Text by Jan Marsh. Contributions by Peter Funnell, Charlotte Gere, Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Alison Smith.
Overlooked stories of the female painters and subjects of Pre-Raphaelite art
When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood exhibited their first works in 1849 it heralded a revolution in British art. Styling themselves the “Young Painters of England,” this group of young men aimed to overturn stale Victorian artistic conventions and challenge the previous generation with their startling colors and compositions.
Think of the images created by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others in their circle, however, and it is not men but pale-faced young women with lustrous, tumbling locks that spring to mind, gazing soulfully from the picture frame or in dramatic scenes painted in glowing colors.
Who were these women? What is known of their lives and their roles in a movement that spanned over half a century? Some were models, plucked from obscurity to pose for figures in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, while others were sisters, wives, daughters and friends of the artists. Several were artists themselves, with aspirations to match those of the men, sharing the same artistic and social networks yet condemned by their gender to occupy a separate sphere. Others inhabited and sustained a male-dominated art world as partners in production, maintaining households and studios and socializing with patrons. Some were skilled in the arts of interior decoration, dressmaking, embroidery, jewelry-making—the fine crafts that formed a supportive tier for the “higher” arts of painting and sculpture. Although their backgrounds and life experiences certainly varied widely, all were engaged in creating Pre-Raphaelite art.
Containing over 100 beautifully reproduced images, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters illustrates the obscure stories of some of the movement’s most familiar faces.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Pre-Raphaelite Sisters.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Harper's Bazaar
Catriona Gray
Models and muses, lovers and wives, became the defining faces of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, while also making their own creative contribution, and forging lives that broke free from the confines of the male perspective.
Wall Street Journal
Peter Saenger
A group of British painters known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood became famous for their lavishly detailed pictures, full of brilliant colors, medieval settings and women with lush, flowing hair.But a new exhibition proposes that women played a far larger role in the movement than has been previously acknowledged.
Guardian
Hettie Judah
Pre-Raphaelite Sisters offers a female take on that frilly-shirted testosterone-fest, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Time Out New York
Rosemary Waugh
Pre-Raphaelite Sisters...doesn’t just reclaim twelve women closely associated with the Brotherhood – working as artists, models, poets and muses – it radically re-writes the history of the British art movement. It does so by showing it wasn't the sole creation of a small group of male artists and that its most famous artworks are only the tip of the Pre-Raph iceberg.
Atlantic
Helen Lewis
Moves female creatives from the margins of a historical era and puts them at the center.... revelatory.
Hyperallergic
Lizzy Vartanian Collier
[The] exhibition arguably succeeds in recognizing women’s roles beyond that of model and muse...[and] write[s] the female characters of the Pre-Raphaelite era into art history.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11 in. / 224 pgs / 160 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $69.95 ISBN: 9781855147270 PUBLISHER: National Portrait Gallery, London AVAILABLE: 11/19/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by National Portrait Gallery, London. Text by Jan Marsh. Contributions by Peter Funnell, Charlotte Gere, Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Alison Smith.
Overlooked stories of the female painters and subjects of Pre-Raphaelite art
When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood exhibited their first works in 1849 it heralded a revolution in British art. Styling themselves the “Young Painters of England,” this group of young men aimed to overturn stale Victorian artistic conventions and challenge the previous generation with their startling colors and compositions.
Think of the images created by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others in their circle, however, and it is not men but pale-faced young women with lustrous, tumbling locks that spring to mind, gazing soulfully from the picture frame or in dramatic scenes painted in glowing colors.
Who were these women? What is known of their lives and their roles in a movement that spanned over half a century? Some were models, plucked from obscurity to pose for figures in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, while others were sisters, wives, daughters and friends of the artists. Several were artists themselves, with aspirations to match those of the men, sharing the same artistic and social networks yet condemned by their gender to occupy a separate sphere. Others inhabited and sustained a male-dominated art world as partners in production, maintaining households and studios and socializing with patrons. Some were skilled in the arts of interior decoration, dressmaking, embroidery, jewelry-making—the fine crafts that formed a supportive tier for the “higher” arts of painting and sculpture. Although their backgrounds and life experiences certainly varied widely, all were engaged in creating Pre-Raphaelite art.
Containing over 100 beautifully reproduced images, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters illustrates the obscure stories of some of the movement’s most familiar faces.
