The Pre-Raphaelites (Character Sketches) Book

The Pre-Raphaelites: Their Lives in Letters and Diaries is part of an engaging series of books that examines the lives and works of artists and writers through their writings--their letters and journals. (Past subjects of this series have included Gauguin, Wilde, Woolf, Monet, and the Bront¨s.) Because they were copious writers, the Pre-Raphaelites and their models, friends, and lovers provide excellent fodder for this type of exploration. Their association, which formed in England in the mid-19th century, included such luminaries as Christina, Dante Gabriel, and William Rossetti, John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Ford, and John Everett Millais. Dismayed by the state of "modern" British art, they sought to evoke the sincerity of early Italian art before the Renaissance master Raphael. Through intimate letters, diaries, and reminiscences, as well as in richly detailed artworks and vivid poetry, the linked lives and loves of this group of painters and poets reveal a deeper story, that of a circle of friends who shared an artistic ideal.Read More