THE MIDDLE OF THE XIXTH CENTURY. THE SEARCH FOR THE NEW IN THE OLD

The second half of the nineteenth century has been described by a number of critics as a period of stagnation in English painting. The same view was held by a very popular group of young artists who in the late 40s organised the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Its members called for a rejection of the dead traditions, conventions and academicism of modern art and for a return to the direct and sincere painting of the period 'before Raphael'.

In the work of the Brotherhood's members one can clearly see the desire to follow the canons of the early Renaissance. This was expressed in everything from the subject matter, the manner of painting with particular attention to detail and the intimate study of colour, to the demand to paint only from life on canvas at once. They even tried to use medieval recipes for their canvases and paints.

The young painters' rebellion against the canon and their courage soon met with rejection from the primitive near-artistic community. The active support of the established critic John Ruskin, however, changed the attitude of amateur painters to the Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood's most notable figures were Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and John Everett Millais (1829-1896). Millais' Death of Ophelia and the numerous portraits of Rossetti's lover Jane Morris as the mythical Proserpine, Astarte, etc. are the most characteristic of the Brotherhood.

The Pre-Raphaelite Society fell apart at the turn of the '50s and '60s, but its influence was still very strong in the following decades, not only in painting or poetry, but also in furniture, book design and other applied fields. The lives of its members were shaped in different ways. So, if Rossetti completely abandoned painting, the Millais, a bit of departure from the style of Pre-Raphaelitism, remained much in demand and is now the most beloved artist in England 2 ½ of XIX century.
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Towards the end of the century the influence of the French Realist and Impressionist painters was increasingly felt in England. The American-born painter and landscape painter James Mac-Neil Whistler (1834-1903) was one of the most interesting representatives of the English school of that period. He painted in traditional techniques, but his love of subtle light and shadow effects, and the unstable, fragile states of nature, brings him closer to the Impressionists.

Landscape painting was still a great passion of British painters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whistler's disciple Richard Sickert (1860-1942) is an example of an Impressionist painter, while the traditional landscape painters include George Turner and his son William Lakin Turner (1867-1936), Frederick Tucker (1860-1935) and others. They absorbed the legacy of their famous predecessors and worthily represented the English painting tradition in European art. The work of the latter two masters is represented in our collection.

Even a cursory glance at the works of the masters discussed in this article allows you to understand the appealing power of antique painting. Let's not forget that buying a painting is not just a lucrative investment. It is first and foremost to bring the beautiful into the home, the fruit of the master's inspiration, a piece of his immortality.

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