Pre-Raphaelite & Victorian Paintings
Ophelia, The Lady of Shalott, Proserpine, Flaming June: the Pre-Raphaelites and the Victorian painters who followed them.
8 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
The Brotherhood
Seven young artists founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in London in 1848, among them Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt. They rejected the academic manner descended from Raphael in favour of bright colour, exact detail painted from nature, and subjects from poetry, legend and scripture. Millais painted the background of Ophelia on the Hogsmill river over five months before adding the figure. A second generation, Burne-Jones and later Waterhouse, carried the medieval and mythological strain to the end of the century.
The works in this collection
Millais's Ophelia; Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott and Miranda; Rossetti's Proserpine and Beata Beatrix; Burne-Jones's The Golden Stairs; Holman Hunt's The Light of the World; and Leighton's Flaming June, the Victorian classicist's best-loved painting.
On the wall
These are jewel-coloured, detailed pictures that reward close viewing, so they suit a bedroom, a reading corner or a stair wall where people pass near them. Ophelia is wide; most of the rest are tall and narrow and look right at 16×24 in a slim frame.