The Pre-Raphaelites and Science

该奖学金的研究将成为第一次系统研究各种形式的拉斐尔前艺术与科学之间关系的主要部分。前拉斐尔派是维多利亚时代最具原创性、最具实验性和最有影响力的艺术运动，他们仍然是最受欢迎的。仅在去年，就举办了前拉斐尔派和意大利的大型摄影、素描和设计展览。将以中世纪主义著称的前拉斐尔派与科学联系起来似乎有悖常理，但他们是唯一在自己的宣言中反复将这种联系联系起来的维多利亚时代艺术家，从他们早期期刊《细菌》(The Germ)(1850年)的随笔到霍尔曼·亨特(Holman Hunt)对这场运动的回顾记述运动《前拉斐尔主义和前拉斐尔兄弟会》(1905)。在这样的著作中，他们认为艺术应该借鉴甚至效仿科学。许多评论家认为这是前拉斐尔派声称是一场现代艺术运动的标志，但很少有人把它当做我们如何解读他们的艺术本身的指南。我将详细探讨前拉斐尔派在艺术和科学之间的关系上采取的不同立场，看看他们关于艺术应该如何回应科学的主张在他们的绘画、设计、雕塑和诗歌中得到了多大程度的证实。在团契期间，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，看看前拉斐尔派如何影响维多利亚人展示他们对自然界的科学观点的建筑。通过约翰·拉斯金的赞助，前拉斐尔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，看看他们是如何帮助塑造这座建筑的，无论是在实践中还是通过他们的理想。我还会看看自然历史博物馆是如何被前拉斐尔派美学塑造的，特别是在理查德·欧文和阿尔弗雷德·沃特豪斯为建筑内外设计的装饰上。对这两座建筑的仔细研究将展示我们今天仍然使用的空间是如何被拉斐尔之前的美学原则塑造的，这些空间现在仍然用来展示我们对自然的科学理解。其次，我将进行一项艺术批评实验，看看更全面地了解拉斐尔之前的科学家们对科学的看法是否会改变我们对他们绘画本身的看法。我将研究英国主要收藏品中的前拉斐尔派绘画和素描，包括伯明翰博物馆和美术馆、英国泰特美术馆、维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆、利物浦的沃克美术馆和夫人杠杆美术馆，以及牛津的阿什莫林博物馆。我将特别与曼彻斯特美术馆和曼彻斯特博物馆密切合作，根据他们各自的前拉斐尔实验和生活世界展览的现有模型，设计让普通公众和科学家自己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学会的论文，看看它们对A·C·斯温本的诗歌有什么影响。史温伯恩是人类学学会的成员，在该学会上，从1863年成立到1871年与民族学学会合并，关于进化、种族、性别和野蛮与文明的关系的科学问题被激烈辩论。这将是第一次深入研究这些争论是如何反映在他的同一时期的诗歌中。第四，我将系统地阅读从1867年到1873年的《双周评论》，把这几年在这本杂志上发表的许多拉斐尔前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.