Em's Reviews > Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites

While not in the same league of PRB detailed research as Jan Marsh (from whom this author benefited), this overview of the intricacies of the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists and models is tightly summarized in this account by Franny Moyle. If someone is completely unaware of the PRB this book is a great one for diving in. With that said if a person comes to this book after having seen only the PBS series by the same name, they would do well to forget every detail of the series which took large dramatic license with the know histories.

Even so it is true that the history of the PRB interactions does assume an element of a Victorian soap opera. Eminent art critic and historian John Ruskin's marriage was annulled and his former wife Effie did marry PRB artist John Everett Millais. Founding PRB member William Holman Hunt was highly religious but also had Annie Miller, a prostitute as his model, mistress, and it is believed, for a time his betrothed. These instances are perhaps shocking enough for the uptight Victorian society, but it was the liaisons of the other founding PRB member Dante Gabriel Rossetti that has become such legend to interest each successive generation since his glory days.

Rossetti had enjoyed a professional and personal entanglement with Annie, sometimes when Holman Hunt was far away, but also when he was in London. Rossetti also became enmeshed in a long time, on and off again relationship with his early model who also appeared in one of Millais' best known paintings 'Ophelia'. Her name was Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Siddal and the circumstances of her life and death have kept historians and casual art lovers intrigued for more than a century. Although connected with Rossetti for over ten years, their brief marriage at the end of her life gives her a unique place in the PRB lore. And also because Rossetti's professional partnerships with models such as (presumed prostitute) Fanny Cornforth and Jane (wife of PRB designer William) Morris, also included a physical relationship, he is regarded as the enigmatic bad boy of the PRB. Rossetti was also a poet as well as painter,

This book is not the best on what made the Pre-Raphaelite Artists so controversial to the art world of their time for that had much more to do with their canvases than their personal pecadillos, but this book does illustrate how the three best known PRB artists Holman-Hunt, Millais and Rosseti gained their fame, both artistically and otherwise.