The Pre-Raphaelites and “The Lady of Shalott” Note: For best results, play this presentation in conjunction with Loreena McKennitt’s “The Lady of Shalott” as audio accompaniment.

They challenged artistic conventions of form and composition. The Pre-Raphaelites were a radical group of Victorian painters founded in 1848. They challenged artistic conventions of form and composition. Their paintings were highly symbolic and lush in detail, beauty, and color. “Ophelia,” by John Everett Millais “Flaming June,” by Frederic Leighton

The Pre-Raphaelites’ subjects were wide-ranging. Some subjects were religious; others secular.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti “Beata Beatrix” Dante Gabriel Rossetti

“The Scapegoat” William Holman Hunt, 1854

The medieval period was quite popular…

“Stitching the Standard” Edmund Blair-Leighton

…as was Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Arthurian poem “The Lady of Shalott.” The Pre-Raphaelites identified with the Lady as an artist: Trapped in a tower, the Lady is “cursed” to see the world only through an enchanted mirror. She works her vision of the world into her art.

“The Lady of Shalott” By William Holman Hunt

And thus, as an artist, though she sees the world… She is forever separate from it.

“The Lady of Shalott” John Sidney Meteyard, 1913

Though it reveals the world to her… …the mirror is a screen between herself … and reality.

“I Am Half-Sick of Shadows” John William Waterhouse

One day, driven to look directly through her window, she sees a sight that changes her forever: Lancelot, the bravest of Arthur’s knights… and the castle of Camelot behind him.

The Lady of Shalott Sees Lancelot John William Waterhouse, 1894

Edmund Blair-Leighton “The Accolade” Edmund Blair-Leighton

The sight of Camelot brings the full force of the Lady’s curse upon her. The Lady is doomed from that moment.

The encounter with the real world… …unmediated by her art or the mirror… …will end her life.

Her mirror cracks from side to side… …and she feels the curse come upon her. Desperate and dying, she writes her name on the prow of a boat…

By John William Waterhouse “The Lady of Shalott” By John William Waterhouse

…and floats to Camelot, the place that has always been forbidden to her.

John Atkinson Grimshaw “The Lady of Shalott,” 1878

By the time she arrives there, she is dead. …To those at Camelot, the Lady of Shalott is largely an unreadable text. By the time she arrives there, she is dead. They have no idea who she is.

“The Lady of Shalott” Arthur Hughes, 1873

…and pray that God in his mercy sends her grace. …Lancelot, unaware he is a central cause of her death, can only reflect that she has a lovely face… …and pray that God in his mercy sends her grace.

John Atkinson Grimshaw “The Lady of Shalott” John Atkinson Grimshaw