As I shared in The Magic Down the Rabbit Hole, immersing myself in a subject and following its trails is one of the biggest delights…
In Modern Painters, John Ruskin urged artists to “go to nature in all singleness of heart… rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing; believing all…
Today has been cold and grey, the kind of day that makes me want to do nothing other than curl up and read. I’ve been…
I have written about William Holman Hunt’s painting Isabella and the Pot of Basil many times before. I included it in a recent Wombat Friday…
Today I have been pondering allegories of love in art. Namely, the choices artists make when representing the concept of Love in physical form. It…
William Morris’ Love is Enough has been on my mind this morning. “He makes a poem these days–in dismal Queen Square in black old filthy London…
I’ve seen comments online that say the Pre-Raphaelites mainly appeal to adolescents. Even this 2007 piece from The Guardian quotes a senior curator at Tate…
Sir John Everett Millais’ painting The Woodman’s Daughter is based on a poem by Coventry Patmore. When first exhibited in 1851, this excerpt of the…
Literature is filled with fictional portraits. Visual art and the written word can intertwine in glorious ways. Dorian Gray’s mysteriously aging painting springs to mind…
I think Sir John Everett Millais’ painting Speak! Speak! is a perfect Pre-Raphaelite image to share on Halloween. The ghost of a bride appears…
If you’re interested in studying the Victorian era seriously, then diaries and letters are important. At times I feel like a 21st-century snoop, devouring personal…
An important hallmark of Pre-Raphaelite art is truth to nature. Of course, there are many reasons why the art of the Pre-Raphaelites is so visually…
Truth to nature was one of the main tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and an excellent example of this can be seen in the Death’s…
“In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight path was lost” So begins Dante’s…
Last week I posted Evelyn De Morgan’s Hope in a Prison of Despair (seen above) on the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Facebook page. A happy byproduct of…
Above is a detail from Arthur Rackham’s illustration of Pan from The Wind in the Willows. I first became enchanted by Pan when, as a little…
Sir William Richmond, R.A. had this to say about Millais’ painting The Eve of St. Agnes and the innovative nature of Millais’ work: “Millais’ literary sympathies were…
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s portrayal of the Annunciation is a continuation of the theme begun in his painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. The moment that…
Inspired by artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s passion for wombats, every Friday is Wombat Friday at Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. “The Wombat is a Joy, a Triumph, a…
The sum total of our greatest fears is the death of the self or someone we love. Since the beginning of time, humans have had…
After posting about Evelyn De Morgan’s painting The Gilded Cage, I began to think about other paintings that depict women who are trapped and imprisoned…
In reality, Dante loved Beatrice from a distance and they had little to no contact with one another. The real Beatrice Portinari probably never had…
Above is Sir John Everett Millais’ painting Mariana, which I’ve blogged about before in this post. Her dress is bluer than blue, the stained glass…
“There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.”-John Keats Several months ago I was diagnosed with a dermoid tumor on my ovary.…
The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is currently preparing their latest exhibit: Love is Enough: William Morris and Andy Warhol: Love is Enough draws together…
