The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse - 1888 - Tate Gallery
The Lady on the lake is, Elaine of Astolat. She was cursed with death if ever she left her castle prison. Her unrequited love for Sir Lancelot drove her to defy fate and escape. By the time she reaches Camelot. She will be dead.
The painting was inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem of the same name. Both poem and painting typify Pre-Raphaelite art.
All Pre-Raphaelite art was inspired by the romance
of Arthurian legend.
Victorian England didn't care much for romancing the Arthurian legend. The nineteenth century was enthralled by the Industrial Revolution. Most thought of the Pre-Raphaelites as daydreamy reactionists unsuited to the Brave New World that was surely in the making.
The twenty first century largely agrees.
I don't.
A sense of heroic purpose and inevitable destiny turns black & white limitation into Technicolor possibility. Without romance we'd all be mired hopelessly in the dreary clay of mundane existence.
Poverty, tragedy, and injustice may only veil a better, larger reality hidden to ordinary reality. The romantic view mightn't be true, but it should be.
Well, toughen-up. That's just the way things are. Get used to it.
I'd rather not. Dreary reality is no more true than adventurous romanticism. Hard-nosed realists don't know better than romantics, they just live in duller ignorance.
On the other hand, romantics live in a purposeful world
of glorious deeds. Romantics are inclined to selfless service to all that is worthy. Realists are inclined to what's in it for themselves.
I'd rather live next door to a romantic than a realist.
Something of the difference is seen in the paintings and poems of the Pre-Raphaelites. They are uniformly beautiful. The works of the nitty-gritty realists are uniformly ugly, except when they accidentally stumble onto something beautiful. Ugly isn't any more true than beauty, only more common.
I prefer to sadly acknowledge the nitty-gritty, and celebrate the beautiful. it doesn't cost any more and it's much more pleasant.
Pre-Raphaelites preferred the purity of King Author's Kingdom to the grinding grimness that accompanied progress in Industrial England.
Progress isn't all it's cracked-up to be. The march of Progress in collective well-being seems always tied to loss of personal freedom, spirituality, and personal importance.
The Arts & Craft movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century echoed the Pre-Raphaelites in deploring the diminished role of the individual in Industrialism.
Both the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts & Craft movement thought the soulless machinery of industrialism suffocated the human spirit. Arts & Craft creators restored humanness to manufacturing by insisting the designer of any piece also be the maker of the piece.
Neither group cared about practicality or realism. Both valued the human spirit above all else. That's why both groups were romantics.
Arts & Craft creators were as much influenced by the romance of Medieval sensibilities
as the Pre-Raphaelites.
Romantics see what the rest of the world walks past. They couldn't imagine not stopping to smell the roses. If the world fails them in beauty and purpose, they invent it.
If their efforts come to nothing, they don't care. They consider the dreaming as more important. They imagine what isn't - for love of what should be.
Plodders plod. Dreamers dream. It's the nature they were born with. Both types are needed. Where would we be without the plodding of stalwart souls to provide useful goods and services. Where would we be without the romancing of the romantics to give individual dignity to practical reality
Man with a Hoe - Jean Francois Millet 1860 - Getty Museum
The Man with a Hoe, would hoe in obscurity without Millet's ennobling painting. Painters, poets, and dreamers of every sort give purpose to random reality. Romantism enriches life with possibilities beyond the obvious.
Grail quests needn't come up with a Grail to be useful.
Idealists, Artists, and Reformers are all hopeless Romantics. All three sail against the prevailing winds of practical realism.
How dull the world would be without them.
I value their fantasies.