Assignment no: 4

ENGL 405 Romantic and Victorian Poetry

The Pre- Raphaelite Movement

Submitted to

Dr. S. Murali,
Professor & H.O.D, Department of English, School of Humanities, Pondicherry University.

Submitted by Jobin Thomas Reg No: 35 1st MA English and Comparative Literature
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

In 1848 appeared a movement called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood or PreRaphaelites, a group of English painters, poets and critics. The initiation and nursing was done by artists like William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, among whom the last is the notable and most discussed figure. William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner are the members who joined the brotherhood later. The sole aim of the movement was to create a reaction against Victorian materialism. They were inspired by medieval and early Renaissance painters up to the time of Raphael, the great Italian painter and architect. The movement supported Christian values and morals. The art and architecture of early middle ages influenced them a lot, though they were considered as sentimental and superficial. John Ruskin, the well-known art critic supported the movement. Since the group idealised the mode of painting that existed before Raphael, the movement came to be known as Pre-Raphaelite movement. In many ways they were in frequent conflict with Royal Academy of Arts. Since the academy favoured an artistic outlook of the time, these painters found it difficult to create an impression in the beginning. But soon the abundant detailing, intense colours, and complex compositions of early Italian art attracted the art lovers. The first painting exhibition of the brotherhood was done in 1849, in the midst of Victorian London. The movement openly criticised the pomp, vanity and hypocrisy of Victorianism. Considered to be the first experimental art movement, it gave impulse and enthusiasm for all the later avant-garde movements in art and literature. Although initially a reform movement and reaction against Victorian sensation, at the peak levels, the movement itself glorified nature like anything and for a time, art lovers felt like the faded spirits of Romanticism got rejuvenated.

At the initial level, the brotherhood prescribed some doctrines on which the movement exists. The Pre-Raphaelites were not vague but precise in their attitude.

The four motives they put forward are To express genuine ideas To study Nature attentively To revive the spirit in the art of early ages. To produce good pictures and sculptures

In Literature alone, the movement got great momentum with Dante Gabriel Rossetti leading the in the ladder and eminent poets like Christina Rossetti, George Meredith, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne following. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one among the founders of the movement later formed a refined movement that has the same spirit and motives, and outshined the earlier one. He has great tradition and ancestry of having artists in his fathers side and its his confidence that enabled him to lead the movement and inspire the followers. So his position in the movement should be noted with reverence. He was a painter and poet at the same time, his art works attracted people for their authenticity and inventiveness. While his contemporaries were greatly looking into Shakespeare and Dante for themes and subjects, Rossetti was influenced by Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson at the same time he tried to revive the early Italian spirits.

Bibliography 1. http://www.poemhunter.com/dante-gabriel-rossetti/ 2. http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/rfletcher/bl-rfletcher-history-11rossetti.htm 3. http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html