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By the middle of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was already so present and so far advanced in many places in Europe in general and in England in particular as the "motherland of capitalism" that many contemporaries who were overwhelmed by the new and faster pace, including noisy railways and steam engines, longed for earlier and perhaps only supposedly better, because simple, quiet and peaceful epochs. Not only in politics, society and economy this nostalgia found expression or even violent outbreak in the form of the "machine storm" or "Luddism", but also in art at that time many painters recalled the romanticised and partly strongly mystified striving for nature, as it was in their opinion still common, customary and widespread in the Middle Ages. Examples of such creative endeavours today include the group of artists that emerged in Great Britain around 1844 and the style of the Pre-Raphaelites, who rejected what they considered to be too sterile academy painting and instead oriented themselves towards fresco painting in the early Renaissance of the 14th century in Italy.
Finally, in 1848, on the initiative of the British painter William Holman Hunt, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, initially comprising seven members, was founded in London, using the Romantic-religious art movement of the "Nazarenes" from the early 19th century in Rome and Vienna as a model and emulating their history painting. The Pre-Raphaelites rejected what they saw as a mechanistic approach, first adopted by Mannerist artists as successors to Raffael/a> and Michelangelo Buonarroti, and saw themselves as a fundamental reform movement, which envisaged the most exact possible imitation of nature as the true and central purpose of art. Among the best-known representatives of the group were John Everett Millais and James Collinson as well as Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner and the two brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael Rossetti. Their Italian roots predestined them as driving forces and pioneers of the Pre-Raphaelites. Especially the elder and first-named, who was considered as a rather eccentric eccentric eccentric towards the end of his life in the year 1882, was notorious and very influential in the London artist circles of that time.
For many years a close friend, patron and at times companion of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the watercolour, architecture and landscape painter George Price Boyce , who was born in 1826 in the London Borough of Bloomsbury as the elder brother of his younger sister and painter Joanna Mary Boyce, who was also a Pre-Raphaelite. After a stay at the Sorbonne in Paris, he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Thomas Brandon Seddon during his studies at the renowned Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1849. Soon afterwards he was increasingly influenced by the style of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood". Boyce and Rosetti were not only united by a great love of art, but also by an amorous affection for the London maid and model Fanny Cornforth, which apparently didn't particularly affect their friendship, however, since both lived almost next door to each other in the noble residential district of Chelsea from 1862. Among art historians, George Price Boyce is also known today as a member of the exclusive artists' group "Hogarth Club" and for his extensive diaries, which are an important source for research into the work of Rosetti and the rest of the Pre-Raphaelites.
By the middle of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was already so present and so far advanced in many places in Europe in general and in England in particular as the "motherland of capitalism" that many contemporaries who were overwhelmed by the new and faster pace, including noisy railways and steam engines, longed for earlier and perhaps only supposedly better, because simple, quiet and peaceful epochs. Not only in politics, society and economy this nostalgia found expression or even violent outbreak in the form of the "machine storm" or "Luddism", but also in art at that time many painters recalled the romanticised and partly strongly mystified striving for nature, as it was in their opinion still common, customary and widespread in the Middle Ages. Examples of such creative endeavours today include the group of artists that emerged in Great Britain around 1844 and the style of the Pre-Raphaelites, who rejected what they considered to be too sterile academy painting and instead oriented themselves towards fresco painting in the early Renaissance of the 14th century in Italy.
Finally, in 1848, on the initiative of the British painter William Holman Hunt, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, initially comprising seven members, was founded in London, using the Romantic-religious art movement of the "Nazarenes" from the early 19th century in Rome and Vienna as a model and emulating their history painting. The Pre-Raphaelites rejected what they saw as a mechanistic approach, first adopted by Mannerist artists as successors to Raffael/a> and Michelangelo Buonarroti, and saw themselves as a fundamental reform movement, which envisaged the most exact possible imitation of nature as the true and central purpose of art. Among the best-known representatives of the group were John Everett Millais and James Collinson as well as Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner and the two brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael Rossetti. Their Italian roots predestined them as driving forces and pioneers of the Pre-Raphaelites. Especially the elder and first-named, who was considered as a rather eccentric eccentric eccentric towards the end of his life in the year 1882, was notorious and very influential in the London artist circles of that time.
For many years a close friend, patron and at times companion of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the watercolour, architecture and landscape painter George Price Boyce , who was born in 1826 in the London Borough of Bloomsbury as the elder brother of his younger sister and painter Joanna Mary Boyce, who was also a Pre-Raphaelite. After a stay at the Sorbonne in Paris, he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Thomas Brandon Seddon during his studies at the renowned Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1849. Soon afterwards he was increasingly influenced by the style of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood". Boyce and Rosetti were not only united by a great love of art, but also by an amorous affection for the London maid and model Fanny Cornforth, which apparently didn't particularly affect their friendship, however, since both lived almost next door to each other in the noble residential district of Chelsea from 1862. Among art historians, George Price Boyce is also known today as a member of the exclusive artists' group "Hogarth Club" and for his extensive diaries, which are an important source for research into the work of Rosetti and the rest of the Pre-Raphaelites.