Stimulating little exhibition: Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites reviewed

Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites… there’s an obvious problem here: how do you represent one sense by another? Synesthesia is a neurological condition whereby some people do just that: they experience colour when they hear music, or taste words – think of the Revd Sydney Smith describing heaven as eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets. There may come a time when we get all-enveloping sensory effects when we look at paintings – an exhibition on medieval women at the British Library uses the stink of sulphur to suggest Julian of Norwich’s vision of hell and strawberry and honey for Margery Kempe’s scent of angels – but still the most obvious way of representing scent visually is by painting things that smell. And that’s the idea behind this stimulating little exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham.

It’s just 11 paintings and they represent a spectrum of scent, not just flowers but less agreeable sorts too. Why the pre-Raphaelites? The introduction explains: ‘With its unflinching realism and controversial spotlight on social issues, pre-Raphaelitism brought themes of stench and urban morality into the realms of “high art”. As pre-Raphaelitism transitioned into aestheticism, with its delight in beauty and sensuous pleasure, perfume was particularly appealing to artists.’ Quite the programme for a little space.

The poster image for the exhibition is Millais’s ‘The Blind Girl’ (1856) which shows a girl sitting on a grassy bank with her eyes closed, oblivious to the double rainbow behind her (see below); at her side her little sister peeps from behind the older girl’s shawl, perhaps smelling the damp wool, certainly feeling its texture. Deprived of sight, the girl can smell… what? On the bank there are harebells, the field behind the stream must have an earthy smell.