William Morris Society at the Morgan Library

Each year during the annual Modern Language Association Convention, the William Morris Society sponsors one or two sessions of papers and also takes a field trip to a local arts and crafts site. This year I organized a special session on Pre-Raphaelites in the Pierpont Morgan Library, so we visited the Morgan for a private exhibition on January 5, 2018. It was held in the decidedly swanky North Parlor and featured objects mentioned in the papers given by Meghan Freeman, Heather Bozant-Witcher, and myself.

This photograph shows three long-time members of the Morris Society in attendance: Mark Samuels Lasner, Florence Boos, and Frank Sharp. Behind Mr. Samuels Lasner is an early sketch (1860) made by Dante Gabriel Rossetti of William Morris’s wife Jane. The sketch had been owned by musical theater composer Jerome Kern and was acquired by the Morgan in 1961. It is virtually unknown, since it was not mentioned in the 1971 complete catalogue of Rossetti’s works compiled by Virginia Surtees (who died just this past year at the age of 100). 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Mrs. William Morris." Morgan Library. E.19.6

The exhibition was put on display for us by Sheelagh Bevan of the Department of Printed Books. It also featured caricatures by Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones; autograph manuscripts of Morris’s News from Nowhere and House of the Wolfings; a pencil sketch and reworked platinotypes of Burne-Jones’ illustrations for the Kelmscott Chaucer; and two copies of the Kelmscott Chaucer itself, one on paper and one on vellum. 

In a posting to this blog from July 14, 2017, curator Rowan Bain announced an exhibition of the artworks of William Morris’s daughter May, which was held at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, East London from October 2017 through January 2018. Our own exhibition at the Morgan featured two items by May, one a sketchbook with two virtually unknown watercolors of Kelmscott Manor, and the other a book cover which she embroidered. The catalogue of the Walthamstow exhibition mentioned a transfer design for this cover at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford but was unaware of the embroidered cover itself owned by the Morgan. 

Selwyn Image, design for embroidered book cover, Ashmolean Museum. WA1941.108.29

The cover was made in 1891 for the 1890 edition of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies and was designed not by May but by the decorative artist Selwyn Image (1849-1930). May’s embroidery features gold, blue and dark pink threads rendering an array of Japanese-looking coiled fish and stylized water symbols. May probably added the dark pink and green tulips on the spine of the book, which were not part of the transfer design. The cover was bequeathed to the Morgan in 1994 by Julia P. Wightman, herself a bookbinder and collector.  

May Morris, embroidered book cover. Morgan Library, PML 150309

The exhibition provided a close look at these fine objects and also served as a cordial reception before most of the attendants went on to our annual dinner downtown.

Paul Acker, Saint Louis University

President, William Morris Society

Upcoming Event, The Cult of Beauty exhibition at the V&A, April 2-July 17, 2011

http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibs/aestheticism/index.html

and, for more detailed information:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/cult-of-beauty/exhibition/index.html

Special William Morris Society Tour of The Pre-Raphaelite Lens Exhibition at the National Gallery

SPECIAL WILLIAM MORRIS SOCIETY EXHIBITION TOUR

The Pre-Raphaelite Lens:
British Photography and Painting, 1848–1875
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Saturday, 15 January 2011

Members and friends are invited to a special tour with the exhibition’s curator, Diane Waggoner. Join us for lunch after.

The Pre-Raphaelite Lens is the first survey of British art photography focusing on the 1850s and 1860s. With 100 photographs and 20 paintings and watercolors the exhibition examines the roles photography and Pre-Raphaelite art played in changing concepts of vision and truth in representation. Photography’s ability to quickly translate the material world into an image challenged painters to find alternate versions of realism. Photographers, in turn, looked to Pre-Raphaelite subject matter and visual strategies in order to legitimize photography’s status as a fine art. Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, and many lesser known photographers had much in common with such painters as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John William Inchbold, who all wrestled with the question of how to observe and represent the natural world and the human face and figure. This rich dialogue is examined in thematic sections on landscape, portraiture, literary and historical narratives, and modern-life subjects.

Diane Waggoner is associate curator in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art. She received a PhD in art history from Yale University. Prior to joining the department, she held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery and at the Huntington Library, where she was the curator of The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design (2003). Since joining the NGA, she has co-curated many exhibitions. Her co-authored catalogue for The Art of the American Snapshot was the 2008 winner of the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for distinguished museum publication. A specialist in the nineteenth century, she has also published on the photographs of Lewis Carroll.

Saturday, 15 January 2011
11.30 a.m. (meet at entrance to the East Building)
National Gallery of Art
Fourth St. NW
Washington, DC
www.nga.gov
RSVP to Mark Samuels Lasner
marksl@udel.edu
(302) 831-3250

University of Delaware Library/Delaware Art Museum Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies

University of Delaware Library/Delaware Art Musum

FELLOWSHIP IN PRE-RAPHAELITE STUDIES

2011

The University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum are pleased to offer the 2011 joint Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite studies. This short-term, one-month Fellowship, awarded annually, is intended for scholars conducting significant research in the lives and works of the Pre-Raphaelites and their friends, associates, and followers. Research of a wider scope, which considers the Pre-Raphaelite movement and related topics in relation to Victorian art and literature, and cultural or social history, will also be considered. Projects which provide new information or interpretation—dealing with unrecognized figures, women writers and artists, print culture, iconography, illustration, catalogues of artists' works, or studies of specific object—are particularly encouraged, as are those which take into account transatlantic relations between Britain and the United States.

Receiving the Fellowship

The recipient will be expected to be in residence and to make use of the resources of both the Delaware Art Museum and the University of Delaware Library. The recipient may also take advantage of these institutions' proximity to other collections, such as the Winterthur Museum and Library, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Princeton University Library, and the Bryn Mawr College Library. Each recipient is expected to make a public presentation about his or her research during the course of Fellowship residence.

