Pre-Raphaelite Roots

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," 1848-49, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, England.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

A group of artists, dominated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), coined the term Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelites were opposed to the British Royal Academy, which championed a narrow range of idealized or moral subjects and conventional definitions of beauty drawn from the Italian Renaissance and Classical art.

Instead, the PRB took its inspiration from medieval art and early Renaissance art before Raphael (1483-1520), believing that artists from this period provided a model for depicting nature and the human body realistically, rather than idealistically. They were also drawn to the intricate details, complex compositions, and intense colors of medieval and early Renaissance art.

Key Ideas

In addition to rejecting the British Royal Academy's preferences for subjects and styles, the PRB also rejected its teaching methods. They believed that Academy learning had become repetitive, replacing truth and experience.
Most importantly, the PRB advocated for Naturalism: the detailed study of nature by the artist and fidelity to its appearance, even when this risked showing ugliness. The movement also preferred natural forms as the basis for patterns and decoration.
Pre-Raphaelitism was also a reaction against the negative impact of industrialization. The PRB turned to the Middle Ages both as a stylistic model and as an ideal for the fusion of art and life in the applied arts.

William Holman Hunt, "The Awakening Conscience," 1853, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, England.

John Everett Millais, "Ophelia," c. 1851, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, England.

Frederic George Stephens, "The Proposal (The Marquis and Griselda)," c. 1850, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, England.

Beginnings

The three original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), and John Everett Millais (1829-1896). They were quickly joined by the painters James Collinson (1825-1881) and Frederic George Stephens (1828-1907), the poet and critic William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919), and the sculptor Thomas Woolner (1825-1892).

Mid-19th-century England was marked by political upheaval, mass industrialization, and social ills. The PRB attempted to convey a message of artistic renewal and moral reform by imbuing their art with seriousness, sincerity, and truth to nature.

The group's early doctrine - which emphasized the importance of each artist's own interpretation and agency - had four parts, as recorded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

1. To have genuine ideas to express;

2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express it;

3. To sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;

4. Most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

The group disbanded completely by 1853, but the concepts and style of Pre-Raphaelitism continued on in Britain for several more decades.

Edward Burne-Jones (designer) and William Morris (executor), "St. Cecilia," c. 1900, stained and painted glass, Princeton University Art Museum, USA.

Beyond the Brotherhood

In 1857 Dante Gabriel Rossetti met the designer William Morris and the painter Edward Burne-Jones. Together they promoted a very meticulous and uncompromising medievalist strand of Pre-Raphaelitism, which promoted the virtues of a pre-industrial life and created paintings and furniture in the style of late medieval art.

Along with Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones began to formulate new directions for the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Morris in particular was keen to take the Pre-Raphaelite ideology beyond the realm of fine art, and ultimately founded the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris, along with Burne-Jones, Rossetti and a few other associates, founded a new design firm called Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company.

The Cult of Beauty

In the late 1860s, under Rossetti, a new group of young artists created a Cult of Beauty, forming a new ideal of feminine beauty with their depictions of unconventionally attractive and sensual women. They used models who challenged traditional Victorian standards of beauty. Many of the models were artists in their own right, including Georgiana Burne-Jones, Marie Spartali-Stilman, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's favorite model, Jane Morris, the wife of William Morris and a skilled embroiderer.

The Cult of Beauty laid the foundation for Aestheticism.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Monna Vanna," 1866, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, England.

"Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth."

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Google Sites

Report abuse