Pre Raphaelite Art

                Fazio Mistress
                D.Rossetti


I love pre raphaelite art...I always have and I suspect that I always will.  I love the colours that they used,  the stories that their paintings told, the energy of their strokes...everything about them speaks to something deep in me.  I think the thing that I love the  most about pre raphaelite art is there is so much emotion captured  in every painting .  Whether they are deep in thought, in pain, curious about something new, scared of what's around the corner...you can read it in the expression of their faces.  

                   Pan and Psyche
                 Edward Burne Jones

                      Boreas
                     J.W. Waterhouse

             Flaming June
             Frederick Leighton

 When I was a little girl, my grandmother had a book of paintings that belonged to her mother...so I imagine it was quite old.   It was  large with a blue hard cover and a slight musty smell to it.  The pages of this book where wonderfully thick and textured...not like books that are published today.   Some of the pages were ripped out and when I asked her why,  my grandmother told me that was where the naked ladies were and that her mother had ripped them out.  Even as a child I thought that was silly...it was art for heavens sake.  The one painting in that book that captured my heart was The Martyr of Solway by John Everett Millais.    I was struck by the sadness that just poured out of her...out of the pages of that book.  Over the years, the book was lost and I hadn't seen the painting in about 35 years....I forgot everything about that painting...the title, the artist who painted it, even the story behind why she looked so sad, but I never forgot her.  

 A few years ago  I was searching everywhere on the internet...trying desperately to find this beautiful painting so I could show it to my children.  I searched and searched and searched but with no title or artist to help me, the search was futile.  I secretly wondered if I would find the painting as moving as I did as a child.  A few months later,  I was looking at some pre raphaelite paintings  on-line and out of the blue there she was...as perfectly beautiful as I remembered her.  Still her sadness tugs at my heart.