This revelatory book traces how the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their close associates put scientific principles into practice across their painting, poetry, sculpture, and architecture. In their manifesto, The Germ, the Pre-Raphaelites committed themselves to creating a new kind of art modeled on science, in which precise observation could lead to discoveries about nature and humanity. In Oxford and London, Victorian scientists and Pre-Raphaelite artists worked together to design and decorate natural history museums as temples to God's creation. At the same time, journals like Nature and the Fortnightly Review combined natural science with Pre-Raphaelite art theory and poetry to find meaning and coherence within a worldview turned upside down by Darwin's theory of evolution. Offering reinterpretations of well-known works by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and William Morris, this major revaluation of the popular Victorian movement also considers less-familiar artists who were no less central to the Pre-Raphaelite project. These include William Michael Rossetti, Walter Deverell, James Collinson, John and Rosa Brett, John Lucas Tupper, and the O'Shea brothers, along with the architects Benjamin Woodward and Alfred Waterhouse. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

"The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington"--Colophon.

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.

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.

A magnificent new book on the Pre-Raphaelites—oversized, gorgeously illustrated, and packed with insight Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. These were among the young British artists who, in the revolutionary year of 1848, set out to return a lost vibrancy to European art. Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, they and their later followers—including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris—mounted an artistic front against what they saw as the confining standards of the Victorian art world, and the dehumanizing aspects of the industrial age. Their works drew on Shakespeare, Keats, Tennyson, and medieval lore. They also treated religious and contemporary themes with striking realism, bringing viewers into intimate contact with the subject and causing scandal in their time. In this authoritative yet highly readable volume, art historian Aurélie Petiot traces Pre-Raphaelitism from its beginnings as a secret brotherhood to its dissemination in multiple strands of British art and beyond. Petiot offers keen analyses of Pre-Raphaelite painting, drawing, and decorative art alike. She gives particular attention to the role of women in the movement, not only as models and muses, but as pioneering artists in their own right, whose work has only begun to receive its proper recognition. Uniquely, the last chapters of the book are devoted to the enduring (yet often underestimated) Pre-Raphaelite influence on the later course of modern art and on our contemporary culture. More than 300 full-color illustrations reproduce all the great Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, as well as many fascinating lesser-known works, with all the luminous brilliance and detail for which the Pre-Raphaelites are renowned. This splendid volume is a must-have for any art history lover.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. Their art's romanticism, attention to detail and jewel-like colours have ensured their eternal popularity. This beautifully illustrated reference book, now back in print, is packed with examples of work by the key proponent Millais, and his many contemporaries. Beginning with an overview of the movement it goes on to discuss the art in the context of society, place, influences, and styles and techniques. It is an ideal gift for art lovers or those new.