The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Hey, so Maddy and I did some research on the Pre-Raphaelites and this is what we came up with! Hope this helps clear anything up that might not have been clear in the presentation!

The Pre-Raphaelites began with the initial group of seven (James Collinson, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner) who formed the group in 1848 that strove to revive what they believed was a “simpler, fresher, more natural art that existed before Raphael (1483-1520)” (Broadview Anthology). One of the most focal mediums for the group was painting, as it was the best way to present their “pre-Raphaelite” vision of simplicity and freshness. Eventually, more poets became involved in the P.R.B., and they started going off of one another, most commonly painting portraits of the poems that others wrote. Most notable of this is the poem The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which was emulated by numerous different painters including John William Waterhouse, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The art of the P.R.B., particularly its representation of women, was aptly analyzed and documented by Jan Marsh in her illustrated book, Pre-Raphaelite Women: Images of Femininity (1987). As she points out, consistent features of these women – including the Lady of Shalott – are loose hair, large eyes, an elongated neck, and a sorrowful expression (Marsh). She also posits that the group “established new structures of feeling and of representation whereby women were both elevated and constrained, worshipped and restricted to specific roles” (Marsh). The Lady of Shalott’s motif of confinement seemed to be the focal point for the painters in spite of protests from Tennyson himself that the poem was a metaphor for one who lives in a world of shadows and is transformed through love into the world of what is real (Marsh).

To give you guys some context, we thought we’d link you to a couple websites that show the art of Raphael as well as the Pre-Raphaelites so you can decide for yourselves if they achieved their goal of being more simple, fresh, and natural!

Links:

P.R.B.

http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/~spd/Pre-Raphaelites/Pre-Raphaelites.html

Raphael

http://www.art.com/gallery/id--a110/raphael-posters_p6.htm

References:

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition Vol. B. Ed. Don LePan. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2008.

Marsh, Jan. Pre-Raphaelite Women: Images of Femininity. New York: Harmony Books, 1987.