Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content
menu

Past Exhibitions


< >

Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement

Jun 13 – Sep 8 2019

Seattle Art Museum

Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries

As industrialization brought sweeping and dehumanizing changes to 19th-century England, a small group of artists reasserted the value of the handmade. Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelites, they turned to the unlikely model of medieval European craftsmen as a way of moving forward. Victorian Radicals presents an unprecedented 150 paintings, drawings, books, sculpture, textiles, and decorative arts—many never before exhibited outside of the United Kingdom—by the major artists associated with this rebellious brotherhood.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris dubbed themselves the Pre-Raphaelites in reaction to the Royal Academy of Arts, whose methods to artmaking they regarded to be as formulaic as industrial methods of production. This movement had broad implications and inspired a wide range of industries to rebel against sterility and strive to connect art to everyday life.

The Pre-Raphaelites and members of the later Arts & Crafts Movement operated from a moral commitment to honest labor, the handmade object, and the ability of art to heal a society dehumanized by industry and mechanization. The works of the men and women presented in the exhibition illustrate a spectrum of avant-garde practices of the Victorian period and demonstrate Britain’s first modern art response to industrialization. These artists’ attention to detail, use of vibrant colors, and engagement with both literary themes and contemporary life, is evident in the paintings, watercolors, and superb examples of decorative art on view. Drawing on the renowned collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, England, Victorian Radicals is a comprehensive consideration of the search for beauty in the age of industry.

The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and Birmingham Museums Trust. The exhibition is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding provided by Clare McKeon and the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation.


The presentation in Seattle is made possible by

Presenting Sponsor

Lead Sponsors


Generous Support
Kreielsheimer Exhibition Endowment
Guendolen Carkeek Plestcheeff Endowment for the Decorative Arts

Image: La Donna della Finestra, 1881, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, British, 1828–1882, oil on canvas with underdrawing in chalk and graphite, 37 3/4 × 34 1/4 in., Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council, Purchased, 1883, 1885P2465, © Birmingham Museums Trust, Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM