This publication marks the centenary of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905), a leading painter of the Pre-Raphaelite group that formed around Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the mid-nineteenth century. A precocious young talent, Solomon enjoyed early critical success with his paintings of biblical and classical subjects, but his public career was effectively destroyed when his homosexuality became public knowledge in 1873. Solomon is recognized today, however, as an important and influential figure in the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Their Bohemian lifestyle and intertwined love affairs shockingly broke 19th Century class barriers and bent the rules that governed the roles of the sexes. They became defined by love triangles, played out against the austere moral climate of Victorian England; they outraged their contemporaries with their loves, jealousies and betrayals, and they stunned society when their complex moral choices led to madness and suicide, or when their permissive experiments ended in addiction and death. The characters are huge and vivid and remain as compelling today as they were in their own time. The influential critic, writer and artist John Ruskin was their father figure and his apostles included the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the designer William Morris. They drew extraordinary women into their circle. In a move intended to raise eyebrows for its social audacity, they recruited the most ravishing models they could find from the gutters of Victorian slums. The saga is brought to life through the vivid letters and diaries kept by the group and the accounts written by their contemporaries. These real-lie stories shed new light on the greatest nineteenth-century British art.

Add your own color to 30 pre-Raphaelite masterpieces! A progressive group of mid-19th-century artists, the Pre-Raphaelites chose to create their work in the style of medieval and Renaissance painters before the time of Raphael. The other-worldly essence and idealistic spirituality of their art is showcased in this heady collection of Pre-Raphaelite renderings from the masters of the period: John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Evelyn de Morgan, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and more. Each illustration awaits your colors from paintbrush, pencil, marker, or crayon.

This catalog was "published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and DelMonico Books (Prestel) on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, from June 30 to September 30, 2018."

Essentially a domestic biography whose main concern is the tragicomedy of manners enacted by a closely knit group of friends and lovers, Wives and Stunners tells the story of Janey Morris, Georgie Burne-Jones, Lizzie Siddall, Effie Gray and less well-known, Marie Spartali, Aglaia Coronio and Mary Zambacco. These women were the wives, mistresses andmuses, of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the inspiration behind the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and John Millais. Set against the background of mid-Victorian bohemian England, Henrietta Garnett vividly evokes the world they inhabited and the lives they lived. She recounts the romances and friendships between the artists and the 'stunners' in a lively and original way and her book will appeal to anyone interested in Victorian England, the history of the Pre-Raphaelites and, significantly, to everyone who wants to read a spellbinding story of a bygone era.