Named after Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, the Victorian era was a fascinating period of change, full of contrasts and contradictions, brought about by rapid developments in nearly every sphere. As an epoch of great prosperity that afforded British artists many creative outlets, it was a time of artistic exploration for the Pre-Raphaelites and their contemporaries in which drawing played a pre-eminent role.

Assembled by Dennis T. Lanigan in Saskatoon over of a period of more than thirty years, the Lanigan Collection of British drawings from the Victorian age brings to light the revitalization of this medium in nineteenth-century England. Like the 1899 stage performance Beauty’s Awakening, which tells of Knight Trueheart's quest to find and awaken "the Spirit of all things beautiful," this exhibition recounts Victorian artists' pursuit of a new form of beauty rooted in the past. It also pays homage to a collector’s own quest and celebrates his previous and promised gifts to the National Gallery of Canada.

The origins of the National Gallery of Canada are interwoven with the British art world of the late Victorian era. It was Canada's Governor General the Marquess of Lorne and his wife Princess Louise – Queen Victoria's daughter – who launched the establishment of a national art museum in 1880 and endowed it with its first European works by petitioning their artist-friends in Britain to donate paintings to Canada. Frederic Leighton and John Everett Millais, both well represented in the Lanigan Collection, were the first to respond. This tradition of gifting British art from the Victorian period continues with the transformative donation, presented in this exhibition, of over one hundred sheets from the Lanigan Collection.

Editor's Note: Don't foget the Gallery's well-stocked shop with reproductions such as King Pelles' Daughter (see above), The Lady of Shalott, La Ghirlandata, jewelry including indigenous artists, Canadian jigsaw puzzles including those for youths, Beauty's Awakening gifts, art supplies and the best-looking rain boots we've seen. Marvelous shop.

Group Tours for Adults
Monday 12 October 2015 to Sunday 3 January 2016
Explore the Beauty’s Awakening exhibition on a guided group tour. Groups must include a minimum of 10 people. Cost: $7 + Gallery admission. Registration required. Please call 613-990-4888 or email reservations@gallery.ca.

Leading Victorian art expert Christopher Newall will address the importance of drawing in the context of British art of the second half of the nineteenth century, focussing on the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and artists of the Aesthetic Movement. Some of the most remarkable and progressive Victorian painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Frederic Leighton, used drawing to invent their compositions and refine their ideas. Their drawings were seldom intended to be seen outside of the studio and therefore reveal a freedom and originality that was sometimes lost in their more self-conscious finished paintings. A contributing author to the catalogue accompanying Beauty's Awakening, Newall maintains that the medium of drawing was decidedly personal and one in which artists expressed themselves without concern for convention or the expectations of the commercial art world. Ultimately, the intimacy of such expression came to be seen as fascinating and valuable in its own right.

 Pre-Raphaelite Illustration: A Selection from the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives

To 31 December 2015
In the Library and Archives

Against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding desire for books and advances in printing techniques that allowed publishers to meet this growing demand, book illustration was elevated to a high art during the nineteenth century. This tendency was particularly evident in works produced by members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England from the mid-1850s until the 1890s. Several prominent artists were active as illustrators during the century, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones among them, and they worked in tandem with skilled engravers such as the Dalziel brothers and Joseph Swain. On view in the National Gallery of Canada Library, this related exhibition will highlight outstanding examples of Pre-Raphaelite illustrated books from the Library collection.