Page 18 - History 2020

and disrupting the social hierarchies as they did so. Workers tear a hole in the road

and symbolically in the social fabric. Each character represents a particular social
class and role in the modern urban environment. It is a visual representation of
Victorian moral and social radicalism as exemplified by Ruskin. Brown's description of
the two men at the right side (Frederick Maurice, Christian Socialist, and Thomas
Carlyle, Philosopher) are 'the brain workers, who, seeming to be idle, work and are
the cause of well ordained work and happiness in others'.
Within a few years The PRB had devised new rules of composition, new painting
techniques and new subject matter. Then they changed from looking back to looking

at the world around them. The PRB paintings began to show an immediacy of vision
and a truth to nature. They were engaged in scientific thinking, became interested in
geology and botany and used the railways to venture into the English countryside. It
is also likely they were influenced by the sharp detail and luminosity of photography.
They propelled British art into a new direction with beautiful landscapes originating
in the English countryside.

Their peers were shocked with their new kind of radical microscopic examination of
the natural world as they began to produce landscapes of almost scientific fidelity
which brought aa even greater realism to their paintings. The railways made the
English countryside accessible so they started to paint outdoors (10 years earlier than
the French Impressionists.) Pigments were ground and mixed with oil and then
stored in a pig's bladder for transportation. In 1851 in Surrey, Millais transformed the
landscape genre with his painting Ophelia, Tate Britain. It is based on an event in a
Shakespeare play and depicts Ophelia in the process of slowly drowning. Millais

painted the flowers and foliage from natural specimens with meticulous accuracy.
The daisies, dog roses and poppies symbolically relate to the plight of Ophelia.
Elizabeth Siddal was the model but this part of the painting was completed back in
the studio with her in a bath of water. The painting was new and different and
evokes the sympathy of the viewer for this beautiful dying woman. Paintings are
usually read from left to right but in this composition it is reversed making it counter-

intuitive and disturbing.

At the same time Hunt was painting the Hireling Shepherd, 1851, Manchester City Art
Gallery. He adopted a technique influenced by the new silver backed photographs
(daguerreotype) and painted it on a white ground to illuminate the colours brightly.
There is very fine brushwork and minute detail. It is believed he completed only one
square inch per day. It depicts a country scene with a shepherd neglecting his flock
and turning his attention to a country girl to whom he shows a Death’s Head
Hawkmoth.