Pre-Raphaelite school, 19th century

Pre-Raphaelite school, 19th century.
"Untitled". 1881.
Oil on canvas.
Signed with monogram on the back.
Measurements: 69 x 28 cm; 80,5 x 38,5 cm (frame).

The term Pre-Raphaelite comes from its relation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in 1849 by an influential group of nineteenth-century avant-garde painters associated with Ruskin that included William Holman Hunt, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and F. G. Stephens.
This group of artists joined forces to create a school that would break with the prevailing style which they considered an "insubstantial academicism of contemporary art". The subjects of their paintings were almost always historical and religious, but their interest in naturalistic representation distinguished them from the academic tradition. The Pre-Raphaelites advocated a pure, romantic art, influenced by medieval themes and the aesthetics of those artists before Raphael, whose art they considered full of feeling, spiritual and simple. Thus, they create atmospheres of mysticism and ecstasy, like the one we can see in this work, where their feelings are transplanted to the expression of the faces and the poetic outline of their lines.
The Brotherhood lasted only five years as a group, but its influence was felt in English painting until well into the twentieth century.