The Pre-Raphaelites (Character Sketches) [Hardcover]

National Portrait Gallery London (Author), Jan Marsh (Author)

Book Description

Series: Character Sketches | Publication Date: April 1997

The National Portrait Gallery's "Character Sketches" series provides biographical sketches of a specific group of historical figures from the Gallery's collection of portraits. Each volume examines the public images and private faces, the characters and relationships that gave each group its identity and importance. Introductions to each volume give a comprehensive account of the lives featured from a critical perspective. Journals, letters, diaries, anecdotes, poems and novels are all used to create portraits in words as well as images. This issue focuses on the pre-Raphaelites.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 64 pages
• Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers; illustrated edition edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1855142317
• ISBN-13: 978-1855142312
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,587,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Pre-Raphaelite

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another great Pre-Rapahaelite book by Jan Marsh, June 5, 2000

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"girlfiiend" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pre-Raphaelites (Character Sketches) (Hardcover)

For any reader who just can't get enough info about that astounding 19th-century art movement, here's another entertaining, accurate, and informative book by Pre-Raphaelite expert Jan Marsh.

This book is replete with interesting tidbits about about the greatest artists of the movement, including William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, and of course, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It provides just enough historical information to give some insight into the artists' inspiration, but steers clear of unnecessary biographical information and opinionated fluff.

Criticism? Well, yes. This book is not as thoroughly researched as the author's biographies of Elizabeth Siddal and Christina Rossetti, nor is it as lush with paintings and photographs as Marsh's "Pre-Raphaelite Women". It probably a bit too in-depth to be of much interest to those readers with no familiarity with the works of the Pre-Raphaelites. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this, and the other books of Jan Marsh, to anyone wishing to find out more about the Pre-Raphaelites.