#was fucking around with layer modes to make the colours look more harmonious and now patrick looks ginger as fuck. sorry patrick

[wearenemies]

i think these guys are in love is that so insane to say

[momo-de-avis]

tell me more about millais and the whole "steal ur wife and have a happy marriage with her lmaoo" and the whole pedo thing??? im intrigued

At the top of my head and very quickly without bothering myself with checking things online cause I’m a bit lazy sorry (though I’ve been over this story for quite a while, I trust my instinct)

When the Pre-Raphaelites appeared, they were the bad boys of London. Reasons:

1) Fucked around, mostly Rossetti

2) Broke academic rules by painting in excruciating and vivid details that weren’t possible with the naked eye (like Holman Hunt painted every single blade of the grass—your eye can’t see it unless you stare closely at it, so academically, that was ugly)

3) Used redheaded women as models. Now, Victorians were absolute fucking lunatics, but the ideal beauty to them was some corpse-looking Morticia Adams. Black hair and pale skin, was top notch. Blonde, blue-eyed beauty came second, probably. What mattered was the pale skin. It was a trend among Victorian women to paint purple and blue veins to look as dead as possible because the frailty of women in a society that told they literally were good for nothing except breeding was the Latest Trend. Redheads, however, were considered cursed. Case in point: the greatest pre-raphaelite muse, Lizzie Siddal: she was not only a red-head, but her skin was also darker than most prefered. Not that she was anything but a white woman, just not white enough to look like you were already flirting with tuberculosis and ready to die fashionably at 40 (though Lizzie was famous for being constantly sick and bedridden. And addicted to Laudanum, like a good Victorian).

4) Basically what gave them the name: PRE-raphaelite. To explain quickly: academic painting privileged the art that resembled Raphael's paintings: harmonious, made of volumes through precise shadowing, mannerist in its style. Line and drawing prevailed above colour. This is linked to formalism so I’m just gonna wrap it up quickly: drawing was considered the intellectual form of art (because in the 16th century people were like ‘oh, astronomy is a science!’ and 'oh, mathematics is a science!’ and people were like, 'well shit, we gotta find a reason to call arts a science too’ and the Renaissance worked that out by explaining that drawing was basically a form of science. Take Da Vinci). The Pre-raphaelites said: fuck that noise, and privileged colour. They used techniques to brighten their paintings (like a layer of white paint applied to the canvas before they applied the preliminary drawing, which made the colours stand out, and then finished it off with wax varnish, which makes it glow. If you ever see a PR painting live, note just how vivid it is. It looks like it’s never gonna wear off, it’s incredible). So with this, they basically said the Royal Academy was a bunch of piss babies who knew jack shit about painting (the accusation of being dumbasses included).

5) …but to be that guy, you had to LIVE the life. So, if you privilege medieval thinking, lifestyle and theology, what you gotta do? BE that medieval knight Victorians thought were oh so Chivalric. Again, famously, Lizzie Siddal is known to be the bad girl of this revival: she refused to wear crinoline and whatever shit the Victorian ladies wore. She wore loose dresses, no corsets and overall dressed like the engravings on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. She was actually lauded for her commitment like, even Ruskin at one point saw Rossetti as a piss baby rock star wannabe who never finished his shit, but this girl? She committed.

So you see, when these guys popped up, Victorians scowled. BADLY.

But they knew that, to conquer the hearts of promiscuous dandies and hypocritical high-society, laudanum-ridden, arsenic-eating uptight douches and douchesses, they had to get to the loins of one man: most important art critic of his time, single-handedly responsible for elevating William Turner to the True Genius of English Painting: John Ruskin.

Now, just WHO was John Ruskin?

First of all, this little shit was overtly religious. Protestant kind, so you know what you’re in for. This guy studied Turner back and forth, knew everything about him, wrote extensively of his genius and was responsible, as I said, to consecrate him to the memory of British sea painting. Except he purposefully left a bit out, one particular episode of Turner’s life that, to Ruskin’s mind, would ruin his reputation.

Turner was a freak. My man has ENDLESS erotic drawings that go from curious artist look into the Vagina from full-blown pre-victorian porn. And Ruskin kept it all locked away inside his drawer.

The thing was, Ruskin was brought up surrounded by art. This guy looked at Roman statues of women, with their perfectly waxed peepees and toned arms supporting perky breasts and DEAD ASS though this was what women looked like.

So he married Effie Gray, a woman in everything respectable, a prosperous marriage for the good ol’ Victorian lady and dude.

And for the next five years of their marriage proceeded to REFUSE to even touch her.

When the pre-raphaelites pop up, Ruskin attends their very first exhibition and writes them a glowing review. Immediately they go from nut-heads to pop stars. But among them all, it was clear that it was John Everett Millais who was the most talented. So Ruskin took him under his wing.

