Exhibition and Catalog Review: The American Pre-Raphaelites – Radical Realists

Abstract

This review covers the National Gallery of Art exhibition "The American Pre-Raphaelites - Radical Realists" and the accompanying catalog edited by Linda S. Ferber and Nancy K. Anderson. The 2019 exhibition included more than ninety works by the group that styled itself the "American Pre-Raphaelites". It is the first such exhibition since the Brooklyn Museum’s “The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites” in 1985. The group's English-born leader, Thomas Charles Farrer (1839-1891) had studied drawing with John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti at the Working Men’s College in London before emigrating to the United States in 1858, and was thus imbued with the ethos and spirit of Pre-Raphaelitism from the outset. But despite their outward similarities, the American group and its members differed significantly from the earlier English Pre-Rapahelite Brotherhood, both in their political and social aspirations, as well as their artistic production. In fact, the most lasting legacy of the American Pre-Raphaelites may be their embrace of the architectural American Gothic Revival style, which is still in evidence in public buildings and university campuses across the country. At a minimum, the American Pre-Raphaelite movement demonstrates the extensive influence of Ruskin’s writing across the Atlantic, as well as the universal appeal to young artists of breaking with the traditions of prior generations.

Keywords: pre-raphaelite, Ruskin, Rossetti, American art