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The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood //
Muddy Colors I have long been an admirer of the artwork of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) though there is a little confusion out there as to who the Pre-Raphaelites were. Not about the founders, they are consistently listed as: William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais, but if you do a google image search for 'Pre-Raphaelite artists' you will get images from a big range of artists. Who was officially in and who might have just been influenced by their ideas? Before we answer that, let's go over why/when the PRB started and who was involved.
Origins The founders were inspired by early Italian painters predating Raphael. The frescoes at Camposanto at Pisa are a great example of the kind of art that inpsired their thinking. The frescos were largely damaged or destroyed during WWII, but have been restored as far as what is possible. They were also inspired by the Nazarenes, a German group of artists living in Rome who wanted to revive the great traditions of religious art.
They were also rebelling against the Royal Academy, believing that the Academy was full of trivial and vulgar subjects. They wanted to paint scenes that were of more importance. Millais said that the goal was to paint images that would turn "the minds of men to good reflections", desiring to inspire and uplift the viewer. They also felt that the Academy, rather than teaching truthful representations, taught many tricks that lacked artistic integrity. Sir Joshua Reynolds was referred to as 'Sir Sloshua' due to what the PRB called 'sloshy' painting or quick and rapid painting that celebrated the brushwork over the representation of the subject.
At their founding meeting in 1848, several others were invited to join the brotherhood; James Collinson, a painter, William Michael Rossetti, a writer and critic, Frederic George Stephens, also a critic, and Thomas Woolner, a sculptor and poet. At this meeting William Rossetti recorded 4 stated goals of the PRB as follows:
- To have genuine ideas to express;
- To study nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
- 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;
- And most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.
Much of what they believed can be traced to the ideas of John Ruskin, who wrote in
Modern Painters that the artist should "go to nature in all singleness of heart" and "rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth." They also rejected the drama of artists like Caravaggio and the use of chiaroscuro as being false. They felt that to capture truth, they needed to draw strictly upon nature and paint their landscapes outside entirely (rather than do a study and complete a larger finished piece back in the studio).
You can see this wrought out in the PRB landscapes where nature is painted in all it's minute detail and with a high degree of fidelity. Just look at details from this landscape,
Our English Coast, by Hunt. You will see the bright colors, crisp and detailed brushwork that is typical of PRB works.
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| Our English Coast by William Holman Hunt |
Their foundations were not really anything new, but the culmination of a tide of feelings in England towards the early style of Italian art and an adherence to nature.
Technique The painting method of the PRB was to paint with pure colors over a brilliant white ground. They didn't tone the canvas with a wash or imprimatura. Many of their paintings are still rather jewel like in person because of this approach. Compared to some of their contemporary paintings, it can be almost jarring. I had the chance to go see a victorian show in D.C. back in the mid nineties and came upon "The Scapegoat" painting by Hunt. It stood out in the room, with its fine detailing and bright colors. It is a strange painting, but I kept coming back to it for another look because of its intensity.
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| The Scapegoat - William Holman Hunt |
Timeframe and Demise The official union of the PRB as rather short, starting in 1848 and ending in 1853. The first paintings appeared in 1849 where the mysterious 'PRB' initials first appeared. The group started out with some success. Millais' painting,
Isabella, received praise for his attempt to paint in the early Italian manner, but the odd perspective and the depiction of the man kicking Isabella's dog was derided.
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| The first publically exhibited PRB painting |
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| The PRB initials carved into the bench |
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| Poor dog getting kicked |
All was not well though. The group as a whole received little sympathy the following year. Art reviews back then were brutal! One paper, describing Millais depiction of Mary in
Christ in the House of His Parents, said she was a "woman so hideous in her ugliness that... she would stand out from the rest of the compant as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin shop in England."
Remember, the PRB wanted to stay true to observation, so they painted with fidelity to their models. How would you like to read that review if you were the model for Millais' Mary!?
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| Christ in the House of His Parents by Millais |
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| Detail - I think the critique of Mary here was a little harsh! |
In 1853, Millais was elected as an associate to the Royal Academy, the institution that the PRB rebelled against initially. Hunt left for the Middle East the following year, effectively ending the Brotherhood. Of this, Rossetti, who was moving away from the Brotherhood already, wrote "so now the Round Table is dissolved". Millais, my favorite of the PRB, would later abandon the it's ideals and see the greatest success through his career.
My two favorite Pre-Raphaelite paintings are by Millais.
Ophelia and
The Blind Girl.
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| Ophelia by Millais |
The details and execution of this piece make this painting the masterpiece of the PRB.
The figure of Ophelia took nearly 4 months to paint. Look at the wonderful details in the dress beading.
The painting rewards close inspection. Note the little blue butterfly perched on the white blossom towards the top. The layering of foliage and inclusion of every detail is almost overwhelming.
Another hidden creature, the little red breasted robin on the left. Look at the remarkable renderings of all the twigs and leaves in this small detail from the painting.
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| The Blind Girl by Millais |
This painting, in all it's beauty is also rather heartbreaking. We see the beautiful girl, eyes closed or closing, sitting on the side of the road with her sibling. The smaller girl looks over her sister's shoulder seeing a beautiful rainbow crowning a beautiful landscape of green grass, rolling hills, a deep blue sky and animals at ease in their natural setting. She holds her sister's hand and sits protectively under her shawl. I love the very real and touching way the younger sister feels the hem of the shawl, rubbing it between her fingers. This is something I have seen my own kids do with their blankets or their mother's hair when they were a little younger.
It isn't until you look closer that you see the tag pinned to her collar that identifies her as blind. It appears that she plays the concertina on her lap to earn her way in the world. She must be sitting very still, listening, feeling the sun on her face, because a butterfly has landed on her shoulder to rest.
Look how she feels the small blade of grass between her fingers. She is trying to take in her surroundings as well. The flowers, forget-me-nots, seem to be a message from the artist to not neglect or forget those that are in need, no doubt reflecting the feelings of the blind girl as well.
Impact and Legacy Now we know who was a part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. That means that many of the other artists that we often see listed among them, (Waterhouse, Leighton, Tadema, Hughes...) were not actual Pre-Raphaelites. If you did the search for "Pre-Raphaelite Artists" in Google Images though you saw that most of the first images to come up are all Waterhouse images.
I think it is much more accurate to put Waterhouse into the Romantic movement, though that doesn't mean he wasn't influenced. If you look at the Millais above and compare them to the Waterhouse below, you can see that both in execution and style, their work is very different. Waterhouse did not have the drive to faithfully render nature in all it's detail. His work was more impressionistic. It even contained the "sloshy" suggestive brushwork the PRB railed against. His most famous painting,
The Lady of Shallot, was more of a naturalist painting than anything the PRB would have done.
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| The Lady of Shallot - Waterhouse |
Putting that aside though, the brief initial movement
did influence many artists, spawning what is referred to as 'Pre-Raphaelitism' which occurred under the umbrella of the Aesthetic Movement that swept through England and Europe in the 1860's. The attention to detail, historical accuracy, the goal of raising the artistic bar and having a social and moral voice were all ideals that the PRB gave fuel, and the influence extended beyond painting through the end of the 19th century.
Further Reading:
Metropolitan Museum of Art Wikipedia entry on the PRB Camposanto Frescoes I also drew much information for this post from the book,
The Pre-Raphaelites by Christopher Wood, which you can get in hardback for about $4 plus shipping at the time of this writing. It is a great book with some excellent reproductions and writing.
Thanks for giving this a read. I wrote this as an excuse to learn a little more about the Pre-Raphaelites and I did! I hope you found it useful as well.
Howard Lyon
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