The group sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions ofQuattrocento Italian art. They rejected what they regarded as the mechanistic approach first adopted byMannerist artists who succeededRaphael andMichelangelo. The Brotherhood believed theClassical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on theacademic teaching of art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, the group objected to the influence ofSir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the EnglishRoyal 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".[2] The group associated their work withJohn Ruskin,[3] an English critic whose influences were driven by his religious background. Christian themes were abundant.[4]
The group continued to accept the concepts ofhistory painting andmimesis, imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. The Pre-Raphaelites 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. The group's debates were recorded in thePre-Raphaelite Journal. The Brotherhood separated after almost five years.[5]
As an aspiring poet, Rossetti wished to develop the links betweenRomantic poetry and art. By autumn, four more members, paintersJames Collinson andFrederic George Stephens, Rossetti's brother, poet and criticWilliam Michael Rossetti, and sculptorThomas Woolner, had joined to form a seven-member-strong brotherhood.[7] Ford Madox Brown was invited to join, but the more senior artist remained independent but supported the group throughout the PRB period of Pre-Raphaelitism and contributed toThe Germ. Other young painters and sculptors became close associates, includingCharles Allston Collins, andAlexander Munro. The PRB intended to keep the existence of the brotherhood secret from members of the Royal Academy.[citation needed]
The brotherhood's early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations:
to have genuine ideas to express;
to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
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; and
most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.[8]
The principles were deliberately non-dogmatic, since the brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced byRomanticism, the members thought freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated bymedieval culture, believing it to possess aspiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles ofrealism which stress the independent observation of nature. In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and moved in two directions. The realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalists were led by Rossetti and his followers,Edward Burne-Jones andWilliam Morris. The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing theiridealism to thematerialist realism associated withCourbet andImpressionism.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was greatly influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp-focus techniques on a white canvas. In attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found inQuattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in thinglazes of pigment over a wet white ground in the hope that the colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity. Their emphasis on brilliance of colour was a reaction to the excessive use ofbitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds,David Wilkie andBenjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of muddy darkness, an effect the Pre-Raphaelites despised.
In 1848, Rossetti and Hunt made a list of "Immortals", artistic heroes whom they admired, especially from literature, some of whose work would form subjects for PRB paintings, notably includingKeats andTennyson.[9]
The first exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite work occurred in 1849. Both Millais'sIsabella (1848–1849) and Holman Hunt'sRienzi (1848–1849) were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Rossetti'sThe Girlhood of Mary Virgin was shown at a Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner. As agreed, all members of the brotherhood signed their work with their name and the initials "PRB". Between January and April 1850, the group published a literary magazine,The Germ edited by William Rossetti which published poetry by the Rossettis, Woolner, and Collinson and essays on art and literature by associates of the brotherhood, such asCoventry Patmore. As the short run-time implies, the magazine did not manage to achieve sustained momentum. (Daly 1989)
In 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood became the subject of controversy after the exhibition of Millais's paintingChrist in the House of His Parents was considered to beblasphemous by many reviewers, notablyCharles Dickens.[10] Dickens considered Millais's Mary to be ugly.[11] Millais had used his sister-in-law, Mary Hodgkinson, as the model for Mary in his painting. The brotherhood's medievalism was attacked as backward-looking and its extreme devotion to detail was condemned as ugly and jarring to the eye.[12] According to Dickens, Millais made the Holy Family look like alcoholics and slum-dwellers, adopting contorted and absurd "medieval" poses.[13]
After the controversy, James Collinson resigned from the Brotherhood due to his belief that it was bringing the Christian religion into disrepute. The remaining members met to discuss whether he should be replaced by Charles Allston Collins orWalter Howell Deverell, but were unable to make a decision. From that point the group disbanded, though its influence continued. Artists who had worked in the style initially continued but no longer signed works "PRB".[14]
The brotherhood found support from the criticJohn Ruskin, who praised its devotion to nature and rejection of conventional methods of composition. The Pre-Raphaelites were influenced by Ruskin's theories. He wrote toThe Times defending their work and subsequently met them. Initially, he favoured Millais, who travelled to Scotland in the summer of 1853 with Ruskin and Ruskin's wife, Euphemia Chalmers Ruskin, née Gray (now best known asEffie Gray). The main object of the journey was to paint Ruskin's portrait.[15] Effie became increasingly attached to Millais,[16] creating a crisis. In subsequent annulment proceedings, Ruskin himself made a statement to his lawyer to the effect that his marriage had been unconsummated.[17] The marriage was annulled on grounds of non-consummation, leaving Effie free to marry Millais,[18] but causing a public scandal. Millais began to move away from the Pre-Raphaelite style after his marriage, and Ruskin ultimately attacked his later works. Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti and provided funds to encourage the art ofElizabeth Siddal, later Rossetti's wife.
By 1853 the original PRB had virtually dissolved,[19] with only Holman Hunt remaining true to its stated aims.[according to whom?] But the term "Pre-Raphaelite" stuck to Rossetti and others, includingWilliam Morris andEdward Burne-Jones, with whom he became involved inOxford in 1857.[20] Hence the term Pre-Raphaelite is associated with a much wider and long-lived art movement.
