The Victorian age
The Pre-Raphaelites rebelled against the Academy, William Morris wanted to make everyday things beautiful, and a large new public flocked to museums and exhibitions.
In 1848 three young students at the Royal Academy formed a secret brotherhood, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They wanted to break away from the Academy’s rules and return to the sincerity they saw in painting before Raphael. Their pictures had bright colours, sharp detail and moral or literary subjects. At first they provoked anger, but the critic John Ruskin came to their defence, and they soon became some of the most admired painters in the country. They influenced British art well into the 20th century.
Industrialisation made Britain the richest country in the world, but also a land of grimy factory towns and mass-produced goods. In reaction, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement sought to restore the dignity of handicraft. He printed wallpapers, wove textiles and published books, and he believed that art should be part of everyday life for everyone. The movement influenced design throughout Europe, not least in Sweden, where Ellen Key took up its ideas. Morris’s firm and writings remained models long after his death.
Art gained a new and larger public. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace drew millions of visitors, and new museums opened in London and the industrial cities. Paintings telling stories from everyday and contemporary life became popular successes. Towards the end of the century Aestheticism grew, with its idea of art for art’s sake, and the American-born James McNeill Whistler set himself against the entire Victorian belief that art should instruct and edify. The conflict between morality and beauty became one of the great art debates of the century.