Customer Reviews

The Pre-Raphaelites: Colour Library (Phaidon Colour Library)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Pre-Rafealite era has spawned some of our most popular posters and romantic postcards. However the movement was rich in other work that is not so commonly seen and certainly not the pieces that appear so typically in art history books. This book contains a little of both.

As always, the color in these paintings is exquisite and joyful. The writing is charming and full of interesting anecdotes about the works and their creators. Since many of the works were inspired by works of literature no longer taught in our schools, it helps that there are many explanations for the characters and the details of the scenes that are shown. This book does a far better job in that regard than most art books I have seen. In so doing it takes a "pretty picture" into an even prettier story.

Most pictures appear as the single piece on a page and surrounded with an ample amount of white. I hate to say it, but they would frame very very well.

That scandalous thought being written, I must recommend this book to anyone who has fallen in love with the Pre-Rafaelite art. I managed to find a few works I hadn't seen before. (Ford Madox Brown, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt tend to get overshadowed by Dante Gabriel Rosetti in most texts)

Overall a beautiful book... Or a wonderful introduction to the uninitiated.

This book contains 88 illustrations, 51 of which are full-color. The book is 127 pages (to give you an idea of art-to-script ratio). After a 20-page essay (with historical photographs) on the Pre-Raphaelites, a selection of their works follows. Every other page is a full-page color print.
I only gave the book 3 stars because it is cheaply bound and I would have preferred to see a slightly different selection of paintings. That being said, I am happy to have bought the book and would do so again.