R. B., pre-Raphaelite Brother. To this
attempt to gain the true regardless of the sensuous, was added a
morbidity of thought mingled with mysticism, a moral and religious
pose, and a studied simplicity. Some of the painters of the
Brotherhood went even so far as following the habits of the early
Italians, seeking retirement from the world and carrying with them a
Gothic earnestness of air. There is no doubt about the sincerity that
entered into this movement. It was an honest effort to gain the true,
the good, and as a result, the beautiful; but it was no less a
striven-after honesty and an imitated earnestness. The Brotherhood did
not last for long, the members drifted from each other and began to
paint each after his own style, and pre-Raphaelitism passed away as it
had arisen, though not without leaving a powerful stamp on English
art, especially in decoration.
Rossetti, an Italian by birth though English by adoption, was the type
of the Brotherhood. He was more of a poet than a painter, took most of
his subjects from Dante, and painted as he wrote, in a mystical
romantic spirit.
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