We'll talk in coming weeks about the depiction of the PRB in Desperate Romantics and what it says about 2009 and the nascent PRB-mania of 2008-2014. On one hand, I agree with our classmate Travis that the whole production is an exercise in over-extension. It seems that each male lead (Rossetti, Millais, Hunt, Ruskin) was asked to act as a caricature rather than a character. On the other hand, I just let go and enjoy it, or try to. Maybe it's an example of television kitsch? Is that such a bad thing?
We won't be watching more episodes during class time, but I'm happy to play them outside of class. We watched the initial episode, subsequent ones feature John Millais hooking up with Effie Ruskin (after she filed for an annulment of her marriage to Ruskin, she and Millais married and started a big family), Hunt coming back from the Holy Land with a mild hashish addiction, Lizzie learning how to draw, and Lizzie succumbing to a laudanum (opium) overdose. We also see Rossetti throwing the manuscripts of all his poems into her open grave, and later upon reconsideration, digging her grave up to reclaim them. Good times for the PRB!
Because it is the iconic image of the PRB and the first thing you see when you visit this website, I've included a link to the scene where Millais paints Lizzie as Ophelia:
Lizzie in a Bathtub
Victorian Avant-Garde // A Seminar at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design at the George Washington University // Spring 2016 // Professor Casey Smith // kcs@gwu.edu // The painting above is by Sir John Everett Millais, 1829–1896, British, L'Enfant du Regiment, 1854 to 1855, Oil on paper, laid on canvas, mounted on board, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
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