Why Pre Raphaelite?

they were initially in reaction against what they felt were the frivolous art of the day They deeply admired the integrity and simplicities of the early 15thC Their aim to bring back art to a greater truth to nature

Lord Leighton Flaming June

 The brotherhood was founded in London in 1848 The initials PRB were painted on Gabrielle Rosettis painting The girlhood of the Mary Virgin in 1849 Was quickly adopted by the other Pre Raphaelites The Girlhood of Mary Virgin Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The initial members Gabrielle Rossetti, Holman Hunt John Everett Millais Soon the group included seven artists.

Title: Portrait of Sir John Everett Millais 1871

Millais in his Studio by Rupert Fuller. 1886.

Gentlemen rebels
They felt they were in rebellion to: the theatricality of Raphael Victorian hypocrisy And the pomp of the academic art tradition.

Thomas Coutoure 1847 masterpiece, Romans in the Decadence of the Empire

THOMAS COUTURE (1815-1879) was an influential French history painter and teacher.
He failed the prestigious Prix de Rome competition at the cole six times, but he felt the problem was with the cole, not himself. Couture finally did win the prize in 1837. In 1840, he began exhibiting historical and genre pictures at the Paris Salon, earning several medals for his works, in particular for his 1847 masterpiece, Romans in the Decadence of the Empire, Shortly after his this success, Couture opened an independent atelier meant to challenge the cole des Beaux-Arts by turning out the best new history painters.

Soap Bubbles

During his lifetime, Couture taught such later luminaries of the art world as Edouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

The Thorny Path

The Little Confectioner

A secret society
The pre Raphaelite brotherhood In deference to the sincerity of the early Renaissance

High Morality
They adopted a high moral stance painting only serious- usually religious or romantic-subjects. Their style was clear and sharply focussed They adopted a sometimes unwieldy combination of symbolism and realism That insisted on painting everything from direct observation.

Their Spokesman The group was championed by the writer John Ruskin

Sir John Everett Millais John Ruskin

Slightly Disturbing
Whilst being laboriously truthful became Became progressively old-worldish This decision to live in the past whilst deploying the judgements of the present can make the work disturbingly disjointed

Millais Christ In The House Of His Parents1850

Response to the Paintings

Initially the group caused outrage after their first exhibition in 1849. Their religious and realist themes also against the popular Historical painting of the day The Royal academy continued showing the work and after 1852 they gained in popularity.

The Blind Girl Sir John Everett Millais

A Deep concern for truth? Maybe a somewhat overindulgence in sentimentality A world of emotional responses devoid of the experiences of reality

Shakespeares Ophelia
a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet. Driven to madness and suicide by Hamlets murder of her father Polonius

Alexander Cabanel John William Waterhouse

Ophelia: Sir John Everett Millais, 1851

Painted from Nature

Was modelled on a real body surrounded by a body of genuine wildflowers Millais spent four months painting the background vegetation on the same spot in Surrey England He then returned to London to paint his model Elizabeth Siddal in the bath tub

An Odd dislocation
The result is oddly dislocated Its as if the setting, woman, flowers did not belong together each keeping its own truth and ignoring that of the others.

The meaning in the Flowers

Poppies = death Daisies = innocence Roses = youth Violets = fruitfulness and early death Pansies = love in vain.
Ophelia John William Waterhouse 1889

The Model
Was modelled on a real body surrounded by a body of genuine wildflowers Millais spent four months painting the background vegetation on the same spot in Surrey England He then returned to London to paint his model Elizabeth Siddal in the bath tub

On English coasts It is a political allegory Its theme is strayed and unprotected sheep

An unpleasant taste The weirdly acidic colours strike unpleasantly on the eyes The story is believable but forced The bright yellow is garishly bright as is the aggressive greens of the sea.

Luminous Colours
They painted pure colours onto a canvass pre-prepared with white Sometimes this would be applied freshly each day to give the colours fresh resonance.

The Inspiration
Their paintings was a combination of artistic and literary sources They drew heavily in Shakespeare, Dante, and poets like Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson Rossetti was himself greatly attracted to Tennysons reworking of the Arthurian legends He specialised in pictures of maidens with extraordinary looks for his romantic themes Used a beautiful but neurotic model Elizabeth Siddal After her untimely death Rosettis model was William Morriss wife Janey (a Siddal look alike) seen in the painting The day dream.

'Lady Lilith', (detail)1868 by Dante C.G. Rossetti Rossetti was himself greatly attracted to Tennysons reworking of the Arthurian legends He specialised in pictures of maidens with extraordinary looks for his romantic themes Used a beautiful but neurotic model Elizabeth Siddal After her untimely death Rosettis model was William Morriss wife Janey (a Siddal look alike) seen in the painting The day dream.

Elizabeth Siddel She was discovered by Walter Deverell in a milliner's shop in 1850. At the time he was searching for a model for Voila in his painting Twelfth Night. Later he told William Holman Hunt, By Jove! shes like a queen, magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, a stately neck, and a face of the most delicate modelling; the flow of surface from the temples over the cheek is exactly like the carving of a Pheidean goddess. Wait a minute! I havent done; she has grey eyes, and her hair is like dazzling copper, and shimmers with lustre as she waves it down. And now, where do you think I lighted on this paragon of beauty? Why, in a milliners back workroom where I went out with my mother shopping. Having nothing to amuse me, while the woman was tempting my mother with something, I peered over the blind of a glass door at the back of the shop, and there was this unexpected jewel.
A drawing by Rosetti of Elizabeth painting

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Siddal was the living, breathing epitome of the Pre-Raphaelite woman. With her sensuous full lips, heavy-lidded eyes, and above all her incredible waist-length auburn hair, she could only be described as a "stunner".

Walter H. Deverell. Twelfth Night, 1850

Elizabeth led a tormented life. She worked as a milliner in her teenage years, her engagement to Rossetti was broken off several times, and she was always afraid of being replaced with a younger muse. She also suffered from an addiction to laudanum. After bearing a stillborn daughter, she overdosed on laudanum. Her possible suicide was covered up, as it would have prevented her from receiving a proper burial.

Study by Rossetti Photo of Elizabeth Self Portrait

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)

Born into a wealthy and intellectual Italian family Throughout the 1840s his poetry and painting prospered and he completed many symbolic Historic paintings He met Elizabeth Siddal in 1850, married her in 1860 she died only two years later leaving him a broken man He placed his poetry manuscripts in her coffin which he then retrieved in 1869 by exhuming her body He fell into a depression and in 1872 attempted suicide but did not die He lingered on in a drug induced haze until his death in 1882

After gaining an acceptance the work of the Pre-Raphaelites has since become one of the most enduring and popular of all art subjects to this day