Pre-Raphaelite Gallery. Merry painters
It is not surprising that the very idea of breaking with academism in painting arose among students, moreover, among students of the British Royal Academy of Arts. The initial discussion arose between three students: Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and John Evertt Millais. Young and far from untalented artists reflected on the present and future of painting, shared their reformist plans and eventually came to the creation of the secret Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It was in opposition to the official line of the Academy and proclaimed a return to the ideals of the era "before Raphael." Soon the secret society already included seven artists.
The Brotherhood had its own magazine, Sprout, and Dante Rossetti, for example, signed some paintings with the initials P.R.B, marking belonging to this group. The journal also published the first postulates of the society. Over time, the ideas of the "Brotherhood" took shape in a single system, which helped to develop pre-Raphaelism in culture.
After several years of existence, the "Brotherhood" broke up, and each of its members went their own way. But even after the destruction of the organization, the theses and thoughts of the Pre-Raphaelites excited the public. Their ideas penetrated many areas of culture: design, illustration, decorative art and literature.
Theory provisions
Initially, the Pre-Raphaelites published theses on reform in art in their own journal. They called for the return of art to reality and naturalness, and also heralded the rejection of mythological and historical plots worn to holes. Beauty should not be abstract, alien to the naturalness of a person.
It is logical that one of the main postulates of the direction was work from nature. Often in the paintings of artists you can find their relatives or friends. Historians of painting meticulously examine their canvases and find curious parallels and coincidences.
The "Brotherhood" also turned to painting technique. Their task was to move away from the dark tones that the bitumen used by the artists at that time gave. They wanted a clean pictorial image, high precision in detail and rich hues, characteristic of the Quattrocento era. To achieve this effect, they applied a layer of white to the primed canvas, cleaned the canvas of oil and worked on top with translucent paints. The technique made it possible to achieve purity of the drawing and extraordinary lightness at that time.
The excessive naturalism and novelty of the approach aroused not only interest, but also rejection in society. However, the authoritative critic John Ruskin became interested in Pre-Raphaelite painting. He formalized the postulates of the "Brotherhood" into a logical and harmonious artistic system, and revealed the Pre-Raphaelites to the world, helped to understand their motives and art.
Ruskin substantiated several principles of this artistic movement and supported them financially. The maximum detail was justified by the artists' attention to the very essence of things, the unwillingness to be content with generally accepted ideas about nature and man. The Pre-Raphaelites were so attentive to detail that, in their desire to paint from life, they came to awe of the smallest details, spent an incredible amount of time outdoors and working with models.
Another principle highlighted by Ruskin is fidelity to nature, combined with fidelity to spiritual principles. In every branch and leaf, in every drop of water, the artists saw the creation of God, and therefore, they treated everything with awe and reverence. The return to spirituality saw a new birth and a turn to the religiosity of the early Renaissance.
The support of the critic influenced the position of the Pre-Raphaelites in society, they became more popular and even became fashionable.
Artists and their creations
John Evert Millais, "Ophelia"
Millais was one of the founders of the movement. Extremely talented, he became one of the youngest applicants at the Royal Academy of Arts. The painting was created by Millet in the course of many hours of plein air in the fresh air. The artist could work up to 11 hours a day! The artist directed all his attention to creating a landscape, so the figure of a girl was the final detail of the canvas. Millais was so obsessed with detail that he forced model Elizabeth Siddal to spend several hours in a bath filled to the brim. The girl caught a cold, and the story became one of the legends of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Lady Lilith"
The artist spent 2 years writing the first version of the picture, and later he rewrote the girl’s face with a new model. The picture is a diptych with the work "Sibyl Palmifera". Remarkably, Rossetti applied sonnets of his own composition to the frames. "Lady Lilith" is an ode to beauty. The spirit of symbolism is strong in the picture: white roses, poppy, the contents of the dressing table. Historians call this work feminist: great strength and beauty are concentrated in a woman.
