Main content
Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 4
Lesson 2: The Pre-Raphaelites and mid-Victorian art- A Beginner's Guide to the Pre-Raphaelites
- The Aesthetic Movement
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Millais's Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Portrait of John Ruskin
- A Portrait of John Ruskin and Masculine Ideals of Dress in the Nineteenth Century
- Sir John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms)
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- John Everett Millais, Bubbles
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts
- Hunt, the Awakening Conscience
- Hunt, The Awakening Conscience
- William Holman Hunt, Isabella or the Pot of Basil
- William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott
- William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death
- William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Ford Madox Brown's 'Work'
- Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini
- Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
- Rossetti, Proserpine
- Wallis, Chatterton
- Wallis, Chatterton
- William Powell Frith, Derby Day
- Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Sleeping Beauty — but without the Kiss: Burne-Jones and the Briar Rose series
- Burne-Jones, The Depths of the Sea
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Sir Edward Burne-Jones, four stained glass windows at Birmingham Cathedral
- Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott
- William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street
- William Morris, The Green Dining Room
- William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
- Pre-Raphaelites
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Sir John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms)
Sir John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms), 1859, oil on canvas,113 x 176.3 cm (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool). A conversation with Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(gentle music) - [Steven] We're in Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool, England. We're looking at a painting
called "Apple Blossoms" by Sir John Everett Millais. - [Beth] We're looking at a painting that seems like a very
straightforward subject at first. In fact, it looks like a genre scene, a scene of everyday life. We have young girls, young
women having a picnic, set against the backdrop of apple trees. The girls have been
gathering wild flowers, they're being served porridge, but we know from the the
positions of the figures and the composition that there's
much more to this painting. - [Steven] All of the figures are pushed into the foreground, creating almost a frieze of figures. Just behind them, we see a low
wall, and then, an orchard, and those apple trees are amazing. There's this delicate rendering
of these ephemeral blossoms that are there only for a few days. - [Beth] We see that some
are just starting to open, that others are in full bloom. - [Steven] And it's clearly a metaphor for the varied ages of the
young women and girls below. - [Beth] And we know that Millais painted much of this outdoors in a very serious effort to
capture the effects of light on the apple trees and on the figures. - [Steven] Look at the
yellows of that dress, they deepen to a kind of burnt orange or lighten in various places, and then there's those
blues of the shadows. - [Beth] And that's the only figure who seems to look out at us. One of the strange
effects of this painting is that there is a sense
of the figures being alone in their thoughts and
isolated from one another, and that gives the painting, I
think, a feeling of solemnity that something more
serious is happening here, and also, something almost religious. - [Steven] Balancing
the gesture of pouring is an unexpected intrusion
into this painting, that is the top most part
of a scythe pointing down to the young girl in yellow. A scythe is a traditional symbol of death. - [Beth] Well, we think
about the grim reaper who uses a scythe to reap souls, and that scythe points
directly down at that girl who is looking out at us, and it also points down
to the wild flowers that the girls have gathered. And so, we seem to have a painting that is about the transience
of youth, of beauty, the passage of time. - [Steven] Millais seems
to be seeking a means to bring religious
sentiment into modern life. - [Beth] We know that in
the later part of the 1850s, Millais is moving away
from literary subjects, from religious subjects that had occupied the years immediately after 1848 when he, together with
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt
and other artists, founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which sought to revive British art by looking back to art
before the Renaissance. But those early Pre-Raphaelite paintings all had very clear subject matter, and here and in several other paintings from the later part of the
1850s, including "Autumn Leaves", which this painting may be appendant to, and other paintings like "The Blind Girl", Millais seems to be more interested in evoking a feeling, a mood. And this idea may seem
very familiar to us, but a Victorian audience would've looked for a very clear narrative, and instead, Millais is giving
us something very poetic, and art historians have seen this series of paintings
by Millais as precursors to what will happen in
English painting in the 1860s, the style or a movement we
call the aesthetic movement, the idea of art for art's sake that what matters in a
painting is not the narrative, but the color harmonies, the forms, the sense of beauty that
the painting evokes. We know that like the apple blossoms, like the flowers that they've picked, that these girls will
mature, will grow older, and time will pass. (gentle music)