The Pre-Raphaelites wanted truth and naturalism in their Art

This edited article about the Pre-Raphaelites first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 594 published on 2 June 1973.

Day Dreams by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

With most movements in Art it is possible to say when they started, who were members of that movement, what their aims were, why they had the name they did, and when they ended. One of the most interesting things about the Pre-Raphaelite movement in Art is that it’s difficult to answer any of those questions. The one thing that is known with absolute certainty is when it actually began. The rest is confused and often contradictory.

Firstly, let us try and find out exactly why they were called the Pre-Raphaelites. There are a great many theories about this, but these are the three most common. The poet and painter, Rossetti, was impressed by a life of the poet Keats that he had just read and said that he thought that some of the early painters “surpassed even Raphael himself”. Raphael was one of the most famous painters of all time, who died in Rome in 1520. Another painter named Ford Madox Brown claimed that the name ‘Pre-Raphaelites’ was a common art term at the time and the brotherhood just adopted it. Holman Hunt and Millais, two of the founding members of the movement were once criticising a painting by Raphael called ‘The Transfiguration’, when someone who overheard them jokingly commented that if they didn’t like the picture then they must be ‘Pre-Raphaelites’. This last story is so undramatic that it is probably the true reason for the adoption of the name.

Now we know what their name was, let us look at the people who made up this movement and try to find out what their beliefs were. In 1848, three men came together in the home of Millais at Gower Street in London and founded what they called the ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’. Apart from Millais, already an artist of some distinction, they were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. These three painters were generally dissatisfied with the dull state of Victorian art and vowed to try and change it by their collective skill. They enlisted Thomas Woolner, a young sculptor, Rossetti’s brother William Michael, another young painter named James Collinson (who was probably only included because he was to marry Christina Rossetti, who herself became a fine poet) and a friend of Hunt’s named Frederick Stephens who had never painted a picture. These were the seven men who planned to revolutionise Art.

Only Rossetti, Millais and Hunt were really of any consequence as artists and we will look more closely at each of them later as well as at the other artists whom they influenced or who proved to be important to the movement. One of the first things the P.R.B. (this was their own abbreviation for Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and they agreed to inscribe these initials on all of their paintings) did was to draw up a list, pyramid-shaped of the people in history who they considered to be the ‘immortals’.

Holman Hunt insisted that Jesus Christ should stand alone at the very top of their pyramid. Together on the next layer were Shakespeare and the author of the Book of Job in the Bible. The third strata also had an unusual mixture of names. There were Shelley, Keats, Chaucer, Dante, Homer, Goethe, Browning, Thackeray (all writers) plus the painters Landor and Leonardo da Vinci and the statesmen King Alfred and Washington. Below that came two more layers each with a strange assortment of names.

Somehow this list shows the spirit of the movement rather well. It is an odd mixture and shows how different the ideas were of members of the group. Yet, despite that, it shows that they were capable of getting together and producing something on which they were reasonably agreed. So it was with their painting. One thing that we must remember is how very young they all were. Hunt was the eldest at twenty-one with Millais and Rossetti nineteen and twenty respectively.

Among the artists attracted to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was Walter Dowell Deverell who, like Millais and Hunt, went to literature for his themes. Two of his paintings, Twelfth Night and As You Like It are beautiful illustrations of Shakespeare’s plays.

Easily the most important single influence on the Pre-Raphaelites was the poet, writer, critic and painter, John Ruskin. He was ten years older than Millais and had himself been influenced by one of the greatest of English painters, Joseph Turner. Ruskin believed passionately in naturalism in Art. He felt that most painting over the last two hundred years had become too stylised and unfaithful to Nature. For Ruskin, the world and everything in it revealed the full majesty of God. Nature was God, and everything about Nature was therefore good. Ruskin said that there was no such thing as bad weather. There were just different varieties of good weather. Like Turner, the paintings of Ruskin reveal this interest in, and knowledge of, all aspects of Nature.

Another artist who was just slightly older but who was to ally himself to the cause of the P.R.B. was Ford Madox Brown. Ingredients in his work that are cornerstones of the movement are an acute eye for architectural detail, an interest in the classics and a specific use of light and shade. This last is of particular importance. Painters had generally used a general style of light that had become almost conventional. Brown deliberately set out to show light and dark exactly as it was at the moment he was portraying it in each picture. This use of a natural light is one of the common features of nearly all Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Rossetti, Millais and Hunt were all ambitious painters who found little enthusiasm among the older organisation artists of their day. These older men who ran the Royal Academy wouldn’t tolerate these jumped-up young men with their revolutionary ideas. In mid-Victorian England, the Royal Academy was the stronghold of Art and progress of any sort was looked upon with a great deal of suspicion. Since they knew they were weak alone, the three men saw the possibility of strength in numbers and decided to combine. It was September 1848 and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was about to be formed. They all cleared off their outstanding work and prepared to start anew. The revolution had begun.