Pre-Raphaelitism

Pre-Raphaelitism. A term originally applied to the work of a group of young, idealistic British artists founded in 1848, and subsequently used to describe a dreamy, romantic, pseudo-medieval style of painting that was highly popular in Britain in the late 19th century and lingered well into the 20th. The link between the two types of Pre-Raphaelitism was the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82); he was a member of the original group, which favoured morally uplifting themes treated in a devoutly detailed style, but he subsequently changed his approach and specialized in pictures of langourous femmes fatales. His smouldering temptresses, together with the more pallid and ethereal beauties of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833–98), were immensely influential at the turn of the century, when they were part of the taste for Symbolism. The painters who continued the Pre-Raphaelite tradition in the 20th century include Maxwell Armfield, Robert Anning Bell, Frank Cadogan Cowper, Evelyn De Morgan, Sidney Harold Meteyard (1868–1947), John Byam Shaw, and John Melhuish Strudwick (1849–1937). After the First World War, work in this style was increasingly considered old-fashioned, and the reputations of the original Pre-Raphaelites slumped. Robin Ironside's book Pre-Raphaelite Painters, published in 1948 to mark the centenary of the founding of the Brotherhood, was the first scholarly modern book on the subject, but it was not until the 1960s that there was a major revival of interest in Pre-Raphaelitism.