The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

(Most of the following material is from Wikipedia)

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form the seven-member "brotherhood".

 The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what it considered the mechanistic approach first adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. Its members believed the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". 

In particular, the group objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, whom they called "Sir Sloshua". To the Pre-Raphaelites, according to William Michael Rossetti, "sloshy" meant "anything lax or scamped in the process of painting ... and hence ... any thing or person of a commonplace or conventional kind".  In contrast, the brotherhood wanted a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art.

 Through the PRB initials, the brotherhood announced in coded form the arrival of a new movement in British art. The group continued to accept the concepts of history painting and mimesis, imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. The Pre-Raphaelites defined themselves as a reform-movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, and published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. The group's debates were recorded in the Pre-Raphaelite Journal.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house on Gower Street, London in 1848. At the first meeting, the painters John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt were present. Hunt and Millais were students at the Royal Academy of Arts and had met in another loose association, the Cyclographic Club, a sketching society. At his own request Rossetti became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown in 1848.

 At that date, Rossetti and Hunt shared lodgings in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, Central London. Hunt had started painting The Eve of St. Agnes based on Keats's poem of the same name, but it was not completed until 1867.

          

      St. Agnes' Eve  

     Ah, bitter chill it was!

    The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

    The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,

    And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

    Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told

    His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

    Like pious incense from a censer old,

    Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,

  Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.

    His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;

    Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,

    And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,

    Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:

    The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,

    Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails:

    Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries,

    He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails

  To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

    Northward he turneth through a little door,

    And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue

    Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor;

    But no — already had his deathbell rung;

    The joys of all his life were said and sung:

    His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve:

    Another way he went, and soon among

    Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve,

  And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.

  

    That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;

    And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide,

    From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,

    The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:

    The level chambers, ready with their pride,

    Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:

    The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,

    Star'd, where upon their heads the cornice rests,

  With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.

 

    At length burst in the argent revelry,

    With plume, tiara, and all rich array,

    Numerous as shadows haunting fairily

    The brain, new stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay

    Of old romance. These let us wish away,

    And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,

    Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,

    On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care,

  As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

   They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,

    Young virgins might have visions of delight,

    And soft adorings from their loves receive

    Upon the honey'd middle of the night,

    If ceremonies due they did aright;

    As, supperless to bed they must retire,

    And couch supine their beauties, lily white;

    Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require

  Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

    Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:

    The music, yearning like a God in pain,

    She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,

    Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train

    Pass by — she heeded not at all: in vain

    Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,

    And back retir'd; not cool'd by high disdain,

    But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:

  She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year.

   She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes,

    Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:

    The hallow'd hour was near at hand: she sighs

    Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort

    Of whisperers in anger, or in sport;

    'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn,

    Hoodwink'd with faery fancy; all amort,

    Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,

  And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

     So, purposing each moment to retire,

    She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors,

    Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire

    For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,

    Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores

    All saints to give him sight of Madeline,

    But for one moment in the tedious hours,

    That he might gaze and worship all unseen;

  Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss — in sooth such things

      have been.

     He ventures in: let no buzz'd whisper tell:

    All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords

    Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel:

    For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,

    Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,

    Whose very dogs would execrations howl

    Against his lineage: not one breast affords

    Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,

  Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

     Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,

    Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,

    To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame,

    Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond

    The sound of merriment and chorus bland:

    He startled her; but soon she knew his face,

    And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand,

    Saying, "Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;

  They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!"

     "Get hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand;

    He had a fever late, and in the fit

    He cursed thee and thine, both house and land:

    Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit

    More tame for his gray hairs — Alas me! flit!

    Flit like a ghost away." — "Ah, Gossip dear,

    We're safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit,

    And tell me how" — "Good Saints! not here, not here;

  Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier."

    He follow'd through a lowly arched way,

    Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,

    And as she mutter'd "Well-a — well-a-day!"

    He found him in a little moonlight room,

    Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb.

    "Now tell me where is Madeline," said he,

    "O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom

    Which none but secret sisterhood may see,

  When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously."

    "St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes' Eve —

    Yet men will murder upon holy days:

    Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve,

    And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays,

    To venture so: it fills me with amaze

    To see thee, Porphyro! — St. Agnes' Eve!

