Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T06:12:12.350Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893)

from PART TWO - PRE-RAPHAELITES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Elizabeth Prettejohn
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Get access

Summary

A resoundingly paradoxical figure, Ford Madox Brown was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, yet his works stand at the heart of the Pre-Raphaelite corpus. He contributed to The Germ, taught Rossetti, and his work of the late 1840s seems to prefigure many of the most radical achievements of the PRB. Despite his avowed focus on history painting, it was left to Brown to perfect Pre-Raphaelite modern-life painting and to create in Work (1852–65, City of Manchester Art Galleries) and The Last of England (1852–5, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery) its greatest monuments. Brown's landscapes, moreover, are among the finest painted explorations of ‘truth to nature’. In 1865 he published a lengthy descriptive catalogue to a retrospective exhibition of his major works which stands as a key text for the history of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. In the 1860s Brown became a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement and a pioneering designer in the ‘Firm’ of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., and in later years he espoused an idiosyncratic form of socialism. Brown embodied, in other words, all the major currents of Pre-Raphaelitism.

And yet he was nonetheless perpetually the outsider during his lifetime, outside even of the ‘avant-garde’ grouping of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood itself. He systematically alienated himself from the main streams of patronage and critical approbation, consistently placing himself in antagonistic relations with the establishment. Undoubtedly this was in part the result of the artist's personality – querulous; hasty in his judgements; easily wounded. But in Brown’s seemingly self-defeating professional conduct we can see the same refusal to compromise, or to accommodate the status quo, which is the essence of his art. Brown’s work is notable for its frequent recourse to the grotesque; its frequent obscurity of subject and meaning; and its refusal to conform to the requirements of any tendency – including those of Pre- Raphaelitism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×