

            So, to close, the final thoughts on this exhibition are that the old can inspire the new. Who knows what legacy we, ourselves, might leave…