Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.]] The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form a seven-member "brotherhood".

The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art. Hence the name: Pre-Raphaelite. In particular, they objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, whom they called "Sir Sloshua". To the Pre-Raphaelites, according to William Michael Rossetti, "sloshy" meant "anything lax or scamped in the process of painting ... and hence ... any thing or person of a commonplace or conventional kind". In contrast, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.

The Pre-Raphaelites have been considered the first avant-garde movement in art, though they have also been denied that status, because they continued to accept both the concepts of history painting and of mimesis, or imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. However, the Pre-Raphaelites undoubtedly defined themselves as a reform-movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, and published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. Their debates were recorded in the Pre-Raphaelite Journal.

Beginnings of the Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house on Gower Street, London in 1848. At the initial meeting, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt were present. Hunt and Millais were students at the Royal Academy of Arts. They had previously met in another loose association, a sketching-society called the Cyclographic Club. Rossetti was a pupil of Ford Madox Brown. He had met Hunt after seeing his painting The Eve of St. Agnes, which is based on Keats's poem. As an aspiring poet, Rossetti wished to develop the links between Romantic poetry and art. By autumn, four more members had also joined, to form a seven-member-strong Brotherhood. These were William Michael Rossetti (Dante Gabriel Rossetti's brother), Thomas Woolner, James Collinson, and Frederic George Stephens. (Dickens considered Millais' Mary to be ugly. Interestingly enough, Millais had actually used his sister-in-law Mary Hodgkinson as a model for the Mary in his painting). Their medievalism was attacked as backward-looking and their extreme devotion to detail was condemned as ugly and jarring to the eye. According to Dickens, Millais made the Holy Family look like alcoholics and slum-dwellers, adopting contorted and absurd "medieval" poses. A rival group of older artists, The Clique, also used their influence against the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their principles were publicly attacked by the President of the Academy, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake.

Following the controversy, Collinson left the Brotherhood. They met to discuss whether he should be replaced by Charles Allston Collins or Walter Howell Deverell, but were unable to make a decision. From that point on the group disbanded, though their influence continued to be felt. Artists who had worked in the style still followed these techniques (initially anyway) but they no longer signed works "PRB". .]] However, the Brotherhood found support from the critic John Ruskin, who praised their devotion to nature and rejection of conventional methods of composition. The Pre-Raphaelites were influenced by Ruskin's theories. As a result, the critic wrote letters to The Times defending their work, later meeting them. Initially, he favoured Millais, who travelled to Scotland in the summer of 1853 with Ruskin and Ruskin's wife, Effie, to paint Ruskin's portrait. Effie's increasing attachment to Millais, among other reasons (including Ruskin's non-consummation of the marriage) created a crisis, leading Effie to leave Ruskin, have the marriage annulled on grounds that it had not been consummated, and marry Millais, which caused a public scandal. Millais abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style after his marriage, and Ruskin often savagely attacked his later works. Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti. He also provided independent funds to encourage the art of Rossetti's wife Elizabeth Siddal.

Later developments and influence

by Evelyn De Morgan, 1889, in quattrocento style]] Artists who were influenced by the Brotherhood include John Brett, Philip Calderon, Arthur Hughes, Gustave Moreau, Evelyn De Morgan, Frederic Sandys (who came into the Pre-Raphaelite circle in 1857), who would later go on to write his novels, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with their influence taken from the same mythological scenes portrayed by the Pre-Raphaelites.

In the twentieth century artistic ideals changed and art moved away from representing reality. Since the Pre-Raphaelites were fixed on portraying things with near-photographic precision, though with a distinctive attention to detailed surface-patterns, their work was devalued by many painters and critics. In particular, after the First World War, British Modernists associated Pre-Raphaelite art with the repressive and backward times in which they grew up. In the 1960s there was a major revival of Pre-Raphaelitism. Exhibitions and catalogues of works, culminating in a 1984 exhibition in London's Tate Gallery, re-established a canon of Pre-Raphaelite work.

List of artists

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

James Collinson (painter)

William Holman Hunt (painter)

John Everett Millais (painter)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (painter, poet)

William Michael Rossetti (critic)

Frederic George Stephens (critic)

Thomas Woolner (sculptor, poet)

Associated artists and figures

John Brett (painter)

Ford Madox Brown (painter, designer)

Richard Burchett (painter, educator)

Edward Burne-Jones (painter, designer)

Charles Allston Collins (painter)

Frank Cadogan Cowper (painter)

Henry Holiday (painter, stained-glass artist, illustrator)

Walter Howell Deverell (painter)

Arthur Hughes (painter, book illustrator)

Robert Braithwaite Martineau (painter)

Jane Morris (artist's model)

Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford (painter and artist's model)

May Morris (embroiderer and designer)

William Morris (designer, writer)

Christina Rossetti (poet)

John Ruskin (critic)

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (painter)

Thomas Seddon (painter)

Frederic Shields (painter)

Elizabeth Siddal (painter, poet and artist's model)

Simeon Solomon (painter)

Marie Spartali Stillman (painter)

Algernon Charles Swinburne (poet)

Henry Wallis (painter)

William Lindsay Windus (painter)

