The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later called the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics. It was formed in 1848 by seven members: William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner. The group was inspired by the Nazarene movement, but it was not an official organization. Other artists and poets, such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes, and Marie Spartali Stillman, also shared the group’s ideas. Later artists, like Edward Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse, followed these principles.
The group wanted to return to art styles from the Quattrocento period in Italy, which used lots of detail, bright colors, and complex designs. They opposed the methods used by Mannerist artists who came after Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that Raphael’s classical poses and elegant designs had negatively affected art education, which is why they called themselves "Pre-Raphaelite." They criticized Sir Joshua Reynolds, a leader of the English Royal Academy of Arts, calling him "Sir Sloshua." According to William Michael Rossetti, "sloshy" meant poor or careless painting, or anything ordinary or unoriginal. The group supported John Ruskin, an English critic who had strong religious beliefs. His ideas influenced the Pre-Raphaelites, who often included Christian themes in their work.
The group believed that history painting and copying nature were important goals for art. They called themselves a reform movement, created a unique name for their style, and published a magazine called The Germ to share their ideas. Their discussions were also recorded in The Pre-Raphaelite Journal. The Brotherhood ended after about five years.
Beginnings
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 at the home of John Millais's parents on Gower Street, London. At the first meeting, the painters John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt were present. Hunt and Millais were students at the Royal Academy of Arts and had previously met in a group called the Cyclographic Club, which focused on sketching. In 1848, Rossetti requested to become a student of Ford Madox Brown. At that time, Rossetti and Hunt shared living quarters in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, Central London. Hunt began painting The Eve of St. Agnes, inspired by a poem of the same name by John Keats, but the painting was not finished until 1867.
As a poet, Rossetti aimed to strengthen the connection between Romantic poetry and visual art. By autumn, four additional members joined the group: painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, poet and critic William Michael Rossetti (Rossetti's brother), and sculptor Thomas Woolner. This formed a group of seven members. Ford Madox Brown was invited to join but chose to remain independent. However, he supported the group throughout the Pre-Raphaelite period and contributed to The Germ, a publication linked to the movement. Other young artists, such as Charles Allston Collins and Alexander Munro, worked closely with the group. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood kept the group's existence a secret from members of the Royal Academy.
Early doctrines
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s early beliefs, as described by William Michael Rossetti, were based on four main ideas. The group’s principles were not strict, as they wanted to highlight the importance of each artist making their own choices about ideas and how to create art. Inspired by Romanticism, members believed that freedom and responsibility were closely connected. However, they were especially interested in medieval culture, thinking it had a spiritual and creative quality that later times had lost. This focus on medieval culture created a conflict with realism, which values observing nature directly. At first, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed their interest in medieval culture and realism could work together, but later the movement split into two groups. Realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while medievalists were led by Rossetti and others, including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. The division was not complete, as both groups believed art should have a spiritual purpose, opposing the material focus of realism seen in the work of Courbet and Impressionism.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was deeply inspired by nature. Artists used detailed, bright, and clear techniques on white canvases to show the natural world. To bring back the vivid colors of Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais painted with thin layers of pigment over a wet white surface, hoping to create colors that looked clear and bright like jewels. This focus on color was a response to the overuse of bitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds, David Wilkie, and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen caused dark, unclear areas in paintings, which the Pre-Raphaelites disliked.
In 1848, Rossetti and Hunt created a list called "Immortals," which included artists and writers they admired. These figures, especially from literature, often inspired the themes of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood paintings, including works by Keats and Tennyson.
First exhibitions and publications
The first exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite artwork took place in 1849. Millais's painting Isabella (1848–1849) and Holman Hunt's painting Rienzi (1848–1849) were displayed at the Royal Academy. Rossetti's painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin was shown at a Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner. As agreed, all members of the brotherhood signed their artwork with their names and the initials "PRB." Between January and April 1850, the group published a literary magazine called The Germ, edited by William Rossetti. The magazine included poetry by the Rossettis, Woolner, and Collinson, as well as essays on art and literature by friends of the brotherhood, such as Coventry Patmore. Because the magazine was only published for a short time, it did not last long or gain much attention. (Daly 1989)
Public controversy
In 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood faced controversy after John Everett Millais’s painting Christ in the House of His Parents was criticized as offensive by many reviewers, including Charles Dickens. Dickens believed Millais’s portrayal of Mary was unattractive. Millais used his sister-in-law, Mary Hodgkinson, as the model for Mary in the painting. The Brotherhood’s focus on medieval themes was criticized as outdated, and their detailed style was called unappealing and harsh to the eye. Dickens claimed Millais made the Holy Family look like people struggling with alcohol and poverty, using strange and awkward poses that seemed medieval.
