American Pre-Raphaelites

movement c. 1857-1870 United States

The American Pre-Raphaelites were a movement of mid-19th-century landscape painters who took John Ruskin's call for 'truth to nature' at face value. Sparked by William James Stillman's journal The Crayon (1855) and a British exhibition in New York in 1857, the circle coalesced around meetings at the Brooklyn home of Henry Kirke Brown. When the English painter Thomas Charles Farrer arrived in 1860, having studied under Ruskin at the Working Men's College, he founded the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art (January 1863), whose monthly magazine The New Path (1863-1865) attacked academic art and the idealized Hudson River School alike. Many members were abolitionists. The demands of plein-air painting and the upheaval of the Civil War dissolved the group by 1870.

Lead image of the Wikipedia article "American Pre-Raphaelites".
Lead image of the Wikipedia article "American Pre-Raphaelites".Public domain (credit: William Trost Richards) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Exacting, high-finish detail: every leaf, stone, and blade of grass observed from life
  • En plein-air working directly from nature, with none of the Hudson River School's composed grandeur
  • Rustic, informal subjects: clearings, brooks, birds' nests, wildflowers, still life
  • Crisp, saturated natural color and sharply defined light
  • Landscape and still life favored over narrative and figure painting

Key figures

  • William James Stillman (1828-1901) — Founded The Crayon and hosted the group's meetings; reputedly spent three months painting one violet
  • Thomas Charles Farrer — English-born painter trained by Ruskin who led the movement and founded its association
  • William Trost Richards (1833-1905) — Leading landscape painter of the circle, later a marine painter
  • John William Hill (1812-1879) — Naturalist watercolorist of birds, flowers, and fruit
  • Fidelia Bridges (1834-1923) — Painter of birds' nests and botanical subjects in meticulous detail

Example works

  • Sunset on the Meadow — William Trost Richards (1861)
  • A Buckwheat Field on Thomas Cole's Farm — Thomas Charles Farrer (1863)
  • English Wild Flowers — William James Stillman (1876)

Sources

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