Loosely associated artists

Sophie Gengembre Anderson (painter)

Wyke Bayliss (painter)

George Price Boyce (painter)

Joanna Mary Boyce (painter)

Sir Frederick William Burton (painter)

Julia Margaret Cameron (photographer)

James Campbell (painter)

John Collier (painter)

William Davis (painter)

Evelyn De Morgan (painter)

Frank Bernard Dicksee (painter)

John William Godward (painter)

Thomas Cooper Gotch (painter)

Charles Edward Hallé (painter)

Edward Robert Hughes (painter)

John Lee (painter)

Edmund Leighton (painter)

Frederic, Lord Leighton (painter)

James Lionel Michael (minor poet, mentor to Henry Kendall)

Charles William Mitchell (painter)

Joseph Noel Paton (painter)

John William Waterhouse (painter)

Daniel Alexander Williamson (painter)

Collections

There are major collections of Pre-Raphaelite work in the Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. The Delaware Art Museum has the most significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite art outside the United Kingdom.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is an avid collector of Pre-Raphaelite works and a selection of 300 items from his collection were shown at a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2003.

The National Trust houses at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton, and at Wallington Hall, Northumberland, both have significant and representative collections.

Portrayal in popular culture

The story of the Brotherhood, from their controversial first exhibition through to their eventual embracement by the art establishment, has been depicted in two BBC television series. The first, The Love School, was broadcast in 1975; the second is the 2009 BBC television drama serial Desperate Romantics by Peter Bowker. Although much of the latter's material is derived from Franny Moyle's factual book Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, the series occasionally departs from established facts in favour of dramatic licence and is prefaced by the disclaimer: "In the mid-19th century, a group of young men challenged the art establishment of the day. The pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were inspired by the real world around them, yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit." Ken Russell's 1967 film Dante's Inferno concentrates on the life of Rossetti, with brief scenes on the other leading Pre-Raphaelites.

Books

Andres, Sophia. (2004) The Pre-Raphaelite Art of the Victorian Novel: Narrative Challenges to Visual Gendered Boundaries. Ohio State University Press, ISBN 0814251293

Bate, P.H. [1901] (1972) The English Pre-Raphaelite painters : their associates and successors, New York : AMS Press, ISBN 0-404-00691-4

Daly, G. (1989) Pre-Raphaelites in Love, New York : Ticknor & Fields, ISBN 0-89919-450-8

des Cars, L. (2000) The Pre-Raphaelites : Romance and Realism, New York : Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 0-81092-891-4

Mancoff, D.N. (2003) Flora symbolica : flowers in Pre-Raphaelite art, Munich ; London ; New York : Prestel, ISBN 3-7913-2851-4

Marsh, J. and Nunn, P.G. (1998) Pre-Raphaelite women artists, London : Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0-500-28104-1

Staley, A. and Newall, C. (2004) Pre-Raphaelite vision : truth to nature, London : Tate, ISBN 1-85437-499-0

Townsend, J., Ridge, J. and Hackney, S. (2004) Pre-Raphaelite painting techniques : 1848-56, London : Tate, ISBN 1-85437-498-2

Watson, M.F. (1997) Collecting the Pre-Raphaelites : the Anglo-American enchantment, Aldershot : Ashgate, ISBN 1-85928-399-3

See also

List of Pre-Raphaelite paintings

New English Art Club

British art

Early Renaissance painting

English school of painting

Hogarth club

Middle Ages in history

John Wharlton Bunney

Florence Claxton

James Smetham

The Light of the World

Notes

References

Bucher, Gregory (2004). "Review of Matthew Dickerson. 'Following Gandalf. Epic Battles and Moral Victory in The Lord of the Rings'", Journal of Religion & Society, 6, ISSN 1522-5658, webpage accessed 13 October 2007

Dickerson, Matthew (2003). Following Gandalf : epic battles and moral victory in the Lord of the rings, Grand Rapids, Mich. : Brazos Press, ISBN 1-58743-085-1

Ramm, John (2003). "The Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite: Henry Wallis", Antique Dealer & Collectors Guide, 56 (Mar/April) , p. 8–9

External links

Collection of links

Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource

Liverpool Walker Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite collection

Pre-Raphaelite and other Masters: the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

Pre-Raphaelitism Lecture by John Ruskin

Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites

Pre Raphaelitism in Poetry

Literary Aspects of Pre Raphaelitism: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature

Pre-Raphaelite Chronology

The Pre-Raphaelite Critic is a collection of full-text and excerpted 19th century reviews of the movement and its individual members.

Oscar Wilde, Joseph Worcester, and the English Arts & Crafts Movement an article describing Worcester's desire to establish a brotherhood similar to the Pre-Raphaelites in the SF Bay Area

The Pre-Raphaelite Society

Pre-Raphaelite online resource project at the Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery

The Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art

Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood: women featured in Pre-Raphaelite art

The Pre-Raph Pack Discover more about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years.

Lizzie Siddal.com Elizabeth Siddal: Pre-Raphaelite model, painter, poet. Siddal is famous for posing as Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais. She later married Pre-Raphaelite founder Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Category:British artist groups and collectives Category:19th-century art groups Category:1848 establishments Category:British art Category:Victorian era