The Lost Pre Raphaelite

When the author bought a falling down fortified house on the Staffordshire moorlands, he had no reason to anticipate the astonishing tale that would unfold as it was restored. A mysterious set of relationships emerged amongst its former owners, revolving round the almost forgotten artist, Robert Bateman, a prominent Pre-Raphaelite and friend of Burne Jones. He was to marry the granddaughter of the Earl of Carlisle, and to be associated with Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, and other prominent political and artistic figures. But he had abandoned his life as an artist in mid-career to live as a recluse, and his rich and glamorous wife-to-be had married the local vicar, already in his sixties and shortly to die. The discovery of two clearly autobiographical paintings led to an utterly absorbing forensic investigation into Bateman's life. The story moves from Staffordshire to Lahore, to Canada, Wyoming, and then, via Buffalo Bill, to Peru and back to England. It leads to the improbable respectability of Imperial Tobacco in Bristol, and then, less respectably, to a car park in Stoke-on-Trent. En route the author pieces together an astonishing and deeply moving story of love and loss, of art and politics, of morality and hypocrisy, of family secrets concealed but never quite completely obscured. The result is a page-turning combination of detective story and tale of human frailty, endeavor, and love. It is also a portrait of a significant artist, a reassessment of whose work is long overdue. Nigel Daly is an antique dealer and house restorer.

A magnificent new book on the Pre-Raphaelites—oversized, gorgeously illustrated, and packed with insight Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. These were among the young British artists who, in the revolutionary year of 1848, set out to return a lost vibrancy to European art. Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, they and their later followers—including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris—mounted an artistic front against what they saw as the confining standards of the Victorian art world, and the dehumanizing aspects of the industrial age. Their works drew on Shakespeare, Keats, Tennyson, and medieval lore. They also treated religious and contemporary themes with striking realism, bringing viewers into intimate contact with the subject and causing scandal in their time. In this authoritative yet highly readable volume, art historian Aurélie Petiot traces Pre-Raphaelitism from its beginnings as a secret brotherhood to its dissemination in multiple strands of British art and beyond. Petiot offers keen analyses of Pre-Raphaelite painting, drawing, and decorative art alike. She gives particular attention to the role of women in the movement, not only as models and muses, but as pioneering artists in their own right, whose work has only begun to receive its proper recognition. Uniquely, the last chapters of the book are devoted to the enduring (yet often underestimated) Pre-Raphaelite influence on the later course of modern art and on our contemporary culture. More than 300 full-color illustrations reproduce all the great Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, as well as many fascinating lesser-known works, with all the luminous brilliance and detail for which the Pre-Raphaelites are renowned. This splendid volume is a must-have for any art history lover.

In Fiona MacCarthy’s riveting account, Burne-Jones’s exchange of faith for art places him at the intersection of the nineteenth century and the Modern, as he leads us forward from Victorian mores and attitudes to the psychological, sexual, and artistic audacity that would characterize the early twentieth century.

"This abundantly illustrated book accompanies a major exhibition of William Holman Hunt's work. It explores the artist's vision and its relevance to contemporary audiences. Despite the great interest in Pre-Raphaelitism, it has been nearly forty years since the last exhibition devoted to Holman Hunt, one of the founders of the movement. His vision, which inspired the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, has lost neither its timeliness or significance." "The book illustrates paintings by Hunt and his associates, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, and also includes drawings, prints, photographs and textiles. It examines Hunt's work in the context of the Brotherhood, and his ideas in relation to the artistic, spiritual, intellectual, emotional and social issues of his age."--Jacket.

The Pre-Raphaelites first appeared in 1984 as the catalogue of the highly succesful exhibition mounted by the Tate Gallery that year. The book, which has been out of print ever since, remains the most comprehensive account of this important movement in British art. It concentrates on the vital years from 1848 (when the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed) to 1860 but also includes a substantial groups of works from the following twenty years, a period in which the movement took new directions. The full range of Pre-Raphaelite painting is represented, from the 'hard-edge' style of Millais's early work to the sensuousness of Rossetti's and Burne-Jones's painting in the 1870s.

Defining Pre-Raphaelite Poetics offers a range of Pre-Raphaelite literary scholarship, provoking innovative discussions into the poetic form, gender dynamics, political engagement, and networked communities of Pre-Raphaelitism. The authors in this collection position Pre-Raphaelite poetics broadly in the sense of poiesis, or acts of making, aiming to identify and explore the Pre-Raphaelites’ diverse forms of making: social, aesthetic, gendered, and sacred. Each chapter examines how Pre-Raphaelitism takes up and explores modes of making and re-making identity, relationality, moral transformations, and even, time and space. Essays explore themes of formalist or prosodic approaches, expanded networks of literary and artistic influence within Pre-Raphaelitism, and critical legacies and responses to Pre-Raphaelite poetry and arts, codifying the methods, forms, and commonalties that constitute literary Pre-Raphaelitism.