A tremendously engaging account of the turbulent relationships between the Pre-Raphaelite painters and the models who seemed to embody their dreams. Two photo inserts.

This publication marks the centenary of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905), a leading painter of the Pre-Raphaelite group that formed around Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the mid-nineteenth century. A precocious young talent, Solomon enjoyed early critical success with his paintings of biblical and classical subjects, but his public career was effectively destroyed when his homosexuality became public knowledge in 1873. Solomon is recognized today, however, as an important and influential figure in the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Their Bohemian lifestyle and intertwined love affairs shockingly broke 19th Century class barriers and bent the rules that governed the roles of the sexes. They became defined by love triangles, played out against the austere moral climate of Victorian England; they outraged their contemporaries with their loves, jealousies and betrayals, and they stunned society when their complex moral choices led to madness and suicide, or when their permissive experiments ended in addiction and death. The characters are huge and vivid and remain as compelling today as they were in their own time. The influential critic, writer and artist John Ruskin was their father figure and his apostles included the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the designer William Morris. They drew extraordinary women into their circle. In a move intended to raise eyebrows for its social audacity, they recruited the most ravishing models they could find from the gutters of Victorian slums. The saga is brought to life through the vivid letters and diaries kept by the group and the accounts written by their contemporaries. These real-lie stories shed new light on the greatest nineteenth-century British art.

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.

Following on from the success of Bloomsbury at Home, Pamela Todd turns her attention to the fiery group of young artists, designers and thinkers, led by the charismatic figure of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which, in 1848, came together as the semi-secret Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She explores their personalities and work through the places and haunts they made their own, presenting an intimate view of an important section of the avant-garde artistic community and placing it firmly in its Victorian context. The Pre-Raphaelites at Home is a book about personality and place. Biographies of each of the extensive cast of characters open the book, followed by a chronology of the significant events affecting the group over more than 60 years. In the succeeding chapters Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Thomas Woolner are joined by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and their intimate circle. Place by place, we are led through the story of subtly shifting allegiance, of love and deaths, adultery and illness, as the angry young men became successful, and, in some cases, even respectable. The lively narrative, packed with quotation from their own work, is lavishly illust

Add your own color to 30 pre-Raphaelite masterpieces! A progressive group of mid-19th-century artists, the Pre-Raphaelites chose to create their work in the style of medieval and Renaissance painters before the time of Raphael. The other-worldly essence and idealistic spirituality of their art is showcased in this heady collection of Pre-Raphaelite renderings from the masters of the period: John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Evelyn de Morgan, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and more. Each illustration awaits your colors from paintbrush, pencil, marker, or crayon.