Gower Street

In this house The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848.
7 Gower Street, WC1

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The first exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite work occurred in 1849. Both Millais's Isabella (1848–1849) and Holman Hunt's Rienzi (1848–1849) were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin was shown at a Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner. As agreed, all members of the brotherhood signed their work with their name and the initials "PRB". 

This is from Isabella. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood

Painted panel

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, born 1828 - died 1882 (possibly, painter (artist)) 
William Morris, born 1834 - died 1896 (possibly, painter (artist)) 
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley (Sir), born 1833 - died 1898 (possibly, painter (artist))

This painted wooden panel is one of a set of four. It is probably an example of the early work produced by William Morris (1834-1896), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) while based at premises in Red Lion Square, London. It is likely that the panels may have been part of a large piece of furniture such as a settle, perhaps even the built-in settle in the drawing room at Red House: William Morris’s home in Bexleyheath, Kent, designed by Philip Webb (1831-1915).

It is uncertain which of Morris’s circle was responsible for the painting of the panels. This uncertainty reflects how closely these individuals worked together during the early years of their collaboration. The subject of the panels suggests the seasons. This particular example is most likely to be Winter. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the panels were ever intended to be ‘labelled’ in this way.

Pre-Raphaelite Haters Then and Now

http://www.dinahroe.com/blog/pre_raphaelite_haters_then_and_now

Pre-Raphaelites from Puerto Rico

How did dozens of fabulous British works of art, most of them Pre-Raphaelites, end up in an obscure museum on a Caribbean island? 


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3672673/Pre-Raphaelites-from-Puerto-Rico.html

Dr Colin Cruise

Waiting for the Verdict and the Liverpool Academy (Speel)

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13624

Waiting for the Verdict, Abraham Solomon's impressive picture of 1857, was the centre of a great battle between the supporters of the Pre-Raphaelites and their detractors. The Liverpool Academy, founded in 1810 and as such one of the oldest art corporations, had between 1851 and 1856 awarded their annual prize to Pre-Raphaelite pictures five times out of six. When in 1857 The Blind Girl by Millais won, the traditionalists supported Solomon's Waiting for the Verdict, and there was much discussion in the press. The Athenium weighed in on the side of Solomon, at which John Ruskin staunchly supported the Pre-Raphaelite picture, writing that the award to Millais 'was the first instance on record of the entirely just and beneficial working of the academical system'. More arguments followed, and the following year the Liverpool Academy showed their defiance of opposing opinion by selecting for their prize another Pre-Raphaelite work, by Ford Madox Brown. Incensed, Liverpool town council cut off funding to the Academy, and within 10 years the body had run out of money and ceased exhibiting.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/paint/solomon3.htm

PRB - Early doctrines

Early doctrines

The Brotherhood's early doctrines were expressed in four declarations:

to have genuine ideas to express
to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them
to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote
most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues


These principles are deliberately non-dogmatic, since the Brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced by Romanticism, they thought that freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. This emphasis on medieval culture was to clash with certain principles of realism, which stress the independent observation of nature. In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed that their two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and began to move in two directions. The realist-side was led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalist-side was led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. This split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and Impressionism.

In their attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found in Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground. They hoped that in this way their colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity. This emphasis on brilliance of colour was in reaction to the excessive use of bitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds, David Wilkie and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of muddy darkness, an effect that the Pre-Raphaelites despised.


Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood

The Art of Illustration: Millais, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Idyllic School

[J. E. Millais, from Good words. Wood engraving by the brothers Dalziel.
From Modern illustration, by Joseph Pennell, London, 1895]


http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-art-of-illustration-millais-the-pre-raphaelites-and-the-idyllic-school

video lecture - Dr Paul Goldman

Reality bites article from 2004

[John William Inchbold - The Lake of Lucerne, Mont Pilatus in the Distance 1857]

The pre-Raphaelites worshipped nature - until their obsessive attention to rocks and leaves brought on a crisis of faith

Feb 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2004/feb/07/art

Pre-Raphaelite Collection, 1860-1931 - Princeton University Library's Manuscripts Division

http://findingaids.princeton.edu/getEad?eadid=C0181&kw=

Pre-Raphaelite (Late 19th Century) - Invaluable Guide

http://www.invaluable.com/fine-art-genre/pre-raphaelite-gtvt6zm3qz

Dante, Beatrice and the Pre-Raphaelites (blog post)

http://www.3pipe.net/

from a great blog.

7 Gower Street, Camden

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramanja/72483754/

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house on Gower Street, London in 1848.

A bewildered brotherhood

[Deceived in love: William Dyce’s Francesca da Rimini, illustrating a tale told by Dante and Boccaccio]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23892307-a-bewildered-brotherhood.do

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Dutch painting

[Adam van Breen (artist)
Dutch, c. 1585 - 1640
Skating on the Frozen Amstel River, 1611
oil on panel]

http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?acc=2010.20.1

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles36/modern-painting-2.shtml

http://www.engl.duq.edu/servus/PR_Critic/Intro.html

The 10 best pre-Raphaelite paintings - Stephen Wildman, director of the Ruskin Library

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/sep/12/10-best-pre-raphaelite-paintings

Pre-Raphaelites from Puerto Rico (article)

Alastair Sooke

Daily Telegraph

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3672673/Pre-Raphaelites-from-Puerto-Rico.html

Pre-Raphaelite art: the paintings that obsessed the Victorians (article)

By Franny Moyle

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/5497198/Pre-Raphaelite-art-the-paintings-that-obsessed-the-Victorians.html

What's in a name - the PRB

In 1848, Holman Hunt, Millais and Rossetti were good friends and looking through a book of engravings from Pisa's Campo Santo, they decided to form a 'League of Sincerity' looking at life and nature in a new 'realistic' way and throwing off what they saw as the mannerism and artificiality of the painting styles of the time.

Hunt though that Pre-Raphaelite was a better name given their love of medieval artists who they thought had approached their art with an uncomplicated honesty. Rossetti suggested they add the word Brotherhood.. And so on that night, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was born. To bring the number of members up to the mystical number seven, they invited Fred Stephens, Thomas Woolner and James Collinson to join and a little later, Rossetti's brother William Michael (as secretary). Hunt later recalled how they discussed reinventing furniture, fabrics, buildings and even fashion.

They wanted to live in a house with PRB mext to the front door, that those not in the know would read as 'Please Ring Bell'.