Discuss The Work Of Courbet And The Pre-Raphaelites In Relation To The Political Turmoil In France And England In The 1840S

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Discuss The Work of Courbet and The Pre-Raphaelites in Relation to The Political Turmoil in France and England in The 1840s

The 1840s in Europe saw much change. 1840 was the year of the European revolutions which had a great impact on both England and France. Louis-Philippe was overturned in France following the emergence of the 1848 revolution. Political turmoil throughout Europe erupted during this time, having a profound impact on the Art in England and France.

The Pre-Raphaelites were an influential group of avante garde painters around the mid nineteenth-century. They were founded in 1849, one year after the revolutions in Europe and comprised most notably of William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. These three artists played the leading role in the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Their ambition was to bring art back to a greater idea of being ‘true to nature’ and they looked at art of the early-renaissance before the time of Raphael and paid great attention to even medieval painters. Their subject matter was usually of religious or romantic scenes and they emphasised the importance on painting everything from direct observation. Their first exhibition of 1849 caused an outrage amongst the critics due to the fact that they were so unlike the popular history paintings that were on show at the time. It took some time before the art of the Pre-Raphaelites was accepted and understood, however, despite their hard won recognition, by 1853 the original Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood had virtually broken, each moving on to develop different styles.

At around the same time in France, the realist movement was beginning to flourish, and did until the late nineteenth century. The realist movement sought to convey the objective and truthful visions of contemporary life, and similar to the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood,

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