Evelyn de Morgan, "Medea"
The artist turns to ancient Greek myths and takes one of the most dramatic images in literature. In the center of the work is a red-haired woman beloved by the Pre-Raphaelites.
Hunt William Holman, "The Hired Shepherd" It was by no means a pastoral that came out from under Holman's brush. In the best traditions of the "Brotherhood", the picture simply glows with bright hues. All plans are finely worked out, the work is interesting to consider. Historians believe that Holman put into the canvas his bewilderment of the contemporary religious discussion and the role of priests in it.
Ford Murdoch Brown, "Farewell to England"
In the center of the work is an absolutely earthly theme - emigration, which sounded with renewed vigor in Britain contemporary to the artist. In the center is a family looking for a new home. In the picture you can find the daughter and wife of the artist, he wrote from nature, paying tribute to the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites. Although Brown was never a member of the Brotherhood, he supported his ideals, which was reflected in this work.
Britain is proud of its Pre-Raphaelite movement, because it is one of the most vibrant artistic movements that originated in England. Despite the fact that the works of these artists were criticized at first, they found their place in world culture and radically influenced both contemporary art and popular culture.
R. Fenton. Interior of Tintern Abbey, late 1850s
In 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood arose in Great Britain - an association of artists created by William Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Milles. Young painters were against the system of academic education and the conservative tastes of Victorian society.
The Pre-Raphaelites were inspired by the painting of the Italian Proto-Renaissance and the 15th century, hence the very name "Pre-Raphaelites" - literally "before Raphael" (Italian High Renaissance artist Rafael Santi).
Frederick Scott Archer's invention of the wet colloid process, which replaced calotype, coincided with the rise of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Members of the fraternity enthusiastically welcomed the emergence of a new method. At a time when most artists considered the amazing accuracy of the photographic image to be a disadvantage, the Pre-Raphaelites, who themselves strove for scrupulous rendering of details in painting, admired this particular aspect of photography. An art critic who supported the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites, John Ruskin, spoke of the first daguerreotypes he bought in Venice as “little treasures”: “As if a magician reduced a real object (San Marco or Canal Grande) so that he could take it with him to an enchanted land.
The Pre-Raphaelites, like many artists of that time, used photographs as a preparatory stage for creating paintings. Gabriel Rossetti took a series of photographs of Jane Morris, which became the material for the artist's future canvases. Rossetti and William Morris painted and photographed this woman many times, finding in her the features of the romantic medieval beauty that they so admired.
A few years after the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England, the “For highly artistic photography” movement appeared. The organizers of this movement were the painters Oscar Gustav Reilander (1813–1875) and Henry Peach Robinson (1830–1901), who were closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and shared their ideas. Reilander and Robinson, like the Pre-Raphaelites, drew inspiration from the world of images of medieval English literature, from the works of the English poets William Shakespeare and John Milton. In 1858, Robinson created one of his best photographs, The Lady of Shalott, close in composition to the Pre-Raphaelite painting Ophelia by D. Milles. Being an adherent of photomontage, Robinson printed a picture from two negatives: on one negative the author took a model in a boat, on the other he captured a landscape.
Members of the movement "For highly artistic photography" interpreted the picture as a picture, in full accordance with the norms of academic painting. In his book Pictorial Effect in Photography (1869), Robinson referred to the rules of composition, harmony, and balance necessary to achieve "painterly effect": using paint and pencil.
Oscar Gustaf Reilander was born in Sweden, studied painting in Italy and moved to England in 1841. Reilander became interested in photography in the 1850s. Fame brought him the allegorical composition "Two Ways of Life", exhibited in 1857 at the Exhibition of Art Treasures in Manchester. The photograph was made using the photomontage technique, and Reilander needed 30 (!) negatives to make it. But the lack of public recognition led him to abandon his laborious technique and move on to shooting portraits. Unlike his allegorical compositions, Rejlander's portraits are more perfect in terms of technique. Miss Mander's portrait is one of the finest Reilander's.
