BBC is currently airing a miniseries called Desperate Romantics. It’s about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of British painters in the nineteenth-century who pioneered a new visual aesthetic, worked with classical and medieval themes, resisted the cloying sentimentalism of the prevailing culture, and were totally obsessed with long wavy red hair. The main characters in the show are Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais (the brotherhood), Effie Gray, Lizzie Siddal, and Annie Miller (their famous and infamous muses), and several other amusing historical figures that stalk in and out of the script. In plots that are generally rather than specifically accurate, everyone sleeps with everyone else, vows true loyalty and then betrays each other, has terrible public scandals, and teeters precariously between artistic integrity, human decency, and financial solvency. It’s really quite entertaining, is what I’m saying.
The Brotherhood: Fred Walters, John Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, William Holman Hunt
John Ruskin
The great thing about Desperate Romantics is that it treats its subjects and its period with almost no respect or reverence. Far from genius painters eternally considering the wisdom of the ages, the Brotherhood sweeps through the lower-class London social scene with verve and enthusiasm. And the gossip flows freely: one of the most influential men of his age, John Ruskin, actually has never gotten up the urge to sleep with his wife of five years (possibly because he’s into much younger female bodies), and hires Millais to seduce her. Poor Ms. Ruskin has to undergo a physical exam to certify her virginity at the divorce hearings! Of course, the eminent Charles Dickens is much more likely to be spotted down in the brothels with William Holman Hunt than isolated in his study like Ruskin. It’s like an episode of The Real Housewives of New York City, but with more sex scenes!
And, to be fair, also more painting. What little respect does maintain a foothold in the series is reserved almost entirely for the infrequent masterpieces the Brotherhood manages to produce. Millais may have almost killed Lizzie Siddal by forcing her to model half-submerged in cold water, and Rossetti may have nearly murdered Millais for endangering the love of his life, but the camera scans Millais’ Ophelia with a loving eye. The reminder of why these self-indulgent, immature men deserve our retrospective attention comes as a palpable relief. The series’ creators and producers have described it as “Entourage with easels,” but those brief moments of historical clarity are a significant departure from Entourage. Yes, Desperate Romantics is about a group of young men struggling for artistic success, and but the fact of their historical relevancy adds a predetermined sense of conclusion to the series. Unlike the boys on Entourage, perpetually fearing they may quickly slip into oblivion, the long historical eye ensures artistic success from the moment the first episode begins.
Lizzie Siddal modeling for John Millais; detail from Millais' Ophelia
The series’ one major misstep is the inclusion of a completely fictional character, Fred Walters, who joins the Brotherhood as a sort of honorary, non-painter friend. As a composite of several other historical hangers-on, I suppose Fred is meant to give us an outside eye on the Brotherhood and to provide us some contemporary moral compass against which to measure their quirks and faults. But in reality, Fred’s dopey, well-meant impulses toward reason and conventionality feel burdensome and saccharine, exactly the kind of sentimentality the Brotherhood claim to abhor. You’re left wondering why they would ever bear to have him around, and yet he keeps showing up, claiming to love revolution and nature.
Overall, though, Desperate Romantics is good for a lot of giggling at Victorian sex, a lot of snickering at artistic temperaments, and a palatable dose of art history.