The Pre-Raphaelites

The Pre-Raphaelites were rebellious group of seven that was formed in 1848 as the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.

Pre-Raphaelite means that they went back before Raphael.  They went against the predictability of Contemporary academic painting that most of them were colleagues at the Royal Academy of Art.  They turned to the directness and simplicity of Italian painters and this type of art shows the description of detail, bright colours on different paintings that go back to tempera paint used by medieval artists, religious paintings and also goes through nature.

This is the Royal Academy of Art.

It was a tough life in these days that began the industrial revolution and people were working in different factories.

If we look through every Pre-Raphaelites artist, they had their own inspirations such as,

Rossetti for example “found” he wants to show a London prostitute suffering.

This is "found" made by Rossetti.

Holman Hunt was interested from religious paintings such as a painting called “The holy land by the shores of the Dead Sea”. He used the goat as a symbol or you can say a model to show a message of dying from the study of religious ancient Rabbinic that called Talmud.

This is "The holy land by the shores of the Dead Sea".

There were more interesting paintings from every Artist but the person that kept the group alive was Rossetti by promoting its second generation of Artists.  

Later Rossetti turned to representations of female beauty such for example Proserpine.

This is a portrait of Jane Morris made by Rossetti.

If we go further Rossetti likes William Morris Wife and he also paint different portraits of her. Proserpine was one of them.

The Pre-Raphaelites Art was influenced from many artists and in the twenty-first Century the artist Howard David Johnson was inspired and tries to use that style and he succeeded.

Another portrait made by Howard David Johnson.

If we look closely to this style was a symbolism and made with mix media. It is a similar style like Rossetti`s paintings. For my opinion I think that Johnson tries to combine this style to our representations of females.

Meagher.J, 2004 The Pre Raphaelites,

Available at  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/praf/hd_praf.htm .