Noel Paton and the Pre-Raphaelites: Scottish Collections and Connections

An exhibition to accompany the Wildering Phantasies conference

Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee

8 July - 10 September 2011
Mon-Fri 09.30-20.30 Sat 09.30-16.30

The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow by Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1860)
University of Dundee Museum Services

This exhibition accompanies a major international conference on the Pre-Raphaelites organised by the School of Humanities at the University of Dundee. It focuses on Scottish links to the Pre-Raphaelites and showcases some rarely seen works in local collections.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. They were later joined by painter James Collinson, sculptor Thomas Woolner and critics Frederic George Stephens and William Michael Rossetti, Dante's brother. Many other artists became associated with the movement, although they were never formal members, including Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Frederick Sandys and William Morris.

The Pre-Raphaelites reacted against the formal, academic style of art popularised by the establishment. They demanded a return to the art of the early Renaissance before the work of Raphael, emphasising truthfulness in subject and treatment. The Brotherhood was based on the following principles:
1. To have genuine ideas to express;
2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
3. To sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote;
4. And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

As a formal group, the Pre-Raphaelites only existed for a few years, but their influence in art and literature was considerable. Many Scottish artists drew on their ideas, and some of their work is included in this exhibition - particularly that of Dunfermline-born Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821-1901). Paton was a close friend of Millais, who invited him to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Paton declined, but continued to be influenced by their ideas. Included in the exhibition is material from the Noel Paton Archive recently acquired by Fife Council Museums and not previously exhibited in public.

The exhibition also features material from Dundee Art Galleries and Museums, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Perth Museum and Art Gallery, the Royal Scottish Academy, the St Andrews Preservation Trust Museum and the University's own collections.