The Pre-Raphaelites and Science

该奖学金的研究将成为第一个系统研究拉斐尔前派艺术与科学之间关系的重要组成部分。拉斐尔前派是维多利亚艺术运动中最具原创性、实验性和影响力的，他们仍然是最受欢迎的。仅去年一年就有拉斐尔前派和意大利、摄影、绘画和设计的大型展览。将以中世纪主义而闻名的拉斐尔前派与科学联系起来似乎是违反直觉的，但他们是唯一一个在自己的宣言中反复将这种联系联系起来的维多利亚艺术家，从他们早期期刊“The Germ”（1850年）的散文到霍尔曼·亨特对运动的回顾性描述“拉斐尔前派和拉斐尔前派兄弟会”（1905年）。在这些著作中，他们主张艺术应该借鉴甚至模仿科学。许多评论家认为这是拉斐尔前派声称自己是一场现代艺术运动的标志，但很少有人认真地把它作为我们如何阅读他们的艺术本身的指南。我将详细探讨前拉斐尔派对艺术与科学之间关系的不同立场，看看他们对艺术应如何回应科学的主张在绘画、设计、雕塑和诗歌中得到了多大程度的证实。在奖学金期间，我将致力于四个关键主题。首先，我将与牛津大学自然历史博物馆和南肯辛顿的自然历史博物馆密切合作，看看拉斐尔前派是如何影响建筑的，在这些建筑中，拉斐尔人展示了他们对自然世界的科学观点。通过约翰·罗斯金的赞助，拉斐尔前派直接参与了牛津大学博物馆的设计和装饰。我将详细追踪这种参与，看看他们如何帮助塑造建筑，无论是在实践中还是通过他们的理想。我也将关注自然历史博物馆是如何被拉斐尔前派美学塑造的，特别是在理查德·欧文委托和阿尔弗雷德·沃特豪斯为建筑内外设计的装饰中。对这两座建筑的仔细研究将表明，我们今天仍然使用的空间是如何通过拉斐尔前派的美学原则来表达我们对自然的科学理解的。其次，我将进行一个艺术批评实验，看看更全面地了解拉斐尔前派关于科学的观点是否会改变我们对他们绘画本身的看法。我将在英国各地的主要收藏中学习拉斐尔前派的绘画和素描，包括伯明翰博物馆和艺术画廊，泰特英国美术馆，维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆，步行者艺术画廊和利物浦的杠杆夫人艺术画廊，以及牛津的阿什莫林博物馆。我将与曼彻斯特美术馆和曼彻斯特博物馆密切合作，根据他们各自的拉斐尔前派实验和生活世界展览的现有模型，设计让公众和科学家参与这项实验的方法。第三，我将研究皇家人类学研究所人类学会的论文，看看它们对A. C.斯温伯恩斯温伯恩是人类学会的成员，在1863年成立到1871年与民族学会合并期间，人类学会就进化、种族、性别以及野蛮与文明的关系等科学问题进行了激烈的辩论。这将是第一次深入研究这些争论是如何反映在他的诗歌从同一时期。第四，我将系统地阅读1867年至1873年的《双周刊评论》，把这几年来发表在这份杂志上的许多前拉斐尔派的诗歌放回到它对实证主义和科学唯物主义的众所周知的承诺的背景下。

The research for this Fellowship will form a major part of the first systematic study of the relationship between Pre-Raphaelite art in all its forms and science. The Pre-Raphaelites were the most original, experimental and influential of Victorian art movements, and they remain the most popular. The last year alone has seen major exhibitions of the Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, photography, drawing and design. It may seem counter-intuitive to link the Pre-Raphaelites, famous for their medievalism, to science, but they were the only Victorian artists to make this link repeatedly in their own manifestos, from essays in their early periodical 'The Germ' (1850) to Holman Hunt's retrospective account of the movement 'Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood' (1905). In such writings they argued that art should draw on and even emulate the sciences. Many critics have seen this as a marker of the Pre-Raphaelites' claim to being a modern art movement, but few have taken it seriously as a guide to how we might read their art itself. I will be exploring in detail the different positions the Pre-Raphaelites took on the relationship between art and science, to see how far the claims they make for how art should respond to science are borne out in their painting, design, sculpture and poetry. During the Fellowship itself I will be working on four key topics. Firstly, I will be working closely with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Natural History Museum in South Kensington to see how the Pre-Raphaelites influenced the buildings in which the Victorians put their scientific view of the natural world on display. Through the patronage of John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites were directly involved in the design and decoration of the Oxford University Museum. I will be tracing this involvement in detail, to see how they helped to shape the building, both in practice and through their ideals. I will be looking too at how the Natural History Museum was shaped by Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, particularly in the decorations that Richard Owen commissioned and Alfred Waterhouse designed for the inside and outside of the building. A close study of these two buildings will show how the spaces which we still use today to present our own scientific understanding of nature were shaped by Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic principles. Secondly, I will be conducting an experiment in art criticism to see whether a fuller knowledge of what the Pre-Raphaelites said about science changes how we look at their paintings themselves. I'll be studying Pre-Raphaelite paintings and drawings in the major collections around the UK, including the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery and the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I'll be working particularly closely with the Manchester Art Gallery and the Manchester Museum to devise ways of involving the general public and scientists themselves in this experiment, based on the existing models of their respective Pre-Raphaelite Experiment and Living Worlds exhibits. Thirdly, I will be studying the papers of the Anthropological Society in the Royal Anthropological Institute to see how they bear on the poetry of A. C. Swinburne. Swinburne was a member of the Anthropological Society, at which scientific questions over evolution, race, sex, and the relationship of savagery to civilization were hotly debated between its foundation in 1863 and its merger with the Ethnological Society in 1871. This will be the first thorough study of how these debates are reflected in his poetry from the same period. Fourthly, I will be reading systematically through the 'Fortnightly Review' from 1867 to 1873, to put the many Pre-Raphaelite poems published in this periodical in these years back into the context of its well-known commitment to positivism and scientific materialism.