Pre Raphaelites

The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of young painters, who started to work and exhibit, in the 1840s.   
They were rebels against the painting establishment and exemplars of a new philosophy of painting.  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was one of the most talented of them, had started to train as an artist but found the traditional path of learning by copying classical paintings, deadening and boring. He and other young arists derided Joshua Reynolds, as "Sir Sloshua" because of the dull colours and restrictive teaching that he had propounded.
Rosetti was also a poet and wrote a great deal of poetry which was related to his painting.  Formal training involved learning to paint from models and copying, before one was allowed to draw from life... and careful composition of each picture.

Rossetti was a restless and original young man who refused to follow this discipline but in later years, his wilfulness and lack of discipline led to his having money and personal problems, and becoming addicted to various drugs such as chloral, which seriously affected his health.

The young men of the Brotherhood were nearly all from modest middle class backgrounds, and in the 1840s they were learning their craft.  They included John Millais, Edward Burne Jones, William Holman Hunt, and William Morris.  They were fed up with the artistic establishment and wanted to “go back to Nature” and to a simpler  pre Capitalist way of working.  

The Pre Raphaelite label was chosen because they wanted to return to the simplicity of life into the Middle ages, and to the style of painting before Raphael... and they preferred simpler purer medieval art.   At the same time, there was a similar group in Germany, who also sought greater simplicity and shared the same ideals.  They were known as the Nazarenes.

The Pre Raphaelites particularly wanted to use light and clear pure colours and to try to paint real life, rather than the compositions of “establishment” art.

Instead of wanting to paint chocolate boxy beauties and society ladies, they sought models who were unusual in their looks, beautiful in an offbeat way, and they often found these attributes in girls of a humbler background.

 Much of their earlier work was considered shockingly realistic, dealing with biblical, literary and mythological subjects but in a “real” way.

One of their first paintings to be exhibited was “Christ in the Carpenters shop”, where Millais was criticised for making the Holy Family look so “ordinary”.   Ruskin and Charles DIckens both disliked this painting...
However the beauty and simplicity of the paintings began to take the public’s fancy and they sold well.  Millais, the best painter, became a critical and commercial success. The group were especially fond of Arthurian themes which were extremely popular in the Victorian era.  

In their early years, the young men were good friends and socialised with each other.  As time passed they acquired wives and families, but usually the friendships survived.

Millais and Burne Jones both married middle class ladies.  Millais married Effie Ruskin, who had divorced her husband the art critic John Ruskin, for non-consummation of their marriage. 

Edward Burne Jones married Georgiana Macdonald, a daughter of well to do middle class family.

Yet some of the Brotherhood sought out working class girls who looked attractive -but not in a conventional way.  Rossetti in particular was drawn to girls with red gold hair.  It’s been suggested that since the young men were nearly all from "proper" Victorian middle class background and were inexperienced and shy with women, they found it easier to start relationships with a working class girl.  It is possible that they felt  that they had more control over girls from a humble background, if they married them. 

  

William Morris married Jane Burden, the daughter of a tradesman.  She was only 18 when they married, very dark, with rich dark hair and a long but attractive face.   Janey later admitted that she had not been in love with him, and their marriage wasn’t always very happy.   Morris was devoted to her, but he was obsessed with his work and often bad tempered.  He had many interests, including textile design, painting, writing, translating, and he was a Socialist activist.

Janey was from a different class, and although she (like some of the other wives) educated herself in “ladylike” behaviour, she didn’t quite fit in.  She pursued a long affair with Gabriel Rossetti, but he had other mistresses and his addiction to drugs caused a rift between them, later… 
Morris tolerated her love for Rossetti, but he sought consolation in platonic romances with other women, particularly Georgiana Burne Jones, who was not very happy in her marriage to Edward.  
Burne Jones was unfaithful to her.. He loved his wife and did not want to leave her, but he had a torrid romance with Maria Zambaco, a Greek girl, who attempted suicide during their affair.  
Georgie tolerated the infidelity, to an extent and remained in love with her husband but found some consolation in her friendship with Morris and also with political activity.  Like Morris she was a socialist sympathizer.  She had hoped to work as an artist herself but found at first that married life, and motherhood took up most of her time.  Later on, when she and Edward had settled into  a marriage that was affectionate but not so close, she  pursued a interest in politics, stood for local election and was an active social reformer.. 
Edward was sympathetic to liberal causes but found politics boring and did not take any active part in them.  He found consolation in other affairs with women, most of them were probably platonic and conducted by letter...

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