Friday 25 October 2013

The Character of Light

The Enchanted Castle: at this apex of feeling, the poet/painter is tolled back to “self-concentration”, and, carefully selecting the words or colours for sunlight (“patent yellow or white lead”, renews their cycle of creativity. As for the rest of us, without their “magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas”, where on earth would we be?.........

Saturday 19 October 2013

Chameleon and Narcissus

John Keats, Thomas Lawrence and the Brilliance Feminine
Sir Thomas Lawrence. Mrs. Jens Wolff, 1803 - 1815. 
© The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection.

We feed on the human drama; it stirs and nourishes us. The painting suddenly looks better. We must forget....

Monday 7 October 2013

"The next Keats can only be a painter”

JOHN KEATS AND VICTORIAN PAINTERS
Edward Burne- Jones, Beguiling of Merlin, 1872 -77, Lady Lever Art Gallery. 
Image source: Wikipedia
"La Belle Dame sans merci/Hath thee in thrall!"

When the Pre-Raphaelites, ardently following “the footsteps of Keats”[1] away from mannerism to revitalized Gothicism, took inspiration from the fresh, saturated colours of his imagery and medieval settings, they chose to overlook his devout Hellenism and appreciation of Raphael’s “heroic simplicity and unaffected grandeur”. [2] 

Their admiration for his technique of conveying intensity of sensory experience was genuine - "the next Keats can only be a painter" observed Dante Gabriel Rossetti in a letter to William Morris - but like many apostles they distorted the intentions of their prophet.

Keats had.....