ASTRONOMICAL IMAGERY IN THE WORK OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHER (AND SISTER) HOOD

Abstract

The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sought to produce art in a purer simpler form by looking back to late medieval and

early Renaissance painting. They emphasised the natural world in an almost religious–like devotion to truth,

basing their works on the observation of nature and the study of science. Astronomy was one of many

sources of inspiration that members of the PRB derived from nature – and many of them were fascinated by

the night sky and used astronomical symbolism to express their ideas. Key proponents were George

Frederick Watts, and later generation pre–Raphaelites such as Arthur Hughes and Edward Burne–Jones

whose works can be examined in the context of contemporary astronomical thinking and discoveries.

Significantly, one of the female members of the group Evelyn De Morgan (née Pickering, 1839–1917) seems

to have done as much as, if not more, than others in promoting the depiction of astronomical features,

particularly the moon. Her works reflect underlying astronomical themes with specific scientific influences.

She was very involved in women‟s education and the suffragette movement, and it surely cannot be

coincidence that her husband‟s father, Augustus de Morgan, was a well–known mathematician and

astronomer. He had a crater on the moon named after him and he also acted as tutor to the famous

mathematician Ada Lovelace. Exploration of astronomical features in the work of the Pre–Raphaelites

reveals a special role for female artists associated with the movement.