You Say You Want a Revolution: ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde’, Tate Britain

Beatrice Bazell (Birkbeck College, University of London) Figure One: John Everett Millais,The Blind Girl (1856) My mother stood in front of Millais’ The Blind Girl and marvelled: ‘You think you know these paintings, but actually you don’t.’ This will always be the major stumbling block, as well as the major    strength of any exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite work: in being so familiar with these beautiful, fascinating works we risk thinking of them as kitsch souvenirs of a bygone age, when in

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