Jimmy Page on the Pre-Raphaelites

There's a fantastic interview in this week's Financial Times with Jimmy Page, guitarist from Led Zeppelin, on his admiration for all things Pre-Raphaelite and Arts & Crafts. The interview takes place in the Leighton House Museum, which is around the corner from Page's own historic house, Tower House.  Tower House is a Victorian era home dominated by a gothic-revival turret and designed by the architect and designer William Burges, "who sought artistic refuge from industrialisation in a fantasy vision of the Middle Ages."

Page speaks about scouring second-hand shops for Arts & Crafts furniture in the sixties and seventies, and his fascination with the Pre-Raphaelites.  He tells the FT that "I got just caught up in that whole romantic notion of the Pre-Raphaelites, the mission they were on [to revolutionise art]. It was something that really captured my imagination, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.”

Check out the rest of this fantastic interview here.

Upcoming Exhibit: Marie Spartali Stillman at the Delaware Art Museum

Love's Messenger, 1885. Marie Spartali Stillman

I'm looking forward to the upcoming exhibit, Poetry in Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of Marie Spartali Stillman, at the Delaware Art Museum in November. It will open just in time for my annual visit to family on the East Coast for the holidays! The exhibit is being co-curated by the Museum’s Chief Curator, Margaretta Frederick,  and Jan Marsh, the Pre-Rapahelite scholar. (Among many of Marsh's wonderful books on the Pre-Rapahelites, I particularly love The Pre-Raphaelites: Their Lives in Letters and Diaries.)

Spartali Stillman was one of just a few female artists working professionally in the 19th Century, Spartali Stillman's work reflected both her association with the Pre-Rapahelite circle and the influence of her time living and working in Italy. She studied under Ford Madox Brown, and painted scenes from Shakespeare, Dante, and Boccaccio, among others, as well as landscapes.  She was also a popular model, and sat for many artists of the time, including the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

Hopefully this new exhibit will bring some more positive energy to the Delaware Art Museum's Pre-Rapahelite collection after the unfortunate sale of Hunt's Isabella and the Pot of Basil last year.