This controversial new movement claimed that art could be divorced from moral or narrative content.
Pre-Raphaelites and mid-Victorian art
In this tragic painting, Rossetti draws a comparison between himself and the medieval poet who shared his name.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
Visually and politically radical, Work provides a visualization of the English social classes.
Curator’s choice – Ford Madox Brown’s Work
Made when he was nineteen, this painting by Millais was a pictorial manifesto for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Curator’s choice – Millais’s Isabella
Fossiliferous stone, many-colored mosaics, and banded bricks: meaning is in the material in this Victorian church.
William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street, London
Morris and his friends designed and crafted every inch of his house, including the wallpaper and furniture.
William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
Cursed by a spell that will kill her if she leaves her castle, this romantic redhead takes a fatal boat ride.
John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott
A beautiful female figure reveals the contrasts between the confines of bondage and the audacity of hope.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Hope
Fatal attraction or the case of the murderous mermaid? The forecast isn’t good for Burne-Jones’s sunken sailor.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, The Depths of ...
Love conquers all for the legendary King Cophetua who finds love outside of his social sphere.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and ...
This painting of musical monochromatic maidens was so popular it inspired a comic operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
A lurid purple nightgown, discarded violets, tawdry trinkets—a fallen woman remembers her bygone virtuous life.
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the ...
Being a female artist in Victorian England wasn’t easy. Osborn made it work, but does the painting’s protagonist?
Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless
Not your average vacation picture: Dyce’s family in a scientifically-observed landscape, timestamped with a comet.
William Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent – a ...
Why did the eighteenth-century poet Thomas Chatterton appeal to the Romantics a century later?
Henry Wallis, Chatterton
This mythological goddess tasted the forbidden fruit and had to face the consequences; the artist could relate.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine
Both Millais and Hunt offered to help Rossetti correct the perspective in his Annunciation scene–why did he refuse?
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini
Muscles, morals, and mongrels help to illustrate the stratification of social class in Victorian England.
Ford Madox Brown, Work
The moral concerns of Victorians were triggered by this interior, where new furnishings raised eyebrows.
William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience
The artist changed the this painting’s title when it was exhibited in France, suggesting multiple layers of meaning.