Elizabeth Prettejohn Quotes

United States, Historian
May 15, 1961

Elizabeth Francesca Prettejohn is an art historian and author of several books about art history. Her books have included Rossetti and his Circle , The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites and Art for Art's Sake . She has also co-edited and co-authored several publications. She has written exhibition catalogues and papers for journals such as The Burlington Magazine, Journal of Victorian Culture and Art Bulletin.

If debates about beauty in nineteenth-century France were ﬁerce, that was because beauty was seen to matter. This was a world of political revolutions, of social reformism, of belief in progress and human perfectibility. Why was it that beauty mattered so much in such a world?

Elizabeth Prettejohn
A recurring image in the work of the Rossetti circle was that of a woman absorbed in self-contemplation, gazing into a mirror or combing her hair.

Elizabeth Prettejohn