    God's help! my lady fair the conjuror plays

    This very night: good angels her deceive!

  But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve."

    Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,

    While Porphyro upon her face doth look,

    Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone

    Who keepeth clos'd a wond'rous riddle-book,

    As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.

    But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told

    His lady's purpose; and he scarce could brook

    Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold

  And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.

      Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,

    Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart

    Made purple riot: then doth he propose

    A stratagem, that makes the beldame start:

    "A cruel man and impious thou art:

    Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream

    Alone with her good angels, far apart

    From wicked men like thee. Go, go! — I deem

  Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem."

As an aspiring poet, Rossetti wished to develop the links between Romantic poetry and art. By autumn, four more members, painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, Rossetti's brother, poet and critic William Michael Rossetti, and sculptor Thomas Woolner, had joined to form a seven-member-strong brotherhood.

 Ford Madox Brown was invited to join, but the more senior artist remained independent but supported the group throughout the PRB period of Pre-Raphaelitism and contributed to The Germ. Other young painters and sculptors became close associates, including Charles Allston Collins, Thomas Tupper, and Alexander Munro. The PRB intended to keep the existence of the brotherhood secret from members of the Royal Academy.

The brotherhood's early doctrines were expressed in four declarations:

1.to have genuine ideas to express

 2.to study nature attentively, so as to know how to express them

 3.to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote

 4.most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues

 The principles were deliberately non-dogmatic, since the brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced by Romanticism, the members thought freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles of realism which stress the independent observation of nature.

 In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and moved in two directions. The realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalists were led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and Impressionism.

 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was greatly influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp focus techniques on a white canvas. In attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found in Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground in the hope that the colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity. Their emphasis on brilliance of colour was a reaction to the excessive use of bitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds, David Wilkie and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of muddy darkness, an effect the Pre-Raphaelites despised.

 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

 James Collinson (painter)

 William Holman Hunt (painter)

 John Everett Millais (painter)

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (painter, poet)

 William Michael Rossetti (critic)

 Frederic George Stephens (critic)

 Thomas Woolner (sculptor, poet)

Associated artists and figures

 John Brett (painter)

 Ford Madox Brown (painter, designer)

 Richard Burchett (painter, educator)

 Edward Burne-Jones (painter, designer)

 Charles Allston Collins (painter)

 Frank Cadogan Cowper (painter)

 Fanny Cornforth (artist's model)

 Henry Holiday (painter, stained-glass artist, illustrator)

 Walter Howell Deverell (painter)

 Arthur Hughes (painter, book illustrator)

 Robert Braithwaite Martineau (painter)

 Annie Miller (artist's model)

 Jane Morris (artist's model)

 Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford (painter and artist's model)

 May Morris (embroiderer and designer)

 William Morris (designer, writer)

 Christina Rossetti (poet and artist's model)

 John Ruskin (critic)

 Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (painter)

 Thomas Seddon (painter)

 Frederic Shields (painter)

 Elizabeth Siddal (painter, poet and artist's model)

 Simeon Solomon (painter)

 Marie Spartali Stillman (painter)

 Algernon Charles Swinburne (poet)

 Henry Wallis (painter)

 William Lindsay Windus (painter)

Loosely associated artists

 Sophie Gengembre Anderson (painter)

 Wyke Bayliss (painter)

 George Price Boyce (painter)

 Joanna Mary Boyce (painter)

 Sir Frederick William Burton (painter)

 Julia Margaret Cameron (photographer)

 James Campbell (painter)

 John Collier (painter)

 William Davis (painter)

 Evelyn De Morgan (painter)

 Frank Bernard Dicksee (painter)

 John William Godward (painter)

 Thomas Cooper Gotch (painter)

 Charles Edward Hallé (painter)

 Edward Robert Hughes (painter)

 John Lee (painter)

 Edmund Leighton (painter)

 Frederic, Lord Leighton (painter)

 James Lionel Michael (minor poet, mentor to Henry Kendall)

 Charles William Mitchell (painter)

 Joseph Noel Paton (painter)

 John William Waterhouse (painter)

 Daniel Alexander Williamson (painter)

 James Tissot (painter)

 Elihu Vedder (painter)

 James Abbott McNeill Whistler (painter)