From Booklist
As Prettejohn notes, so much has been written on those mid-nineteenth-century English art radicals, the Pre-Raphaelites, that some bookstores have separate sections to accommodate all the tomes about them. How could anything exciting remain to be said about them? Well, for many art lovers, what Prettejohn says will be pretty intriguing. She takes the extreme reactions to Pre-Raphaelite painting, then and now, seriously; looks again and more thoroughly at the meticulous realism, even lighting, clashing colors, and multiple foci in their paintings; and suggests a new story about the development of modern art, from Pre-Raphaelitism to symbolism to surrealism to pop art to postmodernism. If that doesn't pique art book readers' interest, perhaps Prettejohn's attention to the female Pre-Raphaelites, or her consideration of gender and sexuality in Pre-Raphaelite art, or the luscious reproductions of virtually all the famous and many lesser-known but entrancing Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces will. Art libraries, consider this book essential. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


ForeWord
The author argues that Pre-Raphaelite art requires long, close scrutiny. Her book equally merits lingering and absorbing attention.


Library Journal
The first combined study of these artists to appear in 15 years. . . . Highly recommended.


Library Journal
The first combined study of these artists to appear in 15 years. . . . Highly recommended.


Booklist
Suggests a new story about the development of modern art... [with] luscious reproductions.


Book Description
Though always controversial in art circles, the Pre-Raphaelites have also always been extremely popular with museum goers. This accessible new study provides the most comprehensive view of the movement to date. It shows us why, a century and a half later, Pre-Raphaelite art retains its power to fascinate, haunt, and often shock its viewers. Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt produced a statement of ideas that revolutionized art practice in Victorian England. Critical of the Royal Academy's formulaic works, these painters believed that painting had been misdirected since Raphael. They and the artists who joined with them, including William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, and Frederick George Stephens, created bright works representing nature and literary themes in fresh detail and color. Considered heretical by many and frequently admonished for a lack of grace in composition the group disbanded after only a few years. Yet its artists and ideals remained influential; its works, greatly admired. In this richly illustrated book, Elizabeth Prettejohn raises new and provocative questions about the group's social and artistic identity. Was it the first avant-garde movement in modern art? What role did women play in the Pre-Raphaelite fraternity? How did relationships between the artists and models affect the paintings? The author also analyzes technique, pinning down the distinctive characteristics of these painters and evaluating the degree to which a group style existed. And she considers how Pre-Raphaelite art responded to and commented on its time and place a world characterized by religious and political controversy, new scientific concern for precise observation, the emergence of psychology, and changing attitudes toward sexuality and women. The first major publication on the Pre-Raphaelite movement in more than fifteen years, this exquisite volume incorporates the swell of recent research into a comprehensive, up-to-date survey. It comprises well over two hundred color reproductions, including works that are immediately recognizable as Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, as well as lesser-known paintings that expand our appreciation of this significant artistic departure.


About the Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn lectures at the University of Plymouth and is the author of several books on nineteenth-century art, including Rossetti and his Circle and Interpreting Sargent.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Though always controversial in art circles, the Pre-Raphaelites have also always been extremely popular with museum goers. This accessible new study provides the most comprehensive view of the movement to date. It shows us why, a century and a half later, Pre-Raphaelite art retains its power to fascinate, haunt, and often shock its viewers.

Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt produced a statement of ideas that revolutionized art practice in Victorian England. Critical of the Royal Academy's formulaic works, these painters believed that painting had been misdirected since Raphael. They and the artists who joined with them, including William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, and Frederick George Stephens, created bright works representing nature and literary themes in fresh detail and color. Considered heretical by many and frequently admonished for a lack of grace in composition the group disbanded after only a few years. Yet its artists and ideals remained influential; its works, greatly admired.

In this richly illustrated book, Elizabeth Prettejohn raises new and provocative questions about the group's social and artistic identity. Was it the first avant-garde movement in modern art? What role did women play in the Pre-Raphaelite fraternity? How did relationships between the artists and models affect the paintings? The author also analyzes technique, pinning down the distinctive characteristics of these painters and evaluating the degree to which a group style existed. And she considers how Pre-Raphaelite art responded to and commented on its time and place a world characterized by religious and political controversy, new scientific concern for precise observation, the emergence of psychology, and changing attitudes toward sexuality and women.

The first major publication on the Pre-Raphaelite movement in more than fifteen years, this exquisite volume incorporates the swell of recent research into a comprehensive, up-to-date survey. It comprises well over two hundred color reproductions, including works that are immediately recognizable as Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, as well as lesser-known paintings that expand our appreciation of this significant artistic departure.

FROM THE CRITICS

- Houston Chronicle

Twentieth-century critics have tended to turn up their noses at Pre-Raphaelite art, dismissing it as sentimental stuff. That attitude has begun to change, and art historian Elizabeth Prettlejohn delivers a spirited study of the aesthetics of this Victorian-era movement in The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Nicholas Basbanes - Worcester Sunday Telegram

Elizabeth Prettejohn takes a fresh look at a revolutionary movement pioneered in England in the 1840s that continues to fascinate critics for its responsiveness to changing social conditions.

Library Journal

Dante Garbriel Rosetti, William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, John Everett Milais, and the other men and women belonging to the Pre-Raphaelite movement would probably be surprised at the staying power of their art and thoughts. There are countless studies of the movement, with some bookstores devoting whole shelves to it. In this work, which had its seeds in the 1998 Burne-Jones exhibit and exhibit at London's Tate Gallery in 1984 that was the largest ever of Pre-Raphaelite works, Prettejohn (art history, Univ. of Plymouth) has assembled the first combined study of these artists to appear in 15 years. There have been books on the Brotherhood, individual artists, and the seldom-mentioned Sisterhood but not the combined, thoroughgoing overview of their lives, thoughts, and, most of all, techniques that Prettejohn accomplishes here. Prettejohn presents complete images and then studies fragments to reveal the technique and small detail. She also shows how these artists revolutionized Victorian art and how they were affected by changes in science, psychiatry, and the attitudes toward sexuality and women. Finally, she addresses their impact today, considering whether this was the first avant-garde movement in modern art. Highly recommended.--Joseph Hewgley, Nashville P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Foreword

A statuesque woman draped in midnight blue velvet stands and stretches in front of her embroidery table, surrounded by rich colors and varying textures-the fabric of her dress, the jewels on her belt, the autumn leaves that have fallen on her needlework, the bright stained glass, the rough wooden floor, the polished wooden stool leg, the gleaming silver vases. The painting, by John Everett Millais, entitled Mariana, is a perfect example of the art of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Who were the Pre-Raphaelites, and what was their art like? Prettejohn, associate senior lecturer in Art History at the University of Plymouth, addresses these questions with sensitivity, careful attention, and scholarly expertise in this gorgeous book.

Millais and his friends and fellow painters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, were frustrated with popular taste in painting, and with the academic precepts of the art world in 1840s London. According to Hunt, they sought to "perfectly revolutionisze [sic] taste." Toward that end, they formed the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" with a sculptor and three other painters. These men declared allegiance to the style of art of the period preceding the High Renaissance-roughly before 1500-a style considered "primitive" in contrast to Raphael's maturity.

Prettejohn writes: "Pre-Raphaelite painting technique was simultaneously very old, in its attempted return to the methods of the first oil painters, and utterly novel, since those methods were `scientifically' examined for the first time."

Other painters soon adopted the style. Artists without standard training, especially women, who were denied entrance to art schools, found advantages in the Brotherhood's rejection of academia.

These painters portrayed people and nature with perfect truthfulness, rendering every square inch of the canvas in exacting detail, rather than clearly portraying principal forms in the foreground with shadowed, indistinct backgrounds. In Hunt's Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus, every blade of grass is articulated; each separate link in the hero's chain mail can be counted; one can even discern the expressions on faces in the distance.

Prettejohn examines this art with the minute attention one must pay to each painting in order to absorb all those details. She analyzes the style's visual aesthetic, its place in the history of art and society, and its portrayal of women. She draws on-and graciously acknowledges-a wide body of scholarly work. The book is beautifully laid out, with vivid color plates clearly marked and juxtaposed conveniently with the text that refers to them.

The author argues that Pre-Raphaelite art requires long, close scrutiny. Her book equally merits lingering and absorbing attention. (December)

Lindsay Duguid - Times Literary Supplement