The painter Roger Fenton (1819–1869) had the highest opinion of photography, even founding a photographic society in 1853. His early photographic series with views of Russia, portraits of the royal family and reporting from the Crimean War brought him international recognition. Fenton's approach to the landscape is connected with the Pre-Raphaelites and their vision: a high horizon line, the absence of such romantic devices as haze, fog, etc. Fenton, like the Pre-Raphaelites, sought to emphasize his technical skill and sang the tangible reality of the landscape. The master also shared the Pre-Raphaelite interest in women in exotic attire, which can be seen in the "Nubian Water Carriers" or "Egyptian Dancing Girls".
Of particular note are the photographs of children taken by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898). Author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was also a gifted amateur photographer. For Carroll, light painting was not just a pastime, but a great passion, to which he sacrificed a lot of time and to which he dedicated several small works and even the poem “Hiawatha the Photographer” (1857):
On Hiawatha's shoulder - A box of rosewood: The device is collapsible, Of planks and glass, Deftly tightened with screws, To fit in a chest. Hiawatha climbs into the casket And opens the hinges, Turning the small casket Into a cunning figure As if from the books of Euclid. Puts it on a tripod And climbs under the black canopy. Crouching, he waves his hand: - Well! Freeze! I beg you! A very strange activity.
The writer devoted 25 years to the "strange" occupation, during which he created wonderful children's portraits, showing himself to be a fine connoisseur of child psychology. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, who moved farther and farther into the world of their fantasy in search of ideal and beauty, Carroll was looking for his fabulous Alice in the photographic Looking Glass. Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1878) turned to photography in the mid-1860s when her daughter gave her a camera. “I longed to capture all the beauty that passed before me,” Cameron wrote, “and finally my desire was granted.”
In 1874–75, Cameron, at the request of her friend Tennyson, illustrated some of his poems and poems. The composition of the photograph “The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere” is close to the composition of the paintings of D. G. Rossetti, but Cameron does not have the accuracy in conveying details that is inherent in the Pre-Raphaelites. By softening the optical pattern, Cameron achieves greater poetry in his works.
The work of the Pre-Raphaelites and photographers was very closely connected. And the influence was not one-sided. Julia Cameron, abandoning precise focusing, created magnificent photographic studies. Rossetti, who highly appreciated her work, changed his style of writing, subsequently striving for greater artistic generalization. Gabriel Rossetti and John Milles used photographs to create their paintings, and the photographers in turn turned to themes developed by the Pre-Raphaelites. Photo portraits created by L. Carroll, D. M. Cameron and O. G. Reilander convey not so much the character as the moods and dreams of their models - which is typical of Pre-Raphaelism. The approach to depicting nature was the same: the early landscapes of the Pre-Raphaelites and the landscapes of photographers such as, for example, Roger Fenton, are extremely accurate and detailed.
The Pre-Raphaelites are the English artists William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), John Evret Millet (1829-96), the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), who united in 1848 in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
It also included art critics - Dante Gabriel's brother - William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) and Frederick George Stephens (1828-1907), poet and sculptor Thomas Uvulner (1825-92), artist James Collinson (18257-81).
Aesthetic principles of the Pre-Raphaelites
The initials "PB" (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) first appeared on a painting by Hunt at the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition in 1849.
The aesthetic principles of the Pre-Raphaelites are a romantic protest against the cold academicism that dominated English painting of that time.
Their ideal of art is the work of the masters of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance (i.e., the “pre-Raphael” period) - Giotto, Fra Angelico, S. Botticelli, which attracted them as an example of a naive, direct relationship of man to nature. 
The Pre-Raphaelites called for depicting nature in its diversity, using the full range of colors, in contrast to the pale greens and browns of academic artists who never left the studio. The religious spirit of pre-Raphaelite painting by the Pre-Raphaelites was opposed to individualism, godlessness of the artists of the high Renaissance and modern materialism. In this regard, they were influenced by the Oxford Movement. The moral principle approved by the Pre-Raphaelites found expression in religious themes, in symbolic and mystical iconography.
