Emma Thompson’s Effie Finally Gets Under Way

Tony Award winner Derek Jacobi and West End actress Julie Walters have been cast in Emma Thompson's upcoming biopic, "Effie," according to Deadline.com.

"Effie," directed by Richard Laxton, is based on the life of Euphemia "Effie" Gray and set in 1850s London. After a loveless marriage to famed critic John Ruskin, Gray fell in love with Ruskin's protégé, painter John Everett Millais.

Screen actress Dakota Fanning ("I Am Sam," "Twilight") will star in the title role, and Greg Wise will play Ruskin. Walters and Jacobi have signed on to play Ruskin's parents, and Thompson will also appear in the film as Lady Eastlake, a friend of Gray's. Tom Sturridge has been cast as painter Millais.

Don Rosenfeld and Andreas Roald will produce the film that is set to begin production in October in Scotland, London and Venice.

Jacobi won the Tony Award in 1985 for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing and was nominated in 1988 for Breaking the Code. He has also appeared on Broadway in The Suicide, Cyrano de Bergerac and Uncle Vanya.

Walters has performed in the West End in Funny Peculiar, Educating Rita, Fool for Love and Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, among others. She has been seen on screen in the movie-musical "Mamma Mia!" as well as the "Harry Potter" series.

Thompson won Academy Awards for "Howards End" (Best Actress in a Leading Role) and "Sense and Sensibility" (Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium). Her stage credits include Beyond the Footlights, Short Vehicle and Me and My Girl

http://blog.onthebox.com/2011/08/17/emma-thompsons-effie-finally-gets-under-way/

Manchester Art Gallery transforms itself for Pre-Raphaelite-inspired summer fun

http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art361103

Did the aesthetic rebels get Ruskin wrong?

The aesthetic movement rejected John Ruskin's high-minded approach to art – but there was real radicalism behind his moralising http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/mar/29/aesthetic-movement-john-ruskin

More on THAT dress : Victorian-Era Dress, Made With 1,000 Beetle Wings

http://www.ecouterre.com/victorian-era-dress-made-from-1000-beetle-wings-restored-for-50000/?isalt=0


http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/cymraeg/w-global/w-news/w-latest_news/w-news-famous-beetle-wing-dress.htm


http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/11/ellen-terry-beetlewing-gown-macbeth


Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth 1889

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13110&searchid=11609&roomid=3712&tabview=work

Effie script

And in even more news today -

According to a report by the Hollywood Reporter, stage and screen star Emma Thompson is currently in the center of a conflict with playwright Gregory Murphy over who should be credited with writing the script for her upcoming film, EFFIE. Producers of the movie recently took the issue to New York court to confirm that Thompson's movie script does not violate copyright laws on Murphy's 1999 play, THE COUNTESS.

Both the movie and play are about 'art critic John Ruskin, his teenage wife Effie Gray, and pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, a sexual scandal that rocked 19th Century England.' The upcoming film will star Thompson, Olando Bloom, and Saoise Ronan.



Read more: http://movies.broadwayworld.com/article/Emma_Thompson_Gregory_Murphy_Batte_Over_EFFIE_Script_20110207#ixzz1DOHQ3FaY

Tate Britain : Google Art Project

I just published about the fantastic new Google Art Project

http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-offers-virtual-tours-of-17-of.html

and here are the wonderful:

Rossetti's, Beata Beatrix
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=12769&searchid=9408

and

Millais', The Vale of Rest
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=9507&searchid=9581

In the top picture G F Watt's marvellous Hope is also shown
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=16034&searchid=20867


http://www.tate.org.uk/

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/tate


Woh, woh, woh!!!

Tributes to Tessa Sidey, fine art curator at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

Tessa Sidey, curator of fine art at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BM&AG), died on New Year’s Day after suffering from cancer.


Read More http://www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/birmingham-culture/birmingham-art/2011/01/14/tributes-to-tessa-sidey-fine-art-curator-at-birmingham-museum-art-gallery-65233-27988690/#ixzz1BDrzVaBc

"Lost" pre-Raphaelite painting set to fetch £5,000

A “LOST” Pre-Raphaelite painting discovered in Bournemouth is expected to fetch up to £5,000 at auction.

The rare and previously unrecognised watercolour is by Charlotte Wyllie who was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Artists that flourished in the 1870s.

The watercolour, entitled The Ballad of Sir David Graeme, will be offered in a two-day sale of fine art and antiques at Surrey auctioneers Ewbank Clarke Gammon Wellers, incorporating Riddetts of Bournemouth, on December 15 and 16.