Up to $2,500 is available for the one-month Fellowship. Housing is not provided, but the funds may be used for this purpose, or for travel and other research expenses.

The Fellowship is intended for those who hold a PhD or can demonstrate equivalent professional or academic experience. Applications from independent scholars and museum professionals are welcome. By arrangement with the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, scholars may apply to each institution for awards in the same year; every effort will be made to offer consecutive dates.

Important Dates

The deadline to apply for the 2011 Fellowship is October 15, 2010. Applicants will be notified of who the successful candidate is by November 15, 2010. The chosen candidate will then be asked to provide a date for assuming the Fellowship by December 1, 2010.

Previous Fellows

Karen Yuen (2010), Independent Scholar, Vancouver, Canada

Thad Logan (2009), Department of English, Rice University

Colin Cruise (2008), Research Lecturer, The School of Art, University of Aberystwyth, Wales

About the Delaware Art Museum

Founded in 1912, the Delaware Art Museum is home to the largest and most important collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art in the United States. Assembled largely by the Wilmington industrialist, Samuel Bancroft, Jr., at the turn of the century (with significant subsequent additions), the collection includes paintings and drawings by all the major and minor Pre-Raphaelite artists, as well as decorative arts, prints, photographs, manuscripts, and rare books. The Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives, with a reference collection of 30,000 volumes, holds Samuel Bancroft's papers and correspondence, a rich source for the history of collecting and provenance which also contains significant manuscript material by and about the Rossettis.

About the University of Delaware Library

The University of Delaware Library has broadly based and comprehensive collections—books, periodicals, electronic resources, microforms, government publications, databases, maps, manuscripts, media, and access to information via the Internet—which provide a major academic resource for the study of literature and art. Many printed and manuscript items related to the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates are in the Special Collections Department, including major archives relating to the Victorian artist and writer, George Adolphus Storey, and to the bibliographer and forger, Thomas J. Wise. The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, associated with the Special Collections Department, focuses on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and on the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. Its rich holdings comprise 7,000 first and other editions (including many signed and association copies), manuscripts, letters, works on paper (including drawings by Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti), and ephemera.

To Apply

To apply, send a completed application form, together with a description of your research proposal (maximum 1 page) and a curriculum vitae or resume (maximum 2 pages) to the address given below. These materials may also be sent via email to: fellowships@delart.org. Letters of support from two scholars or other professionals familiar with you and your work are also required. These must be sent by mail to:

Pre-Raphaelite Fellowship Committee

Delaware Art Museum

2301 Kentmere Parkway

Wilmington, DE 19806

For an application form go to:

www.delart.org/education/fellowships.html

Illustration: Edward Burne-Jones, The High History of the Holy Grail. Ink and watercolor, 1898 (Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library).

"Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris ant eh Pre-Raphaleites": Conference and Related Events in Delaware, 7–9 October 2010

"Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites" will be the subject of a conference and related exhibitions to be held 7-9 October 2010 at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE) and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate (Wilmington, DE). Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society in the United States, "Useful & Beautiful" will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware's rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur's important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum's superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside Britain). All events will focus on the multitude of transatlantic exchanges that involved Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth century.

In addition to sessions featuring internationally-known scholars and experts, there will be a keynote lecture by noted biographer, Fred Kaplan; demonstrations by leading practitioners who make and design Arts and Crafts objects; special exhibitions; a concert of early music; and a performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest by the University of Delaware's critically acclaimed Resident Ensemble Players.

Registration fee: $150, $75 for students. No charge for University of Delaware faculty, students, and staff, but we ask them to register.

For more information and a registration form go to www.udel.edu/conferences/uandb

or contact Mark Samuels Lasner, Senior Research Fellow, University of Delaware Library, marksl@udel.edu, (302) 831-3250.

7–9 October 2010

University of Delaware, Newark, DE

Winterhtur Museum & Country Estate, Wilmington, DE

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE

Info: Mark Samuels Lasner, marksl@udel.edu

(302) 831-3250

www.udel.edu/conferences/uandb

"Useful & Beautiful" is supported by Delaware Art Museum; Winterthur Museum & Country Estate; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts; William Morris Society in the United States; William Morris Society (UK); University of Delaware Library Associates; Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events; the following University of Delaware units, departments and programs: College of Arts and Sciences, University of Delaware, University of Delaware Library, Art, Art Conservation, Art History, English, History, Institute for Global Studies, Frank and Yetta Chaiken Center for Jewish Studies, Center for Material Culture Studies, Office of Equity and Inclusion, Resident Ensemble Players/Professional Theatre Training Program, University Museums, and Women’s Studies; Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Illustration: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Water Willow, 1871. Oil on canvas, glued to wood. Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.

"The Music of Dante Gabriel Rossetti"—Lecture by Karen Yuen at the Delaware Art Museum

Karen Yuen, the 2010 University of Delaware Library/Delaware Art Museum Fellow in Pre-Raphaelite Studies, will speak on "The Music of Dante Gabriel Rossetti" on Tuesday, 20 April, at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, DE. Her talk will focus on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s changing attitude towards music as he matured. Described by his peers as a “music hater,” Rossetti was, at the same time, the most musically-inspired Pre-Raphaelite, producing countless paintings with color harmonies and musical instruments. Dr. Yuen’s research and presentation will explain the nature of Rossetti’s relationship with music, tracing the development of music in Rossetti’s works from the late 1840s to the 1870s. Prior to the lecture, the galleries devoted to the museum's Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside the UK) will be open.

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

4.00 p.m.

Delaware Art Museum

2301 Kentmere Parkway

Wilmington, DE

(302) 371-9590

The lecture is free and open to the public.