After 1856, Dante Gabriel Rossetti became an inspiration for the medievalising strand of the movement. He was the link between the two types of Pre-Raphaelite painting (nature and Romance) after the PRB became lost in the later decades of the century. Rossetti, although the least committed to the brotherhood, continued the name and changed its style. He began painting versions of femme fatales using models includingJane Morris, in paintings such asProserpine,The Day Dream, andLa Pia de' Tolomei. His work influenced his friendWilliam Morris, in whose firmMorris, 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 inmedieval designs and other crafts leading to theArts and Crafts movement headed by William Morris. Holman Hunt was involved with the movement to reform design through theDella Robbia Pottery company.
After 1850, Hunt and Millais moved away from direct imitation of medieval art. They 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 andPalestine 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 his reversal of principles.
Pre-Raphaelitism had a significant impact in Scotland and on Scottish artists. The figure in Scottish art most associated with the Pre-Raphaelites was the Aberdeen-bornWilliam Dyce (1806–1864). Dyce befriended the young Pre-Raphaelites in London and introduced their work to Ruskin.[22] His later work was Pre-Raphaelite in its spirituality, as can be seen in hisThe Man of Sorrows andDavid in the Wilderness (both 1860), which contain a Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail.[23]Joseph Noel Paton (1821–1901) studied at the Royal Academy schools in London, where he became a friend of Millais and he subsequently followed him into Pre-Raphaelitism, producing pictures that stressed detail and melodrama such asThe Bludie Tryst (1855). His later paintings, like those of Millais, have been criticised for descending into popular sentimentality.[24] Also influenced by Millais wasJames Archer (1823–1904), whose work includesSummertime, Gloucestershire (1860)[24] and who from 1861 began a series ofArthurian-based paintings includingLa Morte d'Arthur andSir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.[25]
Pre-Raphaelism also inspired painters likeLawrence Alma-Tadema.[26] The movement influenced many later British artists into the 20th century.
Rossetti came to be seen as a precursor of the wider EuropeanSymbolist movement. There is evidence to suggest that a number of paintings by the German artistPaula Modersohn-Becker were influenced by Rossetti.[27]
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has a world-renowned collection of works by Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites that, some claim, strongly influenced the youngJ. R. R. Tolkien,[28] who wroteThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings, with influences taken from the same mythological scenes portrayed by the Pre-Raphaelites. Tolkien considered his own group of school friends and artistic associates, the so-called TCBS, as a group in the vein of the Pre-Raphaelites.
In the 20th century artistic ideals changed, and art moved away from representing reality. After theFirst World War, Pre-Raphaelite art was devalued for its literary qualities[29] and was scorned by critics as sentimental and concocted "artistic bric-a-brac".[30] In the 1960s there was a major revival of Pre-Raphaelitism. Exhibitions and catalogues of works, culminating in a 1984 exhibition in London'sTate Gallery, re-established a canon of Pre-Raphaelite work.[31] Among many other exhibitions, there was another large show atTate Britain in 2012–13.[32]
Many members of the 'inner' Pre-Raphaelite circle (Dante Gabriel Rossetti,John Everett Millais,William Holman Hunt,Ford Madox Brown,Edward Burne-Jones) and 'outer' circle (Frederick Sandys,Arthur Hughes,Simeon Solomon,Henry Hugh Armstead,Joseph Noel Paton,Frederic Shields,Matthew James Lawless) were working concurrently in painting, illustration, and sometimes poetry.[33] Victorian morality judged literature as superior to painting, because of its "noble grounds for noble emotion."[34]Robert Buchanan (a writer and opponent of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) felt so strongly about this artistic hierarchy that he wrote: "The truth is that literature, and more particularly poetry, is in a very bad way when one art gets hold of another, and imposes upon it its conditions and limitations."[35] This was the hostile environment in which Pre-Raphaelites were defiantly working in various media. The Pre-Raphaelites attempted to revitalizesubject painting, which had been dismissed as artificial. Their belief that each picture should tell a story was an important step for the unification of painting and literature (eventually deemed theSister Arts[36]), or at least a break in the rigid hierarchy promoted by writers like Robert Buchanan.[37]
The Pre-Raphaelite desire for more extensive affiliation between painting and literature also manifested in illustration. Illustration is a more direct unification of these media and, like subject painting, can assert a narrative of its own. For the Pre-Raphaelites, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti specifically, there was anxiety about the constraints of illustration.[37] In 1855, Rossetti wrote toWilliam Allingham about the independence of illustration: "I have not begun even designing for them yet, but fancy I shall try the 'Vision of Sin' and 'Palace of Art' etc. – those where one can allegorize on one's own hook, without killing for oneself and everyone a distinct idea of the poet's."[37] This passage makes apparent Rossetti's desire to not just support the poet's narrative, but to create an allegorical illustration that functions separately from the text as well. In this respect, Pre-Raphaelite illustrations go beyond depicting an episode from a poem, but rather function like subject paintings within a text.
