Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/52

Rh kin called unfortunate, "because the principles on which its members are working are neither pre- nor post-Raphaelite, but everlasting. They are endeavoring to paint with the highest possible degree of completion what they see in nature, without reference to conventional established rules; but by no means to imitate the style of any past epoch. To paint Nature—Nature as it was around them, by the help of modern science, was the aim of the Brotherhood."

At the time when the Preraphaelite School came into being the art of other lands as well as that of England was in need of an awakening impulse, and the Preraphaelite revolt against conventionality and the machine-like art of the period roused such interest, criticism, and opposition as to stimulate English art to new effort, and much of its progress in the last half -century is doubtless due to the discussions of the theories of this movement as well as of the works it produced.

Preraphaelitism, scorned and ridiculed in its beginning, came to be appreciated in a degree that at first seemed impossible, and though its apostles were few, its influence was important. The words of Bume Jones, in which he gave his own ideal, appeal to many artists and lovers of art: "I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be—in alight better than any light that ever shone—in a land no one can define or remember, only desire—and the forms divinely beautiful."

Rossetti's "Girlhood of Virgin Mary," Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," and Millais' "Christ in the House