THE PRE-RAPHAELITES

1848 - 1890

The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of English artists who rebelled against conventional art as championed by the British Royal Academy.

Their passionate nature was perfectly captured in the quote: “We 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.”

In other words, passions rule.

Specifically they turned their backs on the British Royal Academy’s worship of early Italian Renaissance art. They felt that artists after the High-Renaissance master, Raphael, had so idealized the human form and landscapes that they no longer bore any semblance to reality.

The Pre-Raphaelites sought to right these wrongs by returning to the realistic art created before the Renaissance artists began redefining beauty as dreamy, imaginary images never seen in the real world. They were especially intrigued by the craftsmanship of medieval artists. Many times they took their subject matter from medieval and biblical stories.

We can trace the beginnings of the Pre-Raphaelite movement to a meeting in the living room of John Everett Millais in 1848. The groups dedication to craftsmanship foreshadowed a number of modern art movements ranging from The Aesthetics to Art Nouveau and Bauhaus. Their elegant paintings of Scottish landscapes were said to even inspire Van Gogh and other Neo-Impressionists.