Fine Art

Fine Art

*Victorian Classicism was a British style of historical painting inspired by the art and architecture of Classical Greece and Rome. As some wealthy Europeans travelled to Mediterranean lands there was a great popular interest in ancient ruins and exotic cultures, and this interest gave rise to Classicism in Britain, and Orientalism in Continental Europe.

** The Pre-Raphaelites (from 1849) were British artists who reacted against all art dating from the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael onwards. They felt that Raphael and artists after him had not tried to imitate nature in their work, but composed ‘balanced’ and symmetrical pictures rather than what they saw. The Pre-Raphaelites painted bright figures, often women from medieval and biblical literature. They loved romance and symbolism.