Tate Britain welcomes back major Pre-Raphaelite works

Highlights of the Tate Britain collection of Victorian art, the Pre-Raphaelites return this week to London

Following a global tour, celebrated works by Pre-Raphaelite artists John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt finally return to the Tate Britain this week. The beloved painting of Ophelia drowning in the Hogsmill River in Surrey by Millais, which is one of the best-selling postcards in the gallery, is just one of several key works in the collection that will be re-hung in the BP Walk through British Art. The painting has historically caused a stir with the fear female viewers would themselves be encouraged to take their own lives. The model, Rossetti’s other half Elizabeth Siddall, also became dreadfully ill after the lamps that warmed her bath went out and she spent an entire modelling session in freezing water. 

We also welcome back Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix (1864-70), a haunting portrait of his artist wife Siddall following her tragic death from an overdose of laudanum. After first being discovered as a model by Walter Deverell while working in a hat shop, Siddall went on to form an attachment to Rossetti as his lover and pupil. She was also uniquely sponsored John Ruskin, the famous contemporary art critic whose wife left him for the young painter Millais, who thoroughly believed in her subtle and emotionally sophisticated artistic talents. 

After the international success of the exhibition ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde’, Director Penelope Curtis commented: ‘It has been fascinating to see how popular the Pre-Raphaelites have been in different international contexts and how they resonate with other cultures. It is great to welcome them back and to be able to integrate them into our permanent displays again.’ Indeed the Pre-Raphaelite’s have not always been so popular, and Culture Whisper are thrilled to see the radical group fall back into favour. 

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