DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI changed British art at the age of 20 and, having done so, never really outgrew the obsessions of his youth. Rossetti was one of the seven founder members of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters, sculptors, and critics determined to reform art and clear it of old, staid conventions. Wanting to change the world—and believing it can be done —is a young man’s trait and the original members had barely hit adulthood; indeed, one of them, John Everett Millais, was still a teenager when they embarked on their crusade.
They signed their works with ‘PRB’ in lieu of their individual names and came up with a credo that was earnestly bordering on pompous: they committed to having ‘genuine ideas to express; to studying Nature ‘attentively’; to sympathizing with what was ‘direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art’; and to producing ‘thoroughly good pictures and statues. Nevertheless, when their first pictures were exhibited, they caused an almighty fuss. Dickens wrote a famous attack on Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents in which he lambasted the figure of Mary as ‘so hideous in her ugliness that… she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England’. Needless to say, the PRB became instantly famous.
Denne historien er fra September 22, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 22, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds