As a reaction to the Royal Academy that had become a real showcase for what was officially approved, a group of students led by John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt formed a secret society of artists and called it the ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ in 1848.
The Pre-Raphaelites produced masterpieces focused not only on romantic subjects but also dealing with contemporary social problems.
After the Impressionist period and the magnificence of John Singer Sargent’s paintings, the return to more traditional values in art in England with Walter Sickert and Stanley Spencer, brought an end to the innovative avant-garde activity that had developed in Britain in the pre-war years.
After the second World War, a distinctly humanist and representational current emerged in British art that was to flow through the fifties and beyond, with a whole range of painters who would be essentially concerned with trying to capture the essence of what Francis Bacon called ‘exhilarated despair’.
- Teacher: Demaubus Thierry