Pre-Raphaelite Resource Site

Project start date: 2007-04 Project end date: 2009-03
Pre-Raphaelitism was Britain’s most significant and influential 19th-century art movement. Founded in 1848, it centred on a group of three young artists: William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. These artists sought to revive English art by radically turning away from the old studio tradition and bringing painting into direct contact with nature. The creation of a Pre-Raphaelite online resource allows for both an extraordinary overview and an in-depth analysis of the subject area by crossing media boundaries and collating new visual and metadata material. The project provides unique links to artists and art works that might not have been discovered previously, and allows users to go into further points of study and enquiry. It also provides the education community with images relevant to their needs, easy to find, easy to use and customisable.
Methods usedCategory
2d Scanning and photographyData capture
PhotographyPractice-led research
DocumentationStrategy and project management
PrototypingStrategy and project management
Risk managementStrategy and project management
preservationStrategy and project management
textContent types
Funding sources: 
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Content types created: 
Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used: 
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, Extensis Portfolio, Aperture2
Source material used:  
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite collection.
Digital resource created:  
The project has digitised the vast majority of BM&AG’s Pre-Raphaelite collection, including painting on canvas, works on paper, sculpture, designs for stained glass, textiles, tiles, printed books, unpublished artists’ and associates’ letters, notebooks relating to major patrons of the BM&AG collection, and associated photographic material. It has created almost 3,000 files with new metadata and over 3,000 high quality images.
Data Formats created: 
Raw File Format (RAW), Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), JPEG
Production of compressed JPEG files from uncompressed TIFF files for web dissemination
Metadata standards employed: 
Dublin Core, simple (DC), Dublin Core, qualified (DC), Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), SPECTRUM/MDA

Institutions affiliated with this project: 

UK HE institutions involved:
University of Birmingham
UK HE institutions involved:
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Project staff and expertise: 

Principal staff member:Linda Spurdle, Tessa Sidey, Amelia Yeates, Laura MacCulloch, David Rowan, Lucy Blakeman
Other staff:Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s), PhD student(s)
External expertise:


Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record
Author(s) of recordLinda Spurdle
TitlePre-Raphaelite Resource Site
Record created2010-03-25
Record updated2010-05-06 15:30
URL of recordhttp://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2691
Citation of recordLinda Spurdle: Pre-Raphaelite Resource Site.
<http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2691>
created: 2010-03-25, last updated 2010-05-06 15:30