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The Poetry of Drawing : Pre-Raphaelite Designs, Studies and Watercolours

‘The Poetry of Drawing’ opened at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2011 and toured to Australia in 2012. While conceived as a major exhibition to re-evaluate and re-contextualise the holdings of Pre-Raphaelite drawings in the Birmingham collection, it also re-examined the role of drawing and other media in the practices of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their followers. The hang was designed by Cruise working with BMAG curators, conservators and technicians. It was widely and approvingly reviewed in the national press, Richard Dorment describing it as “magisterial” (Daily Telegraph 31 Jan. 2011).

250 works on paper were exhibited alongside paintings, illustrated books and designed objects involving approximately four years’ forward planning, research and the sourcing of loans in order to achieve a balance of representative artworks. The curatorial work built on two decades of Cruise’s research on 19th-century British art and a decade of research on drawing history. As a result, several drawings previously thought ‘lost’ were reintroduced to the canon. Lenders included key British public collections and descendants of the PRB who loaned works never before exhibited publicly.

The accompanying publication is a fully illustrated, single-authored book that is both catalogue for the exhibition and stand-alone text on the subject. The six chapters offer a comprehensive argument concerning the development of a kind of drawing that can be identified as ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ and the uses made of it by associates and followers in illustration, design and composition. It contains the most comprehensive discussion to date of the role of drawing in informing the aesthetic of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their followers from c.1840 to 1900. The text is accessible to a general audience but also contains scholarly, technical and interpretative material that can be used by museum professionals or academic readers.

This international touring exhibition (250 artworks), researched, curated and designed by Cruise, together with a scholarly book and catalogue (248pp), addresses an important, if overlooked, dimension in the study of Pre-Raphaelitism. It marks the culmination of a decade or more researching 19thC drawing practices. It drew extensively on privileged access to private collections (e.g. the personal records of PRB descendants) as well as public collections (Tate, BM, V&A, Ashmolean and Manchester among them). Two grants funded research at Delaware and Yale. It is the most comprehensive discussion to date of the centrality of drawing to the PRB aesthetic.