Pre-Raphaelites

The Pre-Raphaelites brotherhood were a group of students which banded together to bring back the interest in painting in Britain in 1848. They are called the Pre-Raphaelites because they came before Raphael. They were seven members but there were the three founders which are, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They were later joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner Their art works where aimed to be simple to bring out a serious and moralistic theme which felt to be more meaningful. The subjects treated were, Legends, Emigration, Prostitution, Religious Reform, Medieval Themes and the Female Beauty. They used a coloring technique which was building up colors through glazes. This would create the effect of light falling on the subject and also create a depth of filed that was limited when using a mixture of colors on a palette. This was done by using bright transparent colors and thin glazes onto a smooth white ground which was most often the canvas. They also reversed the establishment's order of painting - creating background first, and then putting in the figures. Using a graphite pencil they generally worked out directly on canvas. To bring out the fact the paintings were done in oils, a high-gloss varnish was used as a final touch and this also aided in protecting the surface of the art work.

One of the well known paintings of the Pre-Raphelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti is Proserpine shown on the right.

http://painting.about.com/od/oldmastertechniques/a/PreRaphs_techs.htm

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/prb.html

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/474248/Pre-Raphaelite-Brotherhood