In the Pre-Raphaelite paintings of Millais, Rossetti, Waterhouse, De Morgan and others, figures of daydreaming women are shown smelling flowers, putting on perfume, making potpourri, performing magic, dancing among incense fumes, reposing by censors or swooning amid intoxicating fragrances.

Yet the importance of the motif of scent in Pre-Raphaelite painting has been almost entirely overlooked. Many mid-late Victorian notions about smell – such as that smell is disease, rainbows radiate the scent of a meadow after rain, or that highly-perfumed flowers are asphyxiating – seem outlandish today. Join National Gallery expert, Dr. Christina Bradstreet to learn how these and other largely forgotten ideas about smell can enrich our understanding of paintings in surprising ways.

Dr Christina Bradstreet is author of Scented Visions: Smell in art, 1850-1914, out now with Penn State University Press. She manages adult online learning at the National Gallery, London and creates art meditations for a new app by Kunstell, having written and narrated a series of 5-minute meditations for the National Gallery, during the Covid-19 lockdowns. She studied Victorian painting at the Courtauld Institute of Art and her PhD was awarded Birkbeck’s Anne Humphrey’s Prize for best thesis in the field of nineteenth century studies.

You can find Scented Visions: Smell in Art, 1850-1914 on the Penn State University Press web site at this URL: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09251-5.html

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