Fine art valuers Steve Ozier and Tim Duggan of auctioneers Riddetts made the exciting discovery when they were called in to examine the work by its owner.

He told the pair that he had picked it up for around £600 at a small Bournemouth auction six years previously.

The painting is based on a ballad by 19th century Scottish poet, James Hogg about a fair lady who waits for her lover to rescue her from her father and brothers on St Lambert’s night.

Finally her lover’s faithful dog leads her to the spot where she finds her lover slain by her family.

Charlotte Wyllie exhibited at London’s Grosvenor Gallery, a flagship for the Aesthetic Movement which launched in 1877 as a liberal alternative to the Royal Academy and one of the few to encourage women artists.

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/8718291._Lost__pre_Raphaelite_painting_set_to_fetch___5_000/

http://www.artnet.com/artist/590697/charlotte-major-wyllie.html

ITV1 Presents New Factual Strand

LONDON: ITV1 is set to launch a new documentary strand, Perspectives, which will encompass factual films from a variety of filmmakers and presenters, who offer their take on subjects ranging from life in modern Britain to the arts.


Perspective kicks off in 2011 with a run of five documentaries. These include Mugged (working title), which looks at street crime in Britain. The Fisherman's Friends (working title) tells the story of a group of Cornish fishermen and childhood friends who became a pop sensation. Robson Green and the Pitmen Painters (working title) watches as Green, himself a son of a Northumberland miner, returns to his roots to tell the true story of a band of miners known as the Ashington Group. Children of Britain (working title), watches as children express their viewpoint of modern Britain and tell their own stories. Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Pre-Raphaelites (working title) is an ITV Studios production that follows Webber as he showcases his passion for the Pre-Raphaelites art.

Perspectives was commissioned by Jo Clinton-Davis, ITV's controller of popular factual, with Alison Sharman, ITV's director of factual and daytime, and Peter Fincham, ITV's director of television.

Fincham said: “Perspectives will bring to ITV1’s schedule documentaries defined by distinctive and unique views, vantage points and voices, whether they be those of film-makers or people from a range of fields and backgrounds, addressing their subjects in a way that will enrich and refresh our own way of looking at the world around us. Each of the five films we have commissioned promises in its individual way to do just that.”

Early Millais drawings found inside Led Zeppelin LP

Led Zeppelin, Robert Burns and a 14-year-old John Everett Millais might seem unlikely bedfellows. But a group of four pencil drawings which have surfaced at the Devon auctioneers Chilcotts of Tiverton appear to link the three.


The drawings are by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais (1829 -1896) and all dated May 1843, making him a precociously talented teenager.

They were discovered tucked inside Led Zep LP covers in the home of the man who for many years was the group's roadie and chauffeur. When the man died earlier this year, band members travelled secretly to attend his funeral in Devon and it is likely the drawings had been gifts from them for his devoted service.

This Venetian scene with a gondolier serenading a lady at a window above is an illustration of Robert Burns' poem Farewell Thou Stream.

Beneath the drawing is an extract from the poem, which reads The music of thy voice I heard/Nor wist while it enslav'd me!/I saw thine eyes, yet nothing fear'd/Till fears no more had sav'd me!

In 1858, Millais was a runner-up in the Burns Centenary Poetry Competition, sponsored by the Directors of the Crystal Palace Company.

This drawing and one of the others, which shows a crusading knight leaving his love and illustrates verse four of the Burns poem Ae Fond Kiss, are inscribed Presented to Miss A. Home.

The two further drawings in the group are a garden scene with a young woman and two suitors, and a battle scene with a mounted Cavalier fighting two mounted Roundheads.

The four drawings will be sold as one lot at Chilcotts' sale on August 14, with an estimate of £2000-3000.

http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/7626.aspx

'Outstanding' collection of illuminated royal manuscripts set to fetch £16m at auction

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260283/Christies-Illuminated-manuscripts-kings-bishops-set-fetch-16million-auction.html

Pope Benedict Meets Artists from Around the World in the Sistine Chapel

Looking at the colours here you can definately see one source of inspiration for the PRB.

Updates

When I was on holiday I had a chance to do research on a lot of my favourite PRB pictures (and read the excellant Rossetti's Wombat: Pre-Raphaelites and Australian Animals in Victorian London by John Simmons) so I am updating the notes on those pictures and re-publishing in the evenings. The usual pictures will still appear first thing in the morning. Please feel free to add additional information through the comments so that we all benefit.

I have stopped watching Desparate Romantics, in sheer disgust, so I can't comment on anything about that.