Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum

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This spring, SDMA will showcase some of the most iconic images of 19th-century British art in an internationally touring exhibition drawn from the largest and most prestigious collection of Pre-Raphaelite art outside the United Kingdom. Waking Dreams spans most of the Victorian period and includes 130 paintings, watercolors, drawings, ceramics, jewelry, and furniture from some of the most important artists of the era.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood emerged in 1848 when three young British artists—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais—banded together to revolutionize British art by studying nature as a primary source, expressing genuine ideas, and avoiding over-utilized artistic formulas.

As rebels against the strict artistic traditions of the Royal Academy, the Pre-Raphaelite artists transformed their high ideals into separate artistic identities. The single unifying force behind the various Pre-Raphaelites was their reliance on the literary sources that permeated English Victorian culture, including biblical stories and ancient mythology, as well as the writings of Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, and Tennyson.

Highlights of Waking Dreams include Water Willow and Lady Lilith by Rossetti, Romeo and Juliet and The Dream of Sardanapalus by Ford Madox Brown, and Mary Magdalene by Frederick Sandys. The ceramics, metalwork, jewelry, and furniture made by members of the group, also on view, anticipate the Arts and Crafts Movement led by William Morris at the end of the 19th-century.

Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum is organized and circulated by Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia.

Local presentation is made possible by the generous support of the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program, and members of the San Diego Museum of Art.