Pre-Raphaelite Inspiring Authors
Favorite authors who inspired the Pre-Raphaelites - Dante, T. Malory, W. Shakespeare, romantic poets W. Blake, J. Keats, P. B. Shelley, perceived as aesthetes and mystics, A. Tennyson with his medieval plots and the theme of the struggle of the spiritual and sensual beginnings, and especially R. Browning with his interest in Italy, the exaltation of pre-Raphaelian art, with sharp psychological plots.
The Pre-Raphaelites were perceived in 1848-49 as dangerous, impudent revolutionaries and were sharply criticized. The art theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900), who became a friend of D. G. Rossetti, spoke in their defense. In open letters published in 1851 and 1854 in The Times, he defended them against accusations of artificial resurrection of primitive medieval painting, predilection for abstract symbolism and indifference to everything that went beyond the "beautiful".
With Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites were united by the condemnation of the prose and pragmatics of bourgeois relations, the idealization of the craft way of the Middle Ages. Later, he condemned their "aestheticism" and moved away from them. In January-April 1850, the Pre-Raphaelites published a magazine (four issues) "The Germ" with the subtitle "Reflections on the Nature of Poetry, Literature and Art"; the last two issues have been renamed: "Art and Poetry as Reflections on Nature"; its editor was W. M. Rossetti, who was also the secretary of the Pre-Raphaelites. The artists Ford Madox Brown (1821-93), Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98), Arthur Hughes (1830-1915), writer, artist, ideologist of English socialism William Morris (1834) adjoined the Pre-Raphaelites (but were not members of the brotherhood) -96), sister of D.G. and W. M. Rossetti - the poetess Christina Rossetti (1830-94), who published her poems in their magazine.
Pre-Raphaelite central figure
The central figure of the Pre-Raphaelites is D. G. Rossetti. In his poetry, focused on the duel of the spiritual and the sensual as eternally opposed to each other principles in man, the oscillation characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelites between mysticism and the glorification of sensuality, an attempt to reconcile mysticism and eroticism on the basis of the deification of the flesh, was most clearly embodied. In D. G. Rossetti, the sensual often wins over the spiritual. He loved to refer to Dante, his love for Beatrice. Dante's fascination is evident in his book of translations, The Early Italian Poets (1861). The religious and mystical beginning of Catholicism was often obscured in the perception of the Pre-Raphaelites by the purely pictorial.
The splendor of the Catholic church ritual, the bizarre forms of Gothic architecture sometimes captivated them, regardless of the ideas embodied in it. The most consistent in expressing religious Catholic views are Hunt in painting and K. Rossetti in poetry. In 1853 the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood disintegrates. Millais went to Scotland, and when he returned, he became a commercial artist, painting commissioned portraits and sentimental paintings. Hunt went to Palestine in 1854 in search of a more realistic background for his religious paintings, and throughout his life he remained the most consistent. Uvulner went to Australia, Collinson converted to Catholicism in 1852 and joined the religious community.
The Pre-Raphaelites were connected by personal friendship and aesthetic affinity with A. Swinburne, W. Pater, O. Beardsley, O. Wilde and had a significant impact on "aestheticism" as a trend in literature and painting of the 1880s.
The word Pre-Raphaelite comes from English Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
Founded in 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood can rightfully be considered the first avant-garde movement in Europe. The mysterious letters "R.K.V.", which appeared in the paintings of young and unknown artists, confused the English public - the students of the London Royal Academy of Arts wanted to change not only the principles of modern art, but also its role in the social life of society.
During the Industrial Revolution, lofty subjects and strict academic painting in the spirit of Raphael were not popular with the Victorian middle class, giving way to artistic kitsch and sentimental scenes. Realizing the crisis of the ideals of the High Renaissance, the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood turned to Italian art of the 15th century. The works of outstanding Quattrocento painters served as samples - a bright, rich palette, emphasized decorativeness of their works were combined with life's truthfulness and a sense of nature.
The leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were the artists D.E. Milles (1829-1896), D.G. Rossetti (1828-1882), W.H. Hunt, as well as F.M. Brown. In the late 1850s, a new group formed around Rossetti, which included W. Morris, E. Burne-Jones (1833-1898), E. Siddal and S. Solomon.
The artists of the Rossetti circle were engaged in painting and graphics, wrote poetry and designed books, developed interior decor and furniture design. Back in the middle of the 19th century, the Pre-Raphaelites began to work in the open air, actualized the issue of women's rights in society and contributed to the formation of the most important style of the end of the century - Art Nouveau.
Tasks of the Pre-Raphaelites
The young artists who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood realized that they belonged to a culture in which there were no traditions of religious painting, destroyed in the 16th century, during the Reformation. The Pre-Raphaelites faced a difficult task - to resurrect religious art, without referring to the ideal-conditional images of the Catholic altar painting.
Unlike the masters of the Renaissance, the basis for the composition of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings was not imagination, but observations and faces taken from everyday life. Members of the "Brotherhood" rejected the soft idealized forms characteristic of the artists of the High Renaissance, preferring dynamic lines and bright, rich color.
None of the Pre-Raphaelites particularly sought to emphasize theological truths in the content of their paintings. They rather approached the Bible as a source of human dramas and looked for literary and poetic meaning in it. In addition, these works were not intended for the decoration of churches.
The most zealous Christian in the group was Hunt, an eccentric religious intellectual. The rest of the Pre-Raphaelite artists tried to depict the life of the most ordinary people, at the same time revealing the acute social and moral and ethical themes of modern society. Paintings on religious themes coexist with images that are relevant and burning. Plots devoted to social issues, in the interpretation of the Pre-Raphaelites, take the form of modern parables.
Paintings on historical themes
Paintings on historical themes play a key role in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. Traditionally, the British were not interested in thrilling heroic scenes and idealized classical compositions filled with lethargic nude models. They preferred to study history from the plays of William Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott, to learn the biography of the great figures of the past in the theatrical images of outstanding actors such as Garrick and Sarah Siddons.
The Pre-Raphaelites rejected classical history, with its inherent ideas of exemplary virtue, military might, and monarchical achievement. Turning to literary and historical subjects, they accurately depicted the costumes and interior of the chosen era, but at the same time strengthened the genre aspect, making human relations the main motif of the composition. Before filling the picture with people, the artists carefully wrote out all the details of the interior or landscape in the background in order to emphasize the relaxed and realistic atmosphere around the central stage. In an effort to create a believable composition, they found examples of costumes and ornaments in illuminated manuscripts and historical reference books. The features of each character are a meticulously written face of a model chosen from among the members of the "Brotherhood". This approach denied the accepted conventions of the high genre, but strengthened the effect of authenticity.
The attitude of the Pre-Raphaelites to nature
The attitude of the Pre-Raphaelites to nature constitutes one of the most important aspects of this movement in terms of both artistic theory and style. John Ruskin's call to "turn to nature with all your heart and walk hand in hand with her trustingly and industriously, remembering her instructions and thinking only about how to comprehend her meaning, rejecting nothing, not choosing, not ridiculing" had an undoubted influence on the Pre-Raphaelites. Young members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood avidly studied Ruskin's writings on the legacy of Turner, but their own style is a unique synthesis of plein air painting, exciting Shakespearean stories and topical themes of modern work. In the most successful works, detailed composition is combined with masterful depiction of figures and a complex design that unites all elements into a coherent whole.
John Everett Milles. Valley of Eternal Peace ("The weary shall rest")
At the same time, the Pre-Raphaelites were carried away by the latest discoveries in the field of natural sciences, which in the middle of the century were followed with great interest by the whole of British society. The artists continued to compete with photography, which both complemented their images of nature and encouraged them to paint even more emotionally, using a bright, rich palette. By combining figures and landscape into an intricate composition, the Pre-Raphaelites emphasized the narrative element, appealing to the viewer's feelings and creating a mood in the picture. So painting guarded its borders.
Aestheticism movement, the goal of art
In the early 1860s, a new stage began in the work of Rossetti and his associates. Young painters who joined the circle of former Pre-Raphaelites sought to realize their talent in various fields of art. However, the works created by a new group of artists and writers turned out to be no less innovative. By the mid-1860s, Pre-Raphaelism had transformed into a movement of aestheticism. The works of this section are devoted to beauty as such.
The aspiration to it, this "only absolute goal" of art, according to Rossetti, characterizes the second decade of Pre-Raphaelite painting.
Rossetti also strove for beauty, but his goal was to create a new aesthetic ideal. During this period, the artist performed a series of works that glorify the full-blooded, full of health, emphatically sensual female beauty.
The artsy manner of writing, the wide strokes of paint applied with hard brushes, consciously imitate Venetian painting of the 16th century and, in particular, the technique of Titian and Veronese.
Deep and juicy greens, blues and dark reds have replaced the gothic stained glass transparency of the early Pre-Raphaelite palette.
Despite the relationship with the canvases of the old masters, the paintings shocked contemporaries, who furiously accused Rossetti of immorality. At the same time, the artistic interpretation of the images and the semantic content of these works had a significant impact on the formation of the style of Art Nouveau art.
Poetic painting of the Pre-Raphaelites
In the mid-1850s, Rossetti temporarily stopped painting and, turning to the watercolor technique, created a series of colorful and complex compositions. In these works, the artist's passion for the Middle Ages was especially clearly manifested - many watercolors were created under the impression of illuminated manuscripts.
In the guise of tall, pale and slender heroines of watercolors by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the figure and features of Elizabeth Siddal are often guessed.
The watercolors of the new generation of artists of the Rossetti circle, Edward Burne-Jones, resemble cloisonné enamel, reflecting their author's interest in different techniques and types of art.
Almost all watercolors were inspired by chivalric poetic novels, ballads or the work of romantic poets. At the same time, the independent nature of these works does not allow us to see in them only an illustration of a literary work. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Rossetti created a number of works on religious subjects. The rich color palette and general arrangement of the figures reflect the influence of Venetian art, which during this period replaced the artist's early fascination with Florentine Quattrocento painting.
Pre-Raphaelite utopia, design
Thanks to William Morris and Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., founded by him with E. Burne-Jones, D. G. Rossetti, and F. M. Brown, works of applied art had a significant impact on the development of European design in the second half of the 19th century, influenced the development of British aestheticism and brought to life the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Morris and his companions sought to elevate the status of design to the same level as other fine arts. Initially, they emphasized the collective and guild nature of labor, taking idealized ideas about medieval artisans as a model. The company produced furnishings and decorations for home and church interiors: tiles, stained glass, furniture, printed fabrics, carpets, wallpapers and tapestries. Burne-Jones was considered the main artist, and Morris was engaged in the development of ornaments. The heroes of Burne-Jones's later works do not show any emotions, their figures are frozen in motionless impassivity, so that the meaning of the plot is unclear and, as it were, hidden in dense layers of paint.
Edward Burne-Jones. Sidonia von Bork, 1560. 1860
This artist's dreamy images and abstract compositions offer a figurative alternative to the extreme materialism of Victorian Britain. In this, his art was undoubtedly a utopia, but a completely abstract utopia. As he himself said: "I am a born rebel, but my political views are a thousand years outdated: these are the views of the first millennium and, therefore, have no meaning."
"Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood"
In 1848, an association of artists arose in England, called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It included William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Ford Madox Brown(1821-1893) and John Everett Millais(1829-1896). Since most of the representatives of the Brotherhood were not only artists, but also poets and writers, they dreamed of combining the art of the word with the visual arts. Later, the artist joined the Pre-Raphaelites James Collinson(1825-1881), sculptor Thomas Woolner(1825-1892) and writers and critics Frederick George Stevens(1829-1907) and William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919).
They called for abandoning academism in art and returning to the aesthetics of the Early Renaissance - pre-Raphaelian art and even to the Middle Ages. They were attracted by the spirituality and deep religious feeling inherent in the works of that time. That is why the name "Pre-Raphaelites" appeared. The fascination with the Middle Ages led not only to the fact that they learned a lot from medieval English literature, but also to the fact that the Brotherhood positioned itself as a closed society, similar to a monastic order. The ideologist of this movement was John Ruskin(1819-1900) - writer, historian, art critic, philosopher, who demanded the return of beauty to everyday life as opposed to impersonal machine production. He appreciated the religious and symbolic motives of the artists of the Brotherhood and supported them. Largely thanks to him, the Pre-Raphaelites very soon gained recognition from the general public.
The Pre-Raphaelites abandoned many principles of academic art. In particular, they worked from nature, and only people close to them were chosen as models. Their painting technique is also changing. On a primed canvas, they applied a layer of white, marked out the composition and wrote over the white with translucent paints, using only pure colors. This allowed them to achieve bright, fresh tones that have survived in their paintings until today. But at the same time, they did not take into account the laws of aerial perspective, they neglected the open air.
The brotherhood brought together very different artists and poets. And although they had common ideas, each author had his own embodiment of them. Thus, Millet was able to combine the apparent ordinariness of his subjects with deep symbolism (Christ in the House of His Parents, 1850). His paintings are characterized by the accuracy and truthfulness of the image. So, in order to write his "Ophelia" (1852), which depicts the floating body of the drowned Ophelia, he forced the model to pose in a bath of water in a brocade dress.
Hunt's paintings can well be called parables, so often there are allegories and symbols in them ("Scapegoat", "Light of the World" and "Lady of Shallot").
One of the most versatile figures was Dante Rossetti. Mysticism and eroticism intertwined in his work. He is famous for his graphic illustrations for the works of Tennyson and sketches for Dante's Divine Comedy. He also painted pictures based on scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary, which, however, did not please the public. He also owns several watercolors, including "The Wedding of St. George and Princess Sabra."
The first phase of Pre-Raphaelite history ended in 1853, after Millais, Woolner and Hunt left the Brotherhood. A new stage began with the acquaintance of Dante Rossetti with William Morris(1834-1896) and Edward Burne-Jones(1833-1898), then still students at Oxford. In 1857, Rossetti and other artists painted the walls of one of Oxford's new buildings with scenes from Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Under the influence of this work, Morris (who was a mediocre artist, but at the same time one of the founders of design, as well as a utopian writer) painted the painting "Queen Guinevere", in which he presented his ideal of beauty (his future wife Jane Burden acted as a model), which later became the ideal of beauty throughout the modern era. In 1859 he married Jane Burden (who was also Rosseti's muse) and they built themselves the "Red House". This house, medieval in its philosophy, differed sharply in style from the opulent Victorian pseudo-Gothic that was very popular at that time. In this house, everything is quite simple and practical.
In 1861, Morris founded the firm "Morris and Co.", which was engaged in any kind of design. Through design and art, he tried to transform society. Not wanting to face the coming progress, industrialization, which, as it seemed to him, levels a person to the level of a machine, Morris tried to escape from it into the past and take people with him. He preached the value of honest, creative manual labor as opposed to factory work, he wanted to free people from factories. The masters of the Morris firm produced furniture, stained-glass windows, fabrics, wallpaper, books, entire interiors. Easily recognizable "Morris style" popular in England and now, combined the influence of medieval and oriental arts and crafts.
In 1891, Morris founded the Kelmscott Press, which had a huge impact on the revival of high-end printing.
In the 1870s, after Rossetti's illness, the Brotherhood was headed by Burne-Jones, the author of the watercolor Sidonia von Bork. Monastery witch”, paintings “Mirror of Venus” and paintings about King Arthur. After the death of Burne-Jones, the history of the Pre-Raphaelites ended.
