Report: Research Access Grant Professional | Pre-Raphaelite illustrations by Carey Gibbons

6 December 2024 -

Carey Gibbons reports on a trip to Vancouver to research Pre-Raphaelite illustrations, which was partly-funded by the DHS Research Access Grant.

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I was extremely grateful to receive a Design History Society Research Access Grant for my research on Pre-Raphaelite illustration in Vancouver. Originally, I had planned to combine my research trip with conference attendance at the North American Victorian Studies Association conference in November 2021 in Vancouver. The conference became virtual due to Covid, however, causing me to delay my Vancouver research trip until June 2023.

I spent five days in Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of British Columbia Library, where I was able to view correspondence and other archival materials related to the Pre-Raphaelite illustrator Arthur Hughes. The materials I viewed were within two important collections:

1) the Chester and Roberts Arthur Hughes Collection (RBSC-ARC-1709)

2) the Penkill Collection (RBSC-ARC-1433).

This research was crucial for two book projects I am working on: The Substance of the Self: The Illustrations of Arthur Hughes and Pre-Raphaelite Illustration Beyond Narrative.

The first publication examines Hughes’s illustrations, focusing on his conceptions of the body as metamorphic and multiple and selfhood in terms of indeterminacy and mutability. I hope to give Hughes the scholarly recognition he deserves; although he produced 815 published illustrations, his work has been largely ignored. The second book project engages more widely with the field of Pre-Raphaelite illustration. The publication considers how Pre-Raphaelite illustrators emphasize the importance of multi-sensory, multi-directional, and intuitive forms of reader engagement rather than the need to follow a particular dramatic narrative. I examine how the Pre-Raphaelites resist the traditional clarifying or elucidating functions of illustration through the cultivation of mystery and unpredictability, favouring poetic or enigmatic situations over clarity and forward movement, and creating spaces where boundaries and categories can be challenged and contradictory elements are possible.

Although popular forms of imagery are ubiquitous, the deep analysis of illustration has lagged behind that of other fields due to its associations with commerce and popular culture, as well its resistance to conform to the strict categories of “art” or “design.” Pre-Raphaelite Illustration Beyond Narrative advocates against the exclusion of illustration from histories of art and design and aims to increase the critical discourse around illustration by scholars across disciplines, including art history, design history, literature, book history, media/communications studies, the history of science, and gender studies. In addition, the publication will demonstrate the relationship between illustrations and the design of the books or periodicals which held them, drawing a close connection between visual culture and material culture.

I completed a significant amount of research for this publication while serving as the 2021–22 Drawing Institute Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Morgan Library and Museum. However, my research at UBC in Vancouver was also crucial and would not have been possible without this grant from the Design History Society. While reviewing Hughes’s correspondence, I was particularly intrigued by Hughes’s letters to his friend Susan Lushington. He makes interesting comments about his illustration work; for example, he states that he is “vegetating cheerfully” over drawings for a book by Greville MacDonald, while also wishing that the story was “less hastily put together.”[1] The correspondence also includes references to hazy, indeterminate forms, supporting my belief in Hughes’s preoccupation with mystery and mutability. Additionally, I was especially excited to come across Hughes’s scrapbook of his illustration work, news clippings, and pictures. The opportunity to see Hughes’s illustrations together allowed me to think about his work as a whole and consider it in relation to examples by other Pre-Raphaelites. My visit to UBC developed my thinking about the poetic, enigmatic approach taken by Pre-Raphaelite illustrators and the imaginative and participatory possibilities their illustrations open up for the reader.

[1] Arthur Hughes to Susan Lushington, April 15, 1913, Chester and Roberts Arthur Hughes Collection, RBSC-ARC-1709.

Image caption: Arthur Hughes, Illustration for George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (London: Strahan, 1871), p. 11