His first assignment was: paint my portrait. But the pre-raphaelites did something the British academics didn’t: to paint nature, they went outside and painting the motif by looking directly at it. And Ruskin, who praised this mode of making art, had in mind the precise spot he wanted to be painted on: a waterfal or some shit in Scotland, where he owned a cottage.

This cottage was not big. It was actually rather small—you know, in pretending-to-be-a-peasant-is-so-much-fun! victorian fashion. And what does this absolute buffoon does? He invites Millais and his wife Effie in to paint his portrait.

Now I want you to imagine this woman, who has been pushing down 5 years of Horny, putting up with this dude’s shit, enclosed in a tight space with this man—who was older than herself—and incidentally, a handsome looking young fella who paints nicely.

I insist on this thing that Ruskin didn’t touch his wife because he thought women looked like statues because he actually told her. He told her he found her repulsive because—what do you know!!! The peepee’s got some pubic hair! And women menstruate! And like, we’re real fucking things, not Pygmalion's wet dream forged over and over again! She actually wrote a letter to her father detailing this (if you watch the show Desperate Romantics, the scene were Effie confesses this to Millais, the actress is actually reciting this letter word for word).

So when they return to London after the painting is done, they just… Fall in love. I mean, shit, what was she supposed to do?

The face of a man who doesn’t know he’s about to be shit-whipped by his pupil, painted by none other than his protegée, this same pupil.

But remember: no matter what Victorian fangirls say, and whatever that Victorian TV show tries to show you, this society was absolute utter shit for women. Effie Grey presented an annulment proposal to her marriage, and society collapsed on her. She was actually blamed for the fact that Ruskin wouldn’t consummate the marriage. And because she had grown quite close to Millais, she had to prove before the entirety of Victorian society that she was a virgin. Oh, yes. It’s what you’re thinking.

Those open-your-legs-wide-and-let-me-insert-this-not-at-all-friendly-looking-metal-utensil-up--your-private-canal-to-prove-you-are-a-virgin. This, mind you, was back then as utterly humiliating as it sounds now, and to make matters worse, Mr. I-only-fuck-clean-shaven-pussy claimed she was mentally unstable.

Either way: annulment conceded, and she married John Everett Millais. The two went on to a lifelong of fucking and 8 children. Check Millais’ painting Peace Concluded and tell me those two idiots did not die happy together.

I kid you not: until Millais’ death, Effie was socially ostracized. She was even barred from being present in social events where Queen Victoria was, proclaimed by the Queen herself (because remember kids! Victorian society absolutely sucked because it was none other than our favourite imperialist who made it so!) even after she ordered Millais the first Laureate painter. It was only when Millais was dying that in his death bed he BEGGED to lift that stupid shit and she conceded. I just honestly believe Effie didn’t give a shit at this point, because my girl was happy.

So, you ask, what happened to Ruskin?

Don’t think he got off easy lmao. He had his own demise. He wasn’t seen with good eyes after the whole annulment debacle. But of course, being the pissy adult he was, he had to make things worse.

Enter Rose de La Touche.

You see, Rose de la Touche was Ruskin’s pupil. She is, as far as we can tell from his writings, the only woman he ever called attractive and revealed to be attracted to her. When, you ask?

When she was fucking 9 years old, the first time he met her.

He became tutoring her when she was 14. At this point, this ugly ass vulture was way past his 40s. Rose’s parents actually made it worse if my mind doesn’t fail me, but I’m not certain so I won’t address them. Either way, he pretty much groomed her and she grew infatuated with him. He actually made plans to marry her once she turned like, 18 or something, like a good pedo.

The only reason Rose didn’t marry Ruskin? Effie Gray stepped in. Not that she was that interested in what was to happen. The thing was, the reason for the annulment was that Ruskin was impotent, and if he fucked a healthy girl and she got pregnant, she’d be in the shits. But either way, I think it was easy given that he was like 40 years older or some shit. Rose actually declined to marry because she wanted the marriage to be unconsummated, but this time around, ya big Pedo declined! I wonder why was it so easy the first time, and so hard now that he found himself a neat little child to corrupt, right?

At some point, even fucking Rossetti intervened. Now, Rossetti was the rock star of his time: he fucked everything that moved, he got into affairs with the wives of his pupils while Lizzie lingered between life and death at his home, and it took him some 9 years to finally keep his promise to Lizzie and marry her ass. He was the last person you’d expect to say a thing. But you know you’ve fucked up and that you’re a perverted piece of shit when THIS IS THE GUY who steps in to say 'hey, Ruskin, big fan, but you really gotta tone it down cause even I’m not a pedo, pal’.

Now listen: yeah, there’s a lot of speculation about Ruskin’s 'love affair’ with Rose de La Touche. Did he really fall in love with her when she was 9? We don’t know. We don’t care either, because it doesn’t make him any less a fucking pedo. Like, yeah, good art critic, nice theory on the whole Modern Painting book, but this dude had some serious issues.

And there you go