Pre-Raphaelite Art first appeared
with the mysterious letters PRB,
which Dante Gabriel Rossetti placed after his signature in an
exhibition in 1849. The initials remained a secret. The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as they described themselves, had formed
as a consequence of talks he had
had with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais in
1848. Other members of the group were Rossetti's brother William
Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner the
sculptor, and Frederick G. Stephens.
Through their discussion the like mined
friends, the three
came to conclude that they were dissatisfied with the
general direction art had taken after Raphael, and therefore they sought
to rediscover the original simplicity and honesty of art before the
Renaissance.
Their reaction appears to have focussed more
significantly against the then popular Bolognese and Roman schools of
art of the 17th and 18th centuries.
After
Rossetti revealed the meaning of the initials in 1850, a storm of controversy broke out. Some people
thought they were trying to set themselves up as better than Raphael;
others thought they were
secret Romanists and supporters of the
Oxford Movement; and others, like Charles
Dickens, initially thought they were blasphemous in a distasteful
manner. In spite of the initial controversy they caused, their impact
was instantaneous in art and literature, and their influence became felt
throughout mid-Victorian society.
Gradually their work gained credibility,
and in 1851 John Ruskin gave the movement his blessing, and from then on
their acceptance was assured. And yet within a very short time, the
group
had
dissolved: Millais entered the RA; Rossetti went on the found a second
brotherhood at Oxford with William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones;
and Hunt went off to Palestine to work on religious pictures.
The technical means of their work, such as
the use of bright colours, extremely fine detail, and their famous
method of working onto a wet white background, became the means by which
their work became immediately recognisable, and popular to a wide
audience then, as now.
Since much of their work had historic and
religious themes, the legends of King Arthur offered themselves readily
to the Pre-Raphaelites.
Pre-Raphaelite Art first appeared
with the mysterious letters PRB,
which Dante Gabriel Rossetti placed after his signature in an
exhibition in 1849. The initials remained a secret. The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as they described themselves, had formed
as a consequence of talks he had
had with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais in
1848. Other members of the group were Rossetti's brother William
Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner the
sculptor, and Frederick G. Stephens.
secret Romanists and supporters of the
Oxford Movement; and others, like Charles
Dickens, initially thought they were blasphemous in a distasteful
manner. In spite of the initial controversy they caused, their impact
was instantaneous in art and literature, and their influence became felt
throughout mid-Victorian society.
