Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde

Financial Times“Provokes and challenges...” This show, scorning individuality, is narrower; its thematic approach chimes with a 21st-century climate that favours conceptual over expressive art-making.

Evening Standard“The essential fire of the Brotherhood had long since fizzled out...” Poor visitors — the Tate last offered them a comprehensive review of the Pre-Raphaelites in 1984, yet after a lapse of 28 years, all will leave this exhibition in confusion as absolute as mine in the year of their centenary.

Scotsman“A dreamy legacy...” It hits you straight away, but it repays slow contemplation too

Guardian“A steam-punk triumph...” This is as much a costume drama as a show, jam-packed with heroes and villains and innocent victims, holding up a lurid mirror to the age that built Britain. As is the way with costume dramas, it is at once delightful and a bit silly...

The Telegraph“Its attempts to break fresh scholarly ground can feel frustrating...” Let’s get real. The Pre-Raphaelites are to Modernism as our Neanderthal ancestors are to Homo sapiens: crucial links in the evolutionary chain, but ultimately a different species....

The Arts Desk“A major milestone in the continuing revaluation of Victorian art...” But although it proposes a leading role as an avant-garde for this British art, the high seriousness is often unintentionally comic – although the truly wild colour combinations and dazzling patterns could teach fashion a thing or two...