Circe, 1885, byJohn Collier, depicts the seductive enchantress from Homer'sOdyssey and was exhibited at theChicago World Art Fair 1893, World's Columbian Exposition, Department K Britannica
There is a set of Pre-Raphaelite murals in the Old Library at theOxford Union, depicting scenes from theArthurian legends, painted between 1857 and 1859 by a team of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones. TheNational Trust houses atWightwick Manor,Wolverhampton, and atWallington Hall,Northumberland, both have significant and representative collections.Andrew Lloyd Webber is an avid collector of Pre-Raphaelite works, and a selection of 300 items from his collection were shown at an exhibition at theRoyal Academy in London in 2003.
The story of the brotherhood, from its controversial first exhibition to being embraced by the art establishment, has been depicted in twoBBC television series. The first,The Love School, was broadcast in 1975; the second is the 2009 BBC television drama serialDesperate Romantics byPeter Bowker. Although much of the latter's material is derived fromFranny Moyle's factual bookDesperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites,[38] 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."[39]
Ken Russell's television filmDante's Inferno (1967) contains brief scenes on some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites but mainly concentrates on the life of Rossetti, played byOliver Reed.
Chapter 36 of the 1952 novelEast of Eden byJohn Steinbeck references pre-Raphaelite influenced images used to identify different classrooms: "The pictures identified the rooms, and the pre-Raphaelite influence was overwhelming.Galahad standing in full armor pointed the way for third-graders;Atalanta's race urged on the fourth, thePot of Basil confused the fifth grade, and so on until the denunciation ofCatiline sent the eighth-graders on to high school with a sense of high civic virtue. Cal and Aron were assigned to the seventh grade because of their age, and they learned every shadow of its picture—Laocoön completely wrapped in snakes".
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was not only about the British aesthetic,; they could be linked to other 19th-century European art movements. French Realism, for example, that was promoted by artists like Gustave Courbet, was about the truth of modern life and work.[40][41][42] The Pre-Raphaelites wanted to go back to spiritual and aesthetic standards of the medieval and early Renaissance. Their naturalism and storytelling was different from the social and the political emphasis of continental Realism.[43]
Impressionism in France was about fleeting light and modern leisure. We can see this in the PRB's love of narrative, clarity and moral themes. The Pre-Raphaelites preferred permanence, while Monet and Renoir, the Impressionists, captured the moment. This difference on ideology and style was what made the Brotherhood different, i.e. being more in line with the early German Nazarenes' moral romanticism than the material modernity of their French contemporaries.[44][45]
^Slater, Michael (2009).Charles Dickens, p. 309. Yale University Press.
^Andres, Sophia (2005).The Pre-Raphaelite Art of the Victorian Novel: Narrative Challenges to Visual Gendered Boundaries, p. 9. Ohio State University Press.
^The Times, Saturday, 3 May 1851; pg. 8; Issue 20792: Exhibition of the Royal Academy. (Private View.), First Notice: "We cannot censure at present, as amply or as strongly as we desire to do, that strange disorder of the mind or the eyes which continues to rage with unabated absurdity among a class of juvenile artists who style themselves "P.R.B.," which being interpreted meansPre-Raphael Brethren. Their faith seems to consist in an absolute contempt for perspective and the known laws of light and shade, an aversion to beauty in every shape, and a singular devotion to the minute accidents of their subjects, including, or rather seeking out, every excess of sharpness and deformity."
^Rebecca Jelbert: "Paula Modersohn-Becker’s self-portraits and the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti."The Burlington Magazine, vol.159, no.1373 (2017): 617–22.
^See, for example, Bucher (2004) for a brief discussion on the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites on Tolkien.
^Goldman, Paul (2004).Victorian Illustration: The Pre-Raphaelites, the Idyllic School and the High Victorians. Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries. pp. 1–51.
^Buchanan, Robert W. (October 1871)."The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D.G. Rossetti".The Contemporary Review. as cited in Welland, D.S.R. The Pre-Raphaelites in Literature and Art. London, UK: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 14.
Barringer, Tim (1998).Reading the Pre-Raphaelites. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.ISBN978-0300177336.
Barringer, Tim, Jason Rosenfeld, and Alison Smith (2012).Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, London, England: Tate Publishing,ISBN978-1854379306
Bucher, Gregory (2004). "Review ofMatthew 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,ISBN1-58743-085-1
Gaunt, William (1975).The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy (rev. ed.). London: Cape.ISBN0-224-01106-5.
The Pre-Raphaelites, 1984 (exhibition catalogue, various authors), Tate Gallery, London,ISBN0713916389
Latham, David,Haunted Texts: Studies in Pre-Raphaelitism in Honour of William E. Fredeman, William Evan Fredeman, David Latham, eds, 2003, University of Toronto Press,ISBN0802036627, 9780802036629,google books
Pre-Raphaelite murals in the Old Library at the Oxford Union. Thispodcast covers their painting. Oxford Brookes University has a series of podcasts on the Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford, withthis one onYouTube dedicated to the Union murals.
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