History
The Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood brought
notoriety to British art in the 19th century. Bursting
into the spotlight in the mid century they shocked their peers with a
radical art form which changed the way people perceived art and painted themselves.
To most people the thought of pre-Raphaelite makes you think of beautiful women with fair skin and long lush hair. The Brotherhoods
early work was very different from these later works associated with
them. Their first paintings controversially applied a bold new
realism to sacred subjects and then a decade before the french
impressionists, they captured subjects from
urban life.
There was outrage when this art work
came to light by magazines,
Charles Dickens then went on to criticize Millias's painting, "Christ
in the House of His Parents,
that had appeared for the first time at the 1850 Royal Academy
Exhibition:
"You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In
the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked,
blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown, who appears to have
received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom
he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up
for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her
ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to
exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out
from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in
France, or the lowest ginshop in England. Two almost naked
carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this
agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small
flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and
nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to
have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be
hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of
her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of
feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the
carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards,
in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have
walked out of Saint Giles’s."
Links That where helpful:
http://spartacus-educational.com/ARTpreraphael.htm
http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pre-raphaelite
When looking at paintings, early photography and modern takes on Pre- Rafaelite beauty they all have the essence of longing, and sometimes pain; the way their faces are strained looking for something, but also in a in a romantic way and setting.
The reason I looked into the Pre- Rafaelites is not only due to the fact Charles Dickens thought it was ghastly, but because the romanticism built within the frame; the hair wispy and flowing free made me think of how women of the time where becoming more free in the way they wanted to be perceived themselves, changing small things like hair helped them show their personalities.
Paintings
Author: John William Waterhouse
Year of publication: 1888
Title: The Lady of Shallot
Viewed: 13th February 2015
Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott
Author: John William Waterhouse
Year of publication: 1908
Title: The Soul of the Rose
Viewed: 13th February 2015
Availablefrom: https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/rs=ac&len=2&q=pre+raphaelite+beauty&term_meta%5B%5D=pre%7Cautocomplete%7C1&term_meta%5B%5D=raphaelite%7Cautocomplete%7C1&term_meta%5B%5D=beauty%7Cautocomplete%7C1
Photography
Author: John Robert Parsons
Year of publication: 1865
Title: "A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain"
Viewed: 13th February 2015
Available from: http://vintage-spirit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/john-robert-parsons-jane-morris-1865.html
Modern
Author: John Robert Parsons
Year of publication: 1865
Title: "A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain"
Viewed: 13th February 2015
Available from:
Coco Rocha in “Agua Caliante” for Numero by Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello
Author: John Robert Parsons
Year of publication: 1865
Title: "A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain"
Viewed: 13th February 2015
Available from: https://mippy.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/cupid-and-psyche-09/
Lily Cole in Roberto Cavalli, Spring 2005. Photographed by Miles Aldridge for Vogue Italia ('Like a Painting'), February 2005.
Author: Unkown
Year of publication: Unkown
Title: Pre Raphaelite Lily Cole
Viewed: 13th February 2015
Available from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/417286721694769856/
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