The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was formed by a group of young British artists (painter, poets, writers and, critics) in the September of 1848. It was considered as the first avant-garde art group in British art history with its formative years from 1848 to 1853.⁴³ The original brotherhood consisted of seven members, including William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner. The Brotherhood influenced numerous artists and figures. Some notable associated figures were Ford Madox Brown, Walter Howell Deverell, Arthur Hughes, William Morris, Christina Rossetti, Lucy Madox Brown, John William Waterhouse, and many others.

42 Lavinia Hulea, "Pre-Raphaelites Painting Shakespeare’s Women," Gender Studies 11 (2012): 127.

43 Jason Rosenfeld, John Everett Millais. New York: Phaidon Press, 2012, 2.

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The formation of the art movement started with Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti during their age of twenty-one, twenty and, nineteen. They were the three major figures that contributed to the art movement with their paintings and writings. The name of the brotherhood came from their interest in the late medieval and early Renaissance art works. Frustrated by the act of studying and mimicking the historical pictures and sculptures, they call for a change in art style and intent for creativity. It was founded as a rebellion and opposition towards the general genre of artistic styles and practices established in the generation. They aimed to bring back the art genre before the time of Raphael (1483-1520), in order to reform British arts.⁴⁴ The formation of the group was also a rebel against their teachers of the Royal Academy of Arts. They believed that art should go botanically naturalistic and with realism, instead of spending long hours focusing on objects, models, and casts. Besides from the rebellious thought, they also sought to follow the teachings and emulate the early Renaissance artists that they admired and learned from their artworks.

Other than focusing on the naturalism in the paintings, the Pre-Raphaelites painted in the color of bright and jewel colors, flat surfaces and in the style of the fifteenth-century Italian art. The Brotherhood were more than just an art movement, the raised social questions about the artistic problems and identities. According to Barringer, the Pre-Raphaelites raised issues regarding “the image of the genius, the lone, alienated, [and] creative individual (invariably male).”⁴⁵ Pre-Raphaelitism cannot be identified in one generic form, as Jason Rosenfeld writes,

Pre-Raphaelite pictures are marked stylistically by a vividness of detail, glowing hyper-real coloration, a sharp clarity of outline best seen in their drawings and unconventional

44 Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, 7.

45 Ibid., 14.

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compositions that often seemed willfully to ignore centuries of artistic theory regarding the representation of an illusionistic three-dimensional world on a flat surface.⁴⁶

The Pre-Raphaelite style draws from the traditions of High Renaissance, medieval, and gothic genre of art.

John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was one of the most well-known artists among the three founders. Though first neglected by criticism, his Ophelia has become a symbolic icon to represent Pre-Raphaelitism. The gifted prodigy entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of eleven and as the youngest ever. He met Hunt and Rossetti at the Schools and it led to the founding of the brotherhood. During the formative years of the group, Millais produced a number of Pre-Raphaelitism paintings, such as Isabella (1849), Christ in the House of His Parents (1849), Ophelia (1851-52) and The Order of Release (1853). However, he has slowly drifted from the Pre-Raphaelite style into a more historical genre and portraits in the later 1860s.

Achieved fame as a painter, poet, and translator, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) enrolled in the Royal Academy of Arts and left after a year to study under Ford Madox Brown. As the most celebrated member in the Rossetti family, he was the brother of Christina Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti. He painted his first work inscribing the initials P.R.B in his The Girlhood of Mary Virgin in 1849. In his years of Pre-Raphaelitism, he produced a number of works on the subject of Christianity and literature inspired by Shakespeare, Tennyson and, Keats. Some of his notable artworks are: Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), The Tune of the Seven Towers (1857), Beata Beatrix (1864-70), Dante’s Dream at the Time of Death of Beatrice (1871) and Proserpine (1874). Rossetti was also the main inspiration and influenced many Pre-Raphaelite’s

46 Rosenfeld, John Everett Millais, 25.

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associates.

Unlike Millais and Rossetti, William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was acknowledged to be the less studied and less well-known among the three.⁴⁷ Though less studied, he was the last surviving painter member of the group and the only one who followed the principles throughout his career. With several patrons, he painted one of his most famous and controversial work, The Awakening Conscience (1853). In his later years, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905 and published his memoir in the following year titled Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The memoir included the beginning of the establishment and the beliefs they shared through the paintings.

The Pre-Raphaelites focused on the symbolic messages, artistic identities, religious contexts, literature, social life, nature and, portraits of artistic individuals. Their art style associates with the genre before the High Renaissance, especially on the traditions of medieval and Gothic periods. Other than working with religious themes, they were also largely inspired by literature. The Pre-Raphaelites had created many notable works during their formative years, according to the list organized by Poulson, the Pre-Raphaelites drew at least sixty-three paintings and sketches referencing Shakespeare’s playwrights.⁴⁸ Most Pre-Raphaelite paintings of Shakespeare portrayed the sceneries containing a complex psychological state of the characters with the addition of careful representation of nature. Their interest in drawing intense emotions becomes one of the key reasons for taking Shakespeare’s heroines as a subject.

47 Anna Olivia Funk, "William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelites: Artistic Aims, Worldview, and Influence on Nineteenth-Century Culture," (2016). Honor Senior Theses/Projects. Paper 94, Introduction.

48 Poulson, "A Checklist of Pre-Raphaelite Illustrations," 244.

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