After the controversy, James Collinson left the Brotherhood because he believed it was harming the reputation of Christianity. The remaining members debated whether to replace him with Charles Allston Collins or Walter Howell Deverell but could not decide. From that time, the group ended its activities, though its influence continued. Artists who had worked in the Pre-Raphaelite style continued their work but no longer signed their paintings with the initials "PRB."
The Brotherhood received support from critic John Ruskin, who praised their focus on nature and rejection of traditional art methods. Ruskin defended their work in The Times and met with the artists. At first, he favored Millais, who traveled to Scotland in 1853 with Ruskin and Ruskin’s wife, Effie Gray. The trip aimed to paint Ruskin’s portrait. Effie grew close to Millais, leading to a difficult situation. During legal proceedings to end her marriage to Ruskin, Ruskin told his lawyer that the marriage had never been completed. The marriage was officially ended due to this, allowing Effie to marry Millais, which caused public outrage. After marrying Effie, Millais began to change his artistic style, and Ruskin later criticized his later works. Ruskin continued to support other artists, such as William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and helped fund the work of Elizabeth Siddal, who later married Rossetti.
By 1853, the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had nearly ended, with only Holman Hunt still following its original goals. However, the term "Pre-Raphaelite" became linked to Rossetti and others, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, whom Rossetti met in Oxford in 1857. This led to the term "Pre-Raphaelite" being used for a much larger and longer-lasting art movement.
Later developments and influence
Artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood include John Brett, Philip Calderon, Arthur Hughes, Gustave Moreau, Evelyn De Morgan, Frederic Sandys (who joined the group in 1857), and John William Waterhouse. Ford Madox Brown, who was connected to the group from the start, is often seen as the artist who most closely followed the Pre-Raphaelite principles. One follower who created a unique style was Aubrey Beardsley, who was strongly influenced by Burne-Jones.
After 1856, Dante Gabriel Rossetti became an important figure in the medieval-inspired part of the movement. He helped connect the two main styles of Pre-Raphaelite art (nature and Romance) after the original group’s focus changed over time. Although Rossetti was not deeply involved with the brotherhood, he kept the name and changed the style. He painted images of beautiful and mysterious women, such as Jane Morris, in works like Proserpine, The Day Dream, and La Pia de' Tolomei. His art influenced his friend William Morris, with whom he worked at the firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones also worked at the firm. Through Morris’s company, the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood inspired many interior designers and architects, leading to the Arts and Crafts movement, which William Morris helped lead. Holman Hunt was involved in the movement to improve design through the Della Robbia Pottery company.
After 1850, Hunt and Millais moved away from copying medieval art directly. They focused more on realistic and scientific details in their work, though Hunt still emphasized the spiritual meaning of art. He studied places in Egypt and Palestine to create accurate paintings of biblical scenes. In contrast, Millais stopped following Pre-Raphaelitism after 1860, choosing a looser style influenced by Reynolds. William Morris and others criticized this change.
Pre-Raphaelitism had a strong influence in Scotland and on Scottish artists. The most well-known Scottish artist connected to the movement was William Dyce, who was born in Aberdeen. Dyce introduced the work of the Pre-Raphaelites to John Ruskin, a famous art critic. His later paintings, such as The Man of Sorrows and David in the Wilderness (both from 1860), showed a focus on spiritual themes and detailed work, similar to Pre-Raphaelite art. Joseph Noel Paton studied at the Royal Academy in London, where he became friends with Millais and later joined the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His paintings, like The Bludie Tryst (1855), emphasized detailed scenes and dramatic stories. His later work, like Millais’s, was sometimes criticized for being overly emotional.
James Archer, another artist influenced by Millais, painted works such as Summertime, Gloucestershire (1860). He also created a series of paintings based on Arthurian legends, including La Morte d'Arthur and Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.
Pre-Raphaelitism also inspired artists like Lawrence Alma-Tadema. The movement influenced many British artists throughout the 20th century.
Rossetti became known as an early influence on the European Symbolist movement. Some evidence suggests that the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker was influenced by Rossetti’s work.
The Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has a famous collection of works by Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelite artists. Some people believe this collection influenced the young J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s stories include scenes similar to those painted by the Pre-Raphaelites. He also considered his group of friends, called the TCBS, to be similar to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
In the 20th century, art changed, and artists began focusing less on realism. After World War I, Pre-Raphaelite art was criticized for being too literary and sentimental. However, in the 1960s, there was a revival of interest in the movement. Exhibitions, including one at London’s Tate Gallery in 1984, helped restore the importance of Pre-Raphaelite art. Another major exhibition took place at Tate Britain in 2012–13.
In the late 20th century, groups such as the Brotherhood of Ruralists, the Stuckists, and the Birmingham Group were inspired by Pre-Raphaelitism.
Illustration and poetry
Many artists in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Frederick Sandys, Arthur Hughes, Simeon Solomon, Henry Hugh Armstead, Joseph Noel Paton, Frederic Shields, Matthew James Lawless, and others, worked in painting, illustration, and sometimes poetry at the same time. During the Victorian era, society believed literature was more important than painting because it was thought to inspire noble emotions. Robert Buchanan, a writer who disagreed with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, argued that when one art form influences another, it can harm creativity. This belief created a challenging environment for Pre-Raphaelites, who worked in multiple art forms despite these views. The Pre-Raphaelites aimed to bring back subject painting, which had been criticized as artificial. They believed that each painting should tell a story, which helped connect painting and literature (called the Sister Arts) or at least challenged the strict hierarchy that writers like Buchanan promoted.
The Pre-Raphaelites also wanted to strengthen the link between painting and literature through illustration. Illustration directly combines these forms and can tell its own story, similar to subject painting. However, some Pre-Raphaelites, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, worried about the limits of illustration. In 1855, Rossetti wrote to William Allingham about wanting to create illustrations that could express their own ideas without forcing the reader to focus only on the poet’s message. This shows that Pre-Raphaelite illustrations did more than copy scenes from poems—they acted like subject paintings within written works, adding their own meaning.
Collections
There are important collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in museums in the United Kingdom, such as the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Manchester Art Gallery, the Lady Lever Art Gallery, and Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery. Outside the UK, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Delaware Art Museum in the United States have the most important collections. The Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico also has a notable collection, including works by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Lord Leighton, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Frederic Sandys. The Ger Eenens Collection in the Netherlands includes a painting by John Collier titled Circe (signed and dated 1885), which was displayed at the Chicago World Fair in 1893. The British exhibit at the fair used 14 rooms and showed artwork that matched the fair's theme, so it included many pieces by Pre-Raphaelite and New-Classical painters. These exhibits were very popular.
A set of Pre-Raphaelite murals in the Old Library at the Oxford Union shows scenes from Arthurian legends. These murals were painted between 1857 and 1859 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones. The National Trust houses at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton and Wallington Hall in Northumberland both have important and representative collections of Pre-Raphaelite art. Andrew Lloyd Webber, a collector of Pre-Raphaelite works, had 300 items from his collection displayed in an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 2003.
Kelmscott Manor, the home of William Morris from 1871 until his death in 1896, is owned by the Society of Antiquaries of London and is open to the public. The manor appears in Morris's 1890 novel News from Nowhere and in the background of Water Willow, a portrait of his wife, Jane Morris, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1871. Exhibitions at Kelmscott Manor highlight Morris and Rossetti's early experiments with photography.
Portrayal in popular culture
The story of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, from its first exhibition, which caused debate, to its acceptance by the art world, has been shown in two BBC television series. The first, The Love School, aired in 1975. The second, a 2009 BBC drama called Desperate Romantics by Peter Bowker, is based on Franny Moyle’s book Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites. While much of the series uses information from the book, it sometimes changes facts for dramatic effect. The show begins with a warning: "In the mid-19th century, a group of young men challenged the art world of their time. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were inspired by the world around them but used creative freedom in their art. This story, based on their lives and relationships, follows that same imaginative spirit."
Ken Russell’s 1967 television film Dante’s Inferno includes short scenes about some Pre-Raphaelite artists but focuses mainly on the life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, played by Oliver Reed.
In Chapter 36 of the 1952 novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the author describes how pictures inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite style were used to label different classrooms. The text states: "The pictures identified the rooms, and the Pre-Raphaelite influence was overwhelming. Galahad in armor pointed the way for third-graders; Atalanta’s race urged the fourth grade; the