AustLit

'Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of radical London-based artists who appeared mid-century, united in rebellion against Royal Academy training and the artistic traditions of their birth. This group sought to replicate nature's realism in a framework of contemporary, medieval, and high-literary subjects. Its formation had coincided with the mid-century blossoming and democratization of photography, giving rise to more photographers and a greater variety of subjects. One of the most talented exponents of the camera at the time, and a close friend of key members including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was Charles Dodgson. Using the alias Lewis Carroll, he published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1872)–both revolutionary works of juvenile fantasy fiction. Their appearance at the far end of Pre-Raphaelitism may suggest a disconnect from the aims and objectives of the Brotherhood, and Dodgson's Wonderland, with its strangely timeless and decidedly unrealistic world of talking plants and animals, was in many ways the very antithesis of Pre-Raphaelitism. Here, Organ examines a narrative art by Australian artist Christian Yandell. A latecomer to the Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist worlds of myth and legend, Yandell's work from the 1910s through to the 1930s strongly reflected both, with theosophical underpinnings eventually dominating.' (Publication abstract)