Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A talented, charismatic and enthusiastic poet and painter, he became the central figure of the group.
Rossetti grew up in London within a strong artistic and literary environment. His father was an Italian academic and political refugee. His sister was a poet and his brother a critic, and from an early age Rossetti aspired to be either a poet or a painter. Although painting became his profession, he continued writing poetry throughout his life.
Fascinated by Medieval art and the poetry of his namesake Dante Alighieri, the charismatic young man enthused fellow art students at Henry Sass’s Drawing Academy with his ideas about legends and literature. One of these students was Millais. After four years, in 1845, he enrolled at the Royal Academy and three years later, he left to study under Ford Madox Brown (1821–93), with whom he retained a close friendship throughout his life. That year, after seeing a painting by William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), The Eve of St. Agnes, depicting a poem by John Keats (1795–1821), Rossetti befriended Hunt, as one of his own poems, “The Blessed Damozel,” was inspired by Keats. Hunt shared his artistic and literary beliefs and together Rossetti, Hunt and Millais developed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
This association of young painters challenged the established view of painting, aiming to reform English art by rejecting the adherence to one academic style that followed Raphael and was based on the formal training program introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the 18th century. Instead, they advocated a return to the vibrant colorings, meticulous details and complex compositions of 15th-century Italian and Flemish art. They published a manifesto of their intentions in a periodical called the Germ.
From the start, Rossetti was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s driving force, insisting that painting should be objective and taken directly from nature in emulation of the work of some of the great Italian artists who had preceded Raphael. He made elaborate studies, reproducing colors vividly on to wet, white ground, similar to Italian frescoes. This had the effect of making the colors appear particularly bright. His paintings were sensual and gem-like and his personal life and relationships were closely linked to his work. Although a great deal of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s work received hostile criticism, Rossetti’s paintings were usually well-received. Many of his works depicting biblical, literary and mythological stories inspired many younger artists. By the end of his life, his work commanded exceptionally high prices and he became a major influence on the Symbolist Movement.
Key Works
The Girlhood of Mary Virgin 1849, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
Ecce Ancilla Domini (“The Annunciation”) 1850, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
Beata Beatrix 1864–70, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
The Bower Meadow 1872, CITY ART GALLERIES, MANCHESTER, UK
The Blessed Damozel 1875–8, FOGG MUSEUM OF ART, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MA, US
MILLAIS
1829–1896 • PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD
Ophelia
1851–2 OIL ON CANVAS
76.2 × 111.8 CM (30 × 40 IN)
TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
Depicting the death of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Millais painted this work in two separate locations: outside by the Hogsmill River at Ewell in Surrey and in his studio in London. Millais spent nearly four months painting the background, including symbolic flowers, such as daisies for innocence; roses for youth, love and beauty; violets for faithfulness and poppies for death. The model was Rossetti’s future wife, Elizabeth Siddal. For months, she posed in the heavy antique dress in a bath of water, heated from below with oil lamps.
The youngest ever pupil to be accepted at the English Royal Academy of Arts, John Everett Millais was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which emerged in the middle of the 19th century. As involved with modern artistic developments as much as with the old masters, his jewel-like paintings have shaped many people’s visions of Victorian life and attitudes.
Growing up in a prosperous family, Millais was very hard-working as well as gifted. At the age of nine, he won a silver medal for his art and two years later, he was accepted at the Royal Academy Schools. There he forged friendships with his fellow students, Rossetti and Holman Hunt. When Millais was 19, the three artists formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in an effort to counteract the conservatism of academic painting, with its brown undertones and idealization of subjects. Millais’s concern for moral values and social behavior derived from new attitudes in British society as a result of the Industrial Revolution, as old values began to be questioned. All the Pre-Raphaelites agreed on their approach—to be faithful to nature and exploit the luminosity of color.
Millais’s early paintings were scrupulously observed and planned. He often painted landscape backgrounds over months in the open air, and figures and interior scenes over further months in the studio. His first religious painting, Christ in the House of his Parents, completed when he was 21, attracted a barrage of criticism when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Showing Christ and his family as ordinary, working-class people, critics objected to the lack of reverence shown. Millais’s paintings show eclectic influences, including van Eyck and Velázquez as well as pre-Renaissance art and the work of the Nazarenes, a group of German artists who lived in Rome. Of all the Pre-Raphaelites, Millais was the most heavily criticized, but he carried on, believing in himself and gradually the disapproval diminished. Medieval themes, literature, poetry and the Bible were the basis for many of his works.
The greatest art critic of the day, John Ruskin (1819–1900), became the Pre-Raphaelites’ champion, convinced that Millais would become as great as Turner. Largely through Ruskin, critics began to appreciate the qualities of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, particularly those by Millais. But just as the Pre-Raphaelites had attained the success they sought, they disbanded. Millais began to conform to the ideals of the Royal Academy and became an associate. Always an accomplished painter, he became preoccupied with literary, historical and genre paintings and portraits and many of his works attained critical success.
In his aspirations to earn money, many of Millais’s later works appeared quite sentimental, particularly in comparison to his Pre-Raphaelite paintings. He believed that all art should be beautiful, no matter what the subject. In 1880, Oxford University conferred an honorary degree on him and in 1885 he was made a baronet.
Key Works
Isabella 1848–9, WALKER ART GALLERY, LIVERPOOL, UK
Christ in the House of his Parents 1850, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
Mariana 1851, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
Autumn Leaves 1855–6, MANCHESTER CITY ART GALLERY, MANCHESTER, UK
Bubbles 1886, LADY LEVER ART GALLERY, LIVERPOOL, UK
Impressionism to Post-Impressionism
c.1865–1910
The group title “Impressionists” was originally intended as a derogatory term, used by a critic who thought Monet’s Impression, Sunrise was insubstantial when it was shown at an exhibition in 1874. The Impressionists were united in their rejection of many styles and subjects that preceded them; the Post-Impressionists in turn rejected Impressionism.