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Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Art

   Persephone, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
   Persephone, 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 John
   Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt.

   The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they
   considered to be the mechanistic approach adopted by the Mannerist
   artists who followed Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the
   Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had
   been a corrupting influence on 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. They
   called him "Sir Sloshua", believing that his broad technique was a
   sloppy and formulaic form of academic Mannerism. 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

   Illustration by Holman Hunt to Thomas Woolner's poem "My Beautiful
   Lady", published in The Germ, 1850
   Illustration by Holman Hunt to Thomas Woolner's poem "My Beautiful
   Lady", published in The Germ, 1850

   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 Hunt's painting The Eve of St
   Agnes, based on Keats' 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-strong Brotherhood. These were
   William Michael Rossetti (Dante Gabriel Rossetti's brother), Thomas
   Woolner, James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens. Ford Madox Brown
   was invited to join, but preferred to remain independent. He
   nevertheless remained close to the group. Some other young painters and
   sculptors were also close associates, including Charles Allston
   Collins, Thomas Tupper and Alexander Munro. They kept the existence of
   the Brotherhood secret from members of the Royal Academy.

Early doctrines

   The Brotherhood's early doctrines were expressed in four declarations:
    1. To have genuine ideas to express;
    2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
    3. To sympathise 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. And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures
       and statues.

   These principles are deliberately undogmatic, since the Brotherhood
   wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists
   to determine their own ideas and method of depiction. Influenced by
   Romanticism, they thought that freedom and responsibility were
   inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by
   Medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative
   integrity lost in later eras. This emphasis on medieval culture was to
   clash with the realism promoted by the stress on independent
   observation of nature. In its early stages the Pre-Raphaelite
   Brotherhood believed that the two interests were consistent with one
   another, but in later years the movement divided in two directions. The
   realist side was led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalist side
   was led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William
   Morris. This split was never absolute, since both factions believed
   that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their
   idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and
   Impressionism.

   In their attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found in
   Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in
   thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground. In this way they hoped
   that their colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity.
   This emphasis of brilliance of colour was in reaction to the excessive
   use of bitumen by earlier British artists such as Reynolds, David
   Wilkie and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of
   muddy darkness, an effect which the Pre-Raphaelies despised.

Public controversies

   The first exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite work came in 1849. Both Millais'
   Isabella (1848–1849) and Holman Hunt's Rienzi (1848–1849) were
   exhibited at the Royal Academy and Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin
   was shown at the Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner. As agreed all
   members of the Brotherhood signed works with their name and "PRB".
   Between January and April 1850 the group published a literary magazine,
   The Germ. William Rossetti edited the magazine, which published poetry
   by the Rossettis, Woolner and Collinson, together with essays on art
   and literature by associates of the Brotherhood, such as Coventry
   Patmore. As the short runtime implies, the magazine did not manage to
   achieve a sustained momentum. (Daly 1989)
   Christ In the House of His Parents, by John Everett Millais, 1850.
   Christ In the House of His Parents, by John Everett Millais, 1850.

   In 1850 the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood became controversial after the
   exhibition of Millais's painting Christ In The House Of His Parents,
   considered to be blasphemous by many reviewers, notably Charles
   Dickens. 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.

   However, the Brotherhood found support from the critic John Ruskin, who
   praised their devotion to nature and rejection of conventional methods
   of composition. He continued to support their work both financially and
   in his writings.

   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".

Later developments and influence

   Medea by Evelyn De Morgan, 1889, in quattrocento style
   Medea by Evelyn De Morgan, 1889, in quattrocento style

   Artists who were influenced by the Brotherhood include John Brett,
   Philip Calderon, Arthur Hughes, Evelyn De Morgan and Frederic Sandys.
   Ford Madox Brown, who was associated with them from the beginning, is
   often seen as most closely adopting the Pre-Raphaelite principles.

   After 1856, Rossetti became an inspiration for the medievalising strand
   of the movement. His work influenced his friend William Morris, in
   whose firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. he became a partner, and
   with whose wife Jane he may have had an affair. Ford Madox Brown and
   Edward Burne-Jones also became partners in the firm. Through Morris's
   company the ideals of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood influenced many
   interior designers and architects, arousing interest in medieval
   designs, as well as other crafts. This led directly to the Arts and
   Crafts movement headed by William Morris. Holman Hunt was also involved
   with this movement to reform design through the Della Robbia Pottery
   company.

   After 1850, both Hunt and Millais moved away from direct imitation of
   medieval art. Both stressed the realist and scientific aspects of the
   movement, though Hunt continued to emphasise the spiritual significance
   of art, seeking to reconcile religion and science by making accurate
   observations and studies of locations in Egypt and Palestine for his
   paintings on biblical subjects. In contrast, Millais abandoned
   Pre-Raphaelitism after 1860, adopting a much broader and looser style
   influenced by Reynolds. William Morris and others condemned this
   reversal of principles.

   The movement influenced the work of many later British artists well
   into the twentieth century. Rossetti later came to be seen as a
   precursor of the wider European Symbolist movement. In the late
   twentieth century the Brotherhood of Ruralists based its aims on
   Pre-Raphaelitism, while the Stuckists have also have derived
   inspiration from it.

   The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a world-renowned collection
   of works by Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites which, some claim,
   strongly influenced the young J.R.R. Tolkien while he was growing up in
   the city.

   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 critics. Since the 1970s there has been a resurgence
   in interest in the movement.

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

     * Ford Madox Brown (painter, designer)
     * Edward Burne-Jones (painter, designer)
     * Lawrence Alma-Tadema (painter)
     * Charles Allston Collins (painter)
     * Frank Cadogan Cowper (painter)
     * Walter Howell Deverell (painter)
     * Arthur Hacker (painter)
     * Arthur Hughes (painter, book illustrator)
     * Jane Morris (artist's model)
     * May Morris (embroiderer and designer)
     * William Morris (designer, writer)
     * Christina Rossetti (poet)
     * John Ruskin (critic)
     * Elizabeth Siddal (painter, poet and artist's model)
     * Simeon Solomon (painter)
     * Algernon Swinburne (poet)

Loosely associated artists

     * Wyke Bayliss (painter)
     * John William Godward (painter)
     * Thomas Cooper Gotch (painter)
     * Edward Robert Hughes (painter)
     * Edmund Blair Leighton (painter)
     * Frederic, Lord Leighton (painter)
     * John William Waterhouse (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 on Merseyside and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. The Delaware
   Art Museum has the most significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite art
   outside of the United Kingdom.

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

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