The Pre Raphaelites From Rossetti To Ruskin

The Pre-Raphaelite Movement began in 1848, and experienced its heyday in the 1860s and 1870s. Influenced by the then little-known Keats and Blake, as well as Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge, Pre-Raphaelite poetry 'etherialized sensation' (in the words of Antony Harrison), and popularized the notion ofl'art pour l'art - art for art's sake. Where Victorian realist novels explored the grit and grime of the Industrial Revolution, Pre-Raphaelite poems concentrated on more abstract themes of romantic love, artistic inspiration and sexuality. Later they attracted Aesthetes and Decadents like Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson, not to mention Gerard Manley Hopkins and W.B. Yeats.

This collection of papers from key members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood provides important insights into the art, literature, and culture of Victorian England. Featuring contributions from John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Published to accompany the exhibition at Tate Britain, London from 9 March to 28 May 2000.

In Victorian England, with the country swept up in the Industrial Revolution, the Pre-Raphaelites, close to William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, yearned for a return to bygone values. Wishing to revive the pure and noble forms of the Italian Renaissance, the major painters of the circle (such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt) favoured realism and biblical themes over the academicism of the time. This work, with its captivating text and rich illustrations, describes with enthusiasm this singular movement which notably inspired Art Nouveau and Symbolism.

This illustrated book focuses on the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their radical departure from artistic conventions. Barringer explores the meanings encoded in Pre-Raphaelite paintings and analyses key pictures and their significance within the complex social and cultural matrix of 19th century Britain.

This unique collection demonstrates the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of Pre-Raphaelitism, and contains contains whole texts and key extracts from key Pre-Raphaelite figures such as William Morris, and from less well-known figures.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed in 1848 by the young Millais, Holman Hunt and Rossetti, has long been recognised as a high point in Victorian artistic production. But whilst we know much of the private lives of Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers and their best-known paintings are very familiar, their work (and particularly their visual imagery) has attracted limited attention from art historians and critical theorists. This collection redresses the situation with a series of detailed critical and historical studies of individual issues and productions, artistic and literary, relative to Pre-Raphaelitism. Using rigorous new critical analysis, the book throws new light on the ways in which the Pre-Raphaelites addressed philosophical, religious, political and social questions. It will be essential reading for all students of Victorian art, literature and ideas.--Back cover.