While looking at Victorian Narrative Painting, we will be discussing the concept of
poetry and art expressed by some authors using extracts taken from the Norton
Anthology (vol. 2). I include the pages to the 9th edition.
SECTION PRE-RAPHAELITISM (extracts from Dickens, Ruskin and Rosetti). pp.
1463-1471)
You only need to upload a summary of each extract, expressing the main theses
defended by each author and their argumentation.
1. Introduction: Pre-Raphaelitism
In revolt against the compositional principles of the academic art at that time
(Italian Renaissance), a movement began among a set of young artists studying
painting at the Royal Academy. William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and
Dante Gabriel Rossetti came together in 1848 to form the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, a secret society in which they embraced medieval models to create
a new ideal of naturalism. The group painted directly from nature, making
efforts to achieve a photographic fidelity of detail finding a purer naturalism
going beyond the art before Raphael, the Italian Renaissance.
Pre-Raphaelites founded a journal named The Germ where they used to publish
writing by themselves. They provoked debate and controversy about their work.
Their rendition of detail was controversial, a lot of symbolic objects in their
paintings with photographic accuracy. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood begun to
disintegrate in 1853. In spite of that, other artists began to adopt their principles.
The medieval themes of the works of Rossetti attracted the admiration of
Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris and the three formed a partnership.
Morris and Burne-Jones began to decorate in medieval style a rented flat in
Bloomsbury. This association became a second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. The
second phase presents many contrasts to the first due to the different images
represented in the canvases and the understanding of the artist in relation to
society considering that now the artist feels apart from society in rebellion
against artistic and cultural conventions. Meanwhile, painting and poetry were
still allied. Both groups chose literary subjects for their paintings trying to
explore the symbol.
The Pre-Raphaelitism came to define more than a style of painting, it was an
attitude towards design (Arts and Crafts movement), symbol central to
