The Poetry of Drawing

‘The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphaelite Designs, Studies and Watercolours’, which has recently closed at its Australian venue, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, was curated by Colin Cruise, Research Lecturer in the School of Art. This September Colin was appointed to a full-time post at Aberystwyth University, having previously combined his curatorial and writing activities with occasional visits to us for teaching and research supervision. The de-installation marks the final stage of a project that has preoccupied him for more than three years.

The Pre-Raphaelite drawing exhibition opened at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in January 2011 to great critical acclaim. Richard Dorment described it in the Daily Telegraph as “magnificent”. It was the most comprehensive exhibition devoted to the subject of Pre-Raphaelite drawings ever mounted – around 300 works and objects were displayed. Colin designed the exhibition in consultation with his colleagues in Birmingham, choosing the striking wall colours as well as the ‘hang’ and ground plan.  The exhibition was a huge success – more than 18,000 visitors saw it in its Birmingham showing.

In May the exhibition moved to Australia in a smaller form.  It opened in Sydney in early June to enthusiastic reviews.  Colin travelled to Sydney to deliver several papers on the subject of Victorian art and the Pre-Raphaelites and drawing generally, including one at a conference held at the Gallery during the first few weeks of the run and one to the students and staff at the National Art School, Darlinghurst.



During the exhibition’s run the first paperback edition of the book, Pre-Raphaelite Drawing, sold out. It was written by Colin to accompany the exhibition but also to serve as an independent work on the subject.  It is being reprinted and will be available again soon from Thames and Hudson. The importance of drawing for the development of Pre-Raphaeliitism is also the focus of Colin’s essay in The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites (Cambridge University Press) which will be published next spring.