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Something different

Initially greeted with outrage, the Pre-Raphaelites gained acceptability with the blessings of the critic, John Ruskin

MAGIC REALISM Ophelia by John Everett Millais. The model was Dante Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth Siddal

As the name suggests, the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood took inspiration from a time before the great Renaissance painter Raphael. They found Raphael a symbol of all they were against — Victorian materialism and the strictures set by the Royal Academy of Art. The movement was founded in 1848 by a group of avant-garde English artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. Rossetti's brother, William, an art critic was also part of the group while Rossetti's sister, Christina, though not part of the brotherhood, was very much part of the inner circle.

Taking inspiration from the medieval texts, the Bible, and writers like Shakespeare and Tennyson, the Pre-Raphaelites were obsessed with minute detailing of the humblest objects. Going against academy conventions of a single source of light, the Pre-Raphaelites painted pictures that were evenly lit. The works were a rather uneasy marriage of symbolism and realism.

For instance Millais, for his Ophelia, spent four months researching the wildflowers and then he made his model, Elizabeth Siddal (Rossetti's wife) pose in a bathtub full of water. Though the Pre-Raphaelites encouraged writers and artists to practice each other's craft, apart from Rossetti, no one met with much success. Initially greeted with outrage, the Pre-Raphaelites gained acceptability with the blessings of the art critic, John Ruskin.

The brotherhood broke up in 1854 after which Rossetti founded Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism, which had a greater influence on literature.

MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER

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