National Museums Liverpool Blog - pre-raphaelite

Millais' 'The Black Brunswicker' from the Lady Lever Art Gallery collection.

Post a comment to tell us what you think the caption should be for this image. It's 'The Black Brunswicker' by Millais (more on it and a larger image on our main site). The caption we think is funniest/quirkiest/most inventive wins this month's prize which is a rather nice hardback book, 'Women Artists In The 20th and 21st Century'. The book features Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Georgia O'Keeffe, Barbara Hepworth, Frieda Kahlo, Bridget Riley, Kara Walker and many, many more, and ties in nicely with the forthcoming exhibition, 'The Rise of Women Artists' which starts at the Walker on 23 October.

You've a couple of weeks to enter. If you're looking for inspiration September's entries are here.

The not-very-small-print: This is competition isn't open to NML staff or their families. The judge's decision is final. There's no alternative prize. Please keep your suggestions tasteful.

Update 27/10/09: October's caption competition has now closed although you can obviously still add your suggestions. The winner was 'The conversation waned somewhat while they waited for the butler to appear with the superglue remover'.

'The Scapegoat'

If you caught this week's episode of 'Desperate Romantics' you'll already know that some of our Pre-Raphaelite paintings featured pretty heavily. There was the Lady Lever's The Scapegoat looking resplendent; an imagined, in progress 'Dante's Dream' from the Walker's collection, and Millais' 'Bubbles' which was the cause of much amusement to the TV Brotherhood.

If you didn't catch the episode there's always the BBC iplayer.

'The Scapegoat' by William Holman Hunt

We like a bit of TV glamour here at National Museums Liverpool, so we're pretty excited that one of our paintings is going to be featured on a new BBC program!

'Desperate Romantics' looks at the lives of the self-titled 'Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood', which was made up of the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Millais. We have paintings by all three artists in our collections - one of my personal favourites is 'Dante's Dream' by Rossetti, which is at the Walker Art Gallery.

You get all the juicy details of their rise to fame, with episode one following them on their search for a muse. One of our paintings was mentioned in this episode, when art critic John Ruskin compliments a youthful Millais on his painting, 'Isabella', which is also at the Walker. 

Each episode features a different painting by the artists and 'The Scapegoat' by Holman Hunt, from the Lady Lever Art Gallery will appear in episode four. So look out for it!

You can see a zoomable version of the painting with expert commentary on the BBC's 'Desperate Romantics' website.