Author: Stephanie Chatfield

Let’s imagine: how might the Pre-Raphaelites use social media?

It may sound silly, but imagine Pre-Raphaelite artists using social media today.

The question reveals more than it first appears. Imagining Pre-Raphaelites on social media lets us consider that their work wasn’t just painting, but creating images with mood, persona, symbolism, and a sort of self-mythology. They weren’t merely making art; they were building worlds. This impulse remains relevant in today’s social media sphere, where we, too, construct identities and realities.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by seven young artists and writers in England, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. Their name showed they wanted to break away from what they saw as formulaic and boring academic rules in Victorian painting, and to return to the bright colors, detail, and honesty seen in Italian art before Raphael. This wasn’t just a small preference. It was a bold artistic movement.

From the start, they spread their work through letters, journals, exhibitions, reviews, patrons and personal networks. They built strong followings, and both shocked and charmed people. Essentially, they already recognized the power of a platform.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rossetti would have thrived on Instagram. It brings together everything he loved: images, words, mood, and personality. He’d post close-up shots of rich fabrics, dreamy faces, and symbolic objects, with captions that felt like part poem, part challenge. Some themes would keep showing up. There would be a pomegranate. No one would really know why, and that mystery would make it even more interesting.

Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

He would also be great at blending real life with performance. The Pre-Raphaelites cared deeply about beauty, but for them, beauty was never simply decoration. It was full of memory, medieval themes, desire, faith, sadness, and hints of stories. Social media loves this kind of layered symbolism. One picture can suggest a whole mood or set of values. Rossetti would get this right away, and he’d probably enjoy reading the comments, even if he acted like he didn’t.

Sir John Everett Millais

Millais, on the other hand, might have had a trickier time with social media. His early paintings were extremely detailed and technically impressive, and he painted plants with careful accuracy. You can imagine him posting process videos that amaze viewers with their detail. Here’s the hem. Here’s the waterweed. Here are seventeen steps to painting a hand that turns out to be much harder than expected. He’d run the kind of account that makes people want to try oil painting, until they realize they don’t have the patience or sharp eyesight for it.

The Black Brunswicker, Sir John Everett Millais

But Millais also shows us that public image can change. Over time, his style moved from the strict, detailed Pre-Raphaelite look to a bigger, more popular style. Today, some people might call that “selling out,” while others would say he was just adapting, making a living, and connecting with his audience. The debates would go on and on, and they’d be interesting.

William Morris

Then there’s William Morris, who was close to the Brotherhood and would be a key part of this imagined social feed. Morris wouldn’t just share objects; he’d share his whole philosophy of making things. Textile patterns, fonts, wallpapers, manuscripts, workshops, dyes, labor, craft, and his dislike of ugly mass production would all show up. His account would start with beautiful images and finish with you thinking about industrial capitalism. You’d come for the wallpaper and leave questioning the meaning of everyday objects.

William Morris Home & Library

A curated list for lovers of William Morris, Arts & Crafts interiors, wallpaper, textiles, pattern, flowers, and the belief that a home should be useful, honest, and full of beauty.

William Morris wallpaper design, Chrysanthemum, 1877

This thought experiment is more than just a playful idea. It helps us see what links the Pre-Raphaelites’ world-building to today’s platform culture. The Pre-Raphaelites worked where art, technology, mass reproduction, and public attention met during a time of big changes in Victorian Britain. Instead of rejecting modern life, they responded by creating new worlds inspired by imagination, craft, and historic styles. This careful balance between old and new is a lot like how we use social media now.

Today, many people use social media to build a different world, not just to talk to others. Sometimes this world feels supportive; other times, it’s just a shiny illusion, and often it’s both. We gather objects, values, and styles, and arrange them carefully to say: this is what I love, this is what I resist, this is who I am when it feels right.

The Lady of Shalott, William Holman Hunt

The Pre-Raphaelites knew that beauty is persuasive. Their art is rich, but never just about looks. Their images invite us to look deeper, using religion, literature, legend, and history to stir emotions. Social media works in a similar way: a carefully chosen image can show what matters, what’s desired, and who we are.

The Pre-Raphaelites knew both the appeal and the risks of focusing so much on aesthetics. Wanting to make life beautiful is a natural and worthy human urge. Noticing texture, color, symbols, and shapes isn’t silly, it’s a way of paying attention and saying the world has meaning, not just usefulness. I don’t want to give that up, and I doubt they would either.

Lady Lilith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

But beauty, if left unchecked, can also become slippery. The Brotherhood’s world, full of symbols and longing, sometimes lets real women, work, and grief fade into the background. Their art gives us beauty but also a warning. Style can help us see things more clearly, or it can take over. It reminds us of the urge to turn feelings into mood boards before we really think about them.

So the real question isn’t just whether the Pre-Raphaelites would use social media, but how thinking about them helps us see the purpose and effects of how we build our own online selves.

They would probably remind us that social platforms reward intensity, recognizability, and myth, just like their art did. They would show how easily aesthetics turn into identity, and identity into performance. Most importantly, they would ask us to remember that decoration isn’t the enemy of truth. Sometimes, it lets truth sneak in quietly. In our fast-paced digital world, caring about thoughtful creation and genuine feeling can be a form of resistance.

The Pre-Raphaelites would have done well online for the same reasons they did in paint and print: they believed details and stories mattered, and that surfaces could hold meaning. They would have chosen what to share carefully, maybe even shared too many symbols. And they definitely would have posted lots of lilies.

And maybe, after all the velvet, clever captions, and medieval style, they would leave us with one simple lesson: whether you’re an artist or just scrolling, mean what you share. Don’t let the performance become more important than substance. That’s a good rule for both the Pre-Raphaelites and for us in our digital lives today.

Also see:

The women behind Rossetti’s paintings: a guide to his most frequent muses

April 21, 2026
When Critics Confuse Personal Taste With Cultural Judgment

In a recent interview, actor Timothée Chalamet stirred up controversy by saying ‘no one cares’ about ballet and opera anymore, and defenders of both art forms took to social media to set the record straight. Many argued that just because something isn’t to someone’s taste doesn’t mean it’s lost its value. Alex Beard, who runs The Royal Ballet and Opera, said ticket sales have actually increased thanks to the attention. It’s funny how one offhand remark can spark a conversation about what matters in culture and how easily personal opinion is mistaken for universal truth.

Here’s The Royal Ballet and Opera’s Instagram response to Chalamet’s comments:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Royal Ballet and Opera (@royalballetandopera)

When people say no one cares, they often just mean that they don’t care, or that their friends don’t care. That’s not the same thing.

This pattern is longstanding.

Admirers of Pre-Raphaelite art know this script by heart.

The Day Dream, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Founded in 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite movement challenged stale academic routines. The Brotherhood sought sharper observation, richer symbolism, and more focus on beauty, nature, and emotion. It was never just decorative. It was meant to matter.

In the twentieth century, the Pre-Raphaelites were often criticized as excessive, sentimental, or embarrassingly lush. ‘Overly sentimental’ was a common rebuke, but the real issue often lay in the open expression of strong emotion.

Importantly, this issue is not confined to Victorian England or the mid-twentieth century. Even today, some critics continue to dismiss Pre-Raphaelite art.

Jonathan Jones observed that ‘a lot of critics disdain this period,’ and in his review of the Burne-Jones exhibition at Tate Britain several years ago, he described it as ‘how boring beauty can be’ and declared Burne-Jones to be ‘a stupid artist.’

The Beguiling of Merlin, Sir Edward Burne-Jones

These attitudes may seem discerning, but are often habitual. Beauty is dismissed as superficial, narrative as naive, and emotion as weakness. Critics can appear more unsettled by art that evokes strong responses than by art that fails to engage.

Here, Chalamet’s episode and the Pre-Raphaelite story meet. Both show how personal dislike is confused with cultural judgment, and how authority figures shape what is deemed significant.

A recurring pattern of scorn

Ballet and opera are called elitist or dull. Pre-Raphaelite art is labeled sentimental, decorative, or excessive. The terms change, but critics persistently dismiss them, then act surprised or scornful when the public remains interested.

Nevertheless, audiences continue to attend these performances and exhibitions.

This persistence is key. However labeled by critics, audiences engage. This is not naivety. Audiences see what critics overlook: beauty, atmosphere, emotion, and art that invite appreciation.

Of course, this does not mean all criticism is wrong.

Acknowledging that critics can be dismissive does not suggest that critique itself is unnecessary.

Some Pre-Raphaelite works are uneven or excessive. Some raise questions about gender, idealization, medievalism, empire, and the politics of beauty. Those questions matter; serious criticism helps us see and understand more.

However, it is important to distinguish between critique and contempt.

Critique involves careful and thoughtful examination. Contempt feels performative and superficial.

Personal dislike does not constitute cultural judgment.

It’s easy to conflate personal dislikes with genuine judgment. Historically, critics have often proclaimed the demise of art forms they did not favor, confusing personal opinion with cultural fact.

Yet these art forms persist.

They live on because they are vital.

Art endures through those who passionately engage it. Its vitality comes from devoted audiences: proof that meaning and value are not bestowed by critics, but earned by ongoing, genuine appreciation.

April 16, 2026
Frederick Sandys’ Gentle Spring and the depiction of renewal

We seem to imagine spring as soft and feminine by default: mild weather, pastel colors, and a dreamy sense of renewal. Decorative rather than forceful.

In his painting Gentle Spring, Victorian artist Frederick Sandys leans into that visual language, yet he gives it more gravity. His central figure represents Proserpina (Persephone) returning from the underworld, and knowing the subject gives the image a sense of shadow.

She doesn’t skip or scatter petals with cheerful abandon. She advances with composure, less a girl in a garden than an embodiment of return.

That distinction matters.

Because Gentle Spring belongs to a long nineteenth-century habit of making women carry ideas larger than themselves: spring, virtue, beauty, grief, nations, seasons, salvation, doom.

Femininity in art is often asked to symbolize life rather than simply live it.

Gentle Spring, Frederick Sandys

There is restraint in her posture and a seriousness in her facial expression. And a sense that spring is not arriving untouched but returning from difficulty, which is spot on for a representation of Proserpina. That symbolism leaves room for the realization that renewal is rarely as innocent as it often looks in paintings.

That is part of what makes the beginning of spring such a charged subject.

We celebrate it, but we also project onto it.

As if we ask it to heal the whole year in a single gesture.

And there is a cultural question to ponder: when a woman becomes the image of spring, who is being renewed? Her, or the viewer?

Beauty is never just beauty; it is arrangement, emphasis, and framing. Who is seen, how they are framed, what they are asked to mean, and none of that is neutral. Victorian artists knew this perfectly well, even when they dressed the fact in flowers.

(Especially when they dressed the fact in flowers.)

Yet I do not think Gentle Spring collapses into cynicism. The painting still has real emotional resonance, and its pleasures do not ring false because they are constructed.

All art is constructed.

The point is to notice what the construction is doing.

What this one does, especially at the beginning of spring, is offer renewal without pretending renewal is simple. The rainbow arches, but the dark sky still holds its clouds. The landscape blooms, but within the new growth and bright colors there is still the promise of turbulent weather.

That feels true to the season.

Spring is not a Technicolor pastel reset. It is the world resuming itself, unevenly and in earnest. It is beauty and blooms, as well as thorns and storms.

And perhaps that is why Gentle Spring remains worth returning to: not because it gives us a flawless emblem of the season, but because it reminds us that beginnings can be lovely without being naive. And I find something very human in that.

March 27, 2026
If a Gothic Novel Walked Into a Pre-Raphaelite Studio

Let us open the parlor door a crack.
A cold wind slips in.
Someone murmurs “witch.”
Someone else whispers “fashion.”

And there she stands: Sidonia von Bork.

Equal parts legend, literature, and lightning rod, she seems to saunter straight out of Wilhelm Meinhold’s Gothic romance and into Edward Burne-Jones’ paintbox like she pays rent there.
(She does not.)

First: Who is Sidonia, and why was everyone clutching their pearls?

Sidonia was as a real historical figure: Sidonia von Borcke (1548–1620), who was a Pomeranian noblewoman who was later tried and executed for witchcraft in Stettin (today Szczecin).

Her story gathered myths the way velvet gathers lint: quickly, dramatically, and with a certain inevitability.

Then the nineteenth century came along, an era that adored a good shiver, and said: “What if we made her… more?”

Enter Wilhelm Meinhold, who wrote Sidonia von Bork, die Klosterhexe (published 1847–1848). You can read it free online at Project Gutenberg.

Wilhelm Meinhold

In his telling, Sidonia becomes a grand Gothic engine: beauty, grievance, power, menace, basically all the elements we still see in fictionalized Femme Fatales.

And because English readers love a delicious import, Jane Wilde (mother of Oscar), writing as “Francesca Speranza”, then translated it into English as Sidonia the Sorceress in 1849. (Flip through a digitized version at Archive.org.)

Pre-Raphaelites promptly took one look and said, in essence:
“Yes. We’ll have that.”

Lady Jane Wilde

The Pre-Raphaelite Taste for “Beautiful Trouble”

The Pre-Raphaelites (and their orbit) had a fondness for women who arrived with a certain atmosphere.

Saints with sorrow.
Queens with complicated backstories.
Enchantresses with impeccable hair.

Sidonia fits right in: she is not merely wicked; she is composed, as though her evil nature is simply a kind of interior decorating choice.

And now, behold the pivot from page to pigment.

Sidonia von Bork, Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Burne-Jones Paints Sidonia (And Gives Her a Dress That Basically Has a Plot)

In 1860, the young Edward Burne-Jones created Sidonia von Bork 1560, a watercolour and gouache work now in Tate Britain.

Sidonia turns partly away, as though she’s already bored with our judgment.
Her gown is an extraordinary tangle of black looping forms over white.
It’s a textile enchantment.

It’s also interesting to note that Burne-Jones wasn’t painting Sidonia in a vacuum. Sidonia was painted as a partner to another Burne-Jones work: Clara von Bork 1560, based on Sidonia’s in-laws..

Clara Von Bork 1560, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones

Clara von Dewitz is the subject here: gentle, loyal, and tragically outmatched. She marries Sidonia’s virtuous cousin, Marcus Bork, stands by Sidonia when she falls into trouble, and is eventually led by her to a gruesome death.

That relationship shows up in the details. Clara holds a nest of fledgling doves, while Sidonia’s black cat (her familiar) looks up at them expectantly.

A Delicious Detail: The Model, the Costume, and the Borrowed Renaissance Glamour

Tate Britain notes that Burne-Jones used Fanny Cornforth, who was at one time Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s model and mistress, as his model for Sidonia.
Which is fascinating, because it means the painted Sidonia is not only a character; she’s also a part of a network of studio relationships, muses, rivalries, and the drama often found among relationships in the Pre-Raphaelite circle

Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Fanny Cornforth, and William Michael Rossetti posing in a sort of mock family portrait in the garden of 16 Cheyne Walk.

1859 drawing of Fanny by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Photograph of Fanny Cornforth

Fanny in Fazio’s Misstress, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Drawing of Fanny Cornforth by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Portrait of Fanny Cornforth, circa 1860, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Drawing of Fanny Cornforth by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Fair Rosamund, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

And Sidonia’s fabulously serpentine dress? It’s based on a Renaissance reference: the costume was inspired by a portrait of Isabella d’Este by Giulio Romano.

Portrait of Isabella d’Este by Giulio Romano

Both Burne-Jones’ Sidonia von Bork 1560 and Portrait of Isabella d’Este seem to be visual ancestors of the dress worn by Miranda Richardson in Sleepy Hollow (1999), directed by Tim Burton (streaming on Amazon Prime). As Lady Van Tassel, Richardson wears a gown similar to Sidonia’s, with a dense ornamental surface and almost unnaturally controlled elegance.

Burne-Jones paints Sidonia as a figure whose beauty is inseparable from the threat she holds, and that same logic shapes the costuming in Sleepy Hollow. Lady Van Tassel’s clothes do not simply signal wealth or taste; they turn fabric into a kind of narrative misdirection. The effect is quintessentially Burtonesque gothic, theatrical, and faintly funereal, but it also recalls the Pre-Raphaelite habit of female dress carrying psychological weight.

In that sense, the resemblance to Sidonia matters not only as an art-historical echo but as a clue to how Sleepy Hollow imagines wicked feminine power: ornate, cultivated, and dangerous enough to look decorative until it is far too late.

The Background Cameo: Court as Theater, Sidonia as Plot Device

In Burne-Jones’ image, Sidonia isn’t alone and the background hints at courtly life, a scene-within-a-scene.

Sidonia is perhaps plotting another outrage at the court of the dowager Duchess of Wolgast, where her earliest crimes began. The Duchess herself can be seen approaching in the distance.

Dowager Duchess of Wolgast, Maria of Saxony, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder

And that’s exactly how Meinhold’s Sidonia operates: she moves through court culture like a chaotic storm, and everyone feels her presence. Consequences, of course, follow.

Is she truly supernatural?
Or merely a woman made monstrous by a society eager to punish inconvenient power?

The Victorian imagination, ever thirsty, happily drank both interpretations at once.

The Witch Trial Shadow

It is tempting to stop at the Gothic pleasure of Sidonia von Bork. But Sidonia’s story rests on a darker historical foundation: the very real world of witch trials, social panic, and fear turned into accusation.

Her execution in 1620 is part of that history. So when Burne-Jones paints her as a figure of eerie beauty and charisma, he is working with a subject already shaped by persecution, rumor, and power.

I think that makes the painting more complicated. Its beauty is real, but it is not detached from the violence and suspicion that helped create the legend in the first place.

Why This Pairing Still Hits: Novel + Painting = The Original “Adaptation”

What we’re watching, across Meinhold and Burne-Jones, is a Victorian-era version of something we recognize very well:

A story goes viral.
The image makers pick it up.
A character becomes an aesthetic.
And the aesthetic outlives the plot.

Meinhold supplies the narrative machine (1847–48).
Jane Wilde supplies the English-language spark (1849).
Burne-Jones supplies the image you can’t forget (1860).

Sidonia becomes, almost inevitably, an icon and we continue to see her DNA in fictional characters.

She’s the “dangerous woman,” the “bewitching woman,” the “woman who won’t behave.”

And the painting, with its ornate restraint and quietly chilling pose, doesn’t shout. It simply confirms what the world had already decided to see in her.

A Final Parlor Thought (Before She Vanishes Down the Hall)

And If the Pre-Raphaelites still return to us in fashion, visual culture, and through our repeated hunger for certain kinds of feminine myth then Sidonia shows why.

She is a story reduced to an emblem.
The muse with a shadow attached.
Beauty sharpened into threat.

Naturally, she will absolutely be the last person to leave the party.

(After she’s stolen the candlesticks.)

March 19, 2026