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Pre-Raphaelites: 5 reasons why we love them and TOP-5 of their most luxurious paintings

Today, the popularity of the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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is undoubted. Why are the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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so dear to our hearts and eyes? Here are five answers to an almost eternal question and five stunning paintings that are sometimes overlooked by observers of the artists of this art movement!
Pre-Raphaelites: 5 reasons why we love them and TOP-5 of their most luxurious paintings
— First of all, it’s really beautiful. Funny… The Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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organized their brotherhood to fight the emasculated picture of Raphael and his followers, in order to return to nature. They themselves suffered from cold and heat during their hours of plein air and tortured their models eagering to grasp the essence (Elizabeth Siddal, who posed for Millais’s Ophelia, was so much frozen in a bath of cold water that in the end this masterpiece cost her her life). And what is the result? Grass and flowers are surely depicted very skilfully. But life is not captured exactly enough. Still, not all women are red-haired in life, and even in the middle of the 19th century, they were busy with something else besides sitting in rose bushes and combing their curls. However, the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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did not dare to express their claims: their canvases were very beautiful, sensual and seductive. Some would say that they were too beautiful and would even hold their admiration for the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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as "shameful pleasures" — so be it, because they eventually would also stand in line for the exhibition.

— It’s modern, new, and fresh. Yes, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood appeared a century and a half ago, art critics tend to consider it the first European avant-garde
Avant-garde is how modern art critics refer the general trend of new artistic directions that arose in world art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A very thin line separates it from the concept of “modernism”. Read more
movement and the forerunner of Art Nouveau, but it only gained wide popularity outside Britain at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. And it won a lot in contrast with modern art: of course, the excessive, intense beauty of the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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is more attractive to most art consumers than installations of rubbish and Virgin Mary’s portraits made of elephant shit (the latter is not a joke, but a description of a painting by artist Chris Ofili). See for yourself: Chris Ofili, Virgin Mary (1996) and Annunciation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1850):

Pre-Raphaelites: 5 reasons why we love them and TOP-5 of their most luxurious paintings
— It’s recognizable. Even those who are not familiar with the history of art, when faced with the pa

— It’s recognizable. Even those who are not familiar with the history of art, when faced with the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites for the first time, do not experience discomfort: this is so similar to luxurious magazine photo shoots and stills from "festive" costume films. By the way, at the same time as the opening of the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in New York, the Metropolitan Museum premièred the Maleficent film in May this year: costume designer Anna Shepard says that she was inspired by Millais’s Ophelia.

And the witch played by Angelina Jolie here in this frame
It has always been important for artists and art collectors how to frame their works of art. We can paraphrase Shakespeare and say,

“What’s in a frame? That which we call a picture
In an improper frame will look less nice.”

Or, perhaps, the picture’s message will be obscured by too ornate or too plain framing. Here, we present a retrospective journey into the history of framing and its evolution, with illustrations and an expert’s commentary. Read more
is placed in a landscape that is accurate to the last blade of grass, as if painted by the same Millais, as a result of a grueling plein air, of course:
Pre-Raphaelites: 5 reasons why we love them and TOP-5 of their most luxurious paintings
One more example. The dress of the beautiful witch Sidonia von Bork from the painting by Edward Burne-Jones is twice quoted in the Sleepy Hollow movie, where it is also worn by a witch, Mary van Tassel. By the way, the original can now be viewed at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in Turin, where the Tate Britain collection has arrived after Moscow, Washington and Tokyo.
Pre-Raphaelites: 5 reasons why we love them and TOP-5 of their most luxurious paintings
— It's spicy and exciting. Based on the biographies of Pre-Raphaelite artists, you can even write sentimental articles in women’s magazines, even shoot Oscar-grade films. Artists go crazy, bury and dig their wives out of their graves, they have bunches of mistresses, and just look at the cycle of lovers and models within the brotherhood… You cannot tear yourself away from all this, as well as from the paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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.
You can spend many evenings, even long winter ones, studying the adventures of Fanny Cornforth, an illiterate prostitute who became a muse, mistress, and at the same time a housekeeper of Rossetti, who was at first considered the husband of Elizabeth Siddal (yes, the same Siddal who posed for the famous Ophelia of Millais), and after her death he was too inconsolable, so he did not bother to marry Fanny, but painted dozens of canvases from her. Lady Lilith of Rosseti (far right in the title photo) is Fanny Cornforth. The witch Sidonia von Bork by Bern-Jones is Fanny Cornforth. And here she comes again:
— And last but not least — the sexuality of the red-haired subjects from the paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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. Russians often used to irony about the research of British scientists, but the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first European avant-garde artists who protested against еру wigs and powder of the classical portraiture school; they praised naturalness, romantics, and Shakespearean beauty.


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are the same British property as these scientists themselves, so this time it would be appropriate to cite their research. So, British scientists have found that women with red hair are more likely than brunettes, brown-haired women and blondes to indulge in love pleasures (and, perhaps, they never say "I have a headache"). That is why men can be found at the Pre-Raphaelites' exhibitions much more often and in much larger numbers than at any other: the reason for such a pilgrimage is clear and requires no explanation from British scientists.


The title photo shows the subjects of Rossetti (the farthest) and Waterhouse’s Mermaid

TOP-5 Pre-Raphaelite paintings that deserve no less admiration than Ophelia and Lady Lilith

Frederic Leighton. Flaming june
Flaming june
1895, 120×120 cm
By the way, a photo version of Leighton’s Flaming June was recently on the cover of VOGUE, and actress Jessica Chastain took a languid pose in front of the camera of the famous Ann Leibovitz.
William Holman Hunt. A hired shepherd
A hired shepherd
1851, 76.4×109.5 cm
Recommended artworks:
Yuri Valentinovich Zorko. Noon in Crimea
Noon in Crimea
2000-th , 60×62 cm
$541.00
Original
Edward Potashev. The Way
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The Way
2024, 85×25 cm
Nina Rassen. "Cosmic Xalaharias All Legends of the Universe."
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"Cosmic Xalaharias All Legends of the Universe."
2023, 2000×3000 cm
€200.00
Digital copy
Vladimir Sergeevich Barkov. PENTATONICS
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PENTATONICS
February 2022, 130×160 cm
$10,839.00
Original
Gennady Nikolayevich Zhikharev. Tree Man
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Tree Man
08.03.1989, 127×67 cm
$20.00
Original
Evelyn De Morgan (Pickering). Medea
Medea
1890-th , 148×88 cm