The Pre-Raphaelite landscape / Allen Staley

Allen Staley’s book The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape ignited a revival of interest in Pre-Raphaelite painting nearly three decades ago. Reintroducing the small group of young English artists who in 1848 founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this landmark book helped to attract both scholars and a new generation of admirers to the brilliant and audacious work of the Pre-Raphaelites. In this completely revised and updated second edition, Staley takes into account important artworks that have recently come to light as well as current understandings of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and its legacy. This lovely volume is greatly enhanced by more than 150 luminous color illustrations.

Ranging widely in this volume, Staley offers a comprehensive account of the formation of the Brotherhood, the artists’ theoretical concerns about depictions of the natural world, and the emergence and impact of a school of Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting. Staley also discusses all the figures important to Pre-Raphaelitism: the artists (among them John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt), their associates (Ford Madox Brown, William Dyce), the landscape specialists they influenced (Thomas Seddon, George Price Boyce), and their most articulate supporter, John Ruskin.


Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Allen Staley is professor emeritus of art history at Columbia University.