Image: Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1862). Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.
The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne will present ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Poetry’, an exhibition examining the relationship between visual art and literature during one of the most influential periods of British art. The exhibition will run from 17 October 2026 to 13 February 2027 and will bring together more than 100 paintings, drawings and objects, some of which the gallery says have never been displayed in Newcastle before, including loans from public and private collections across the United Kingdom.
The exhibition is described by the gallery as the first large-scale show to explore the connections between Pre-Raphaelite art and poetry. It will focus on the ways artists translated literary subjects, themes and narratives into images, while also examining examples of art inspiring new poetry. The presentation will include work by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.
The Pre-Raphaelite circle included both artists and writers. Millais, Hunt and Rossetti, identified by the gallery as leading visual artists of the movement’s first phase, shared an admiration for the Romantic poet John Keats. Medieval and early Renaissance art, close observation of nature and literature were central sources of inspiration. Several of the poems they admired told stories of love and peril in the medieval world, subjects that the artists reworked through elaborate, highly detailed compositions.
Alongside the better-known male artists, the exhibition will place emphasis on women connected with the movement and its broader artistic culture. Elizabeth Siddall, Kate Bunce and Julia Margaret Cameron are among the women artists represented. The literary context will include poets such as Dante, Geoffrey Chaucer, Keats and Alfred Tennyson, as well as Christina Rossetti, a writer from the Pre-Raphaelites’ own circle.
The selection extends beyond painting and works on paper to encompass embroidery, metalwork, stained glass, tapestry, illuminated manuscripts and books. Two internationally important paintings from the Laing’s own collections—Hunt’s ‘Isabella and the Pot of Basil’ and Burne-Jones’s ‘Laus Veneris’—will be shown in relation to their literary sources, alongside works with similar poetic inspiration and preparatory studies for larger compositions. ‘Beata Beatrix’ (1862) by Rossetti, lent by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, is also identified in the gallery’s promotional material.
Key loans have travelled to Newcastle from institutions including Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery, the William Morris Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, The Higgins Bedford, the Society of Antiquaries of London, Tullie House and the Bodleian. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the Laing Art Gallery, with support from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. It has received support from the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund, the Cosman Keller Trust and the Golsoncott Foundation.
The Laing Art Gallery is managed by North East Museums on behalf of Newcastle City Council. Admission charges will apply to ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Poetry’, with free entry for visitors aged 21 and under. The gallery is located on New Bridge Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, and the exhibition will remain on view through 13 February 2027.
