The Pre-Raphaelites

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed by a group of rebellious young English artists in 1848 as a reaction against what they saw as the abuses and excesses of the art of their day. They created an entirely new style of painting that looked back to the romance of medieval chivalry and also documented contemporary Victorian social themes with a painstaking technique that demanded the closest possible attention to naturalistic detail. The revolutionary nature of these pictures resulted in repeated and often vitriolic attacks from such critics as Charles Dickens, and within five years the original Brotherhood was disbanded. However, the aspirations, techniques and the striking and often beautiful paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites survived to influence and inspire artists during the remaining years of the nineteenth century and even into the early part of the twentieth.The Pre-Raphaelites is an authoritatively written and superbly illustrated survey of what has become perhaps the most universally recognizable and admired movement in English art. In it Christopher Wood presents the entire story of Pre-Raphaelitism, featuring not only the leading figures and their associates—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Arthur Hughes and Ford Madox Brown—but also many followers. The work of over 40 artists is illustrated in more than 100 color plates and numerous black-and-white illustrations which represent the key paintings of the principal exponents as well as many lesser-known examples by them and their followers, some of which are in private collections and never before reproduced in color. The author outlines the development of the movement in general and the lives and works of the main figures in detail. He examines the less familiar features of Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting and the influence of John Ruskin and unravels the complexities of the later, "aesthetic" phase of the movement exemplified in the remarkable paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse, and concludes with his personal appraisal of the recent resurgence of interest in the fascinating history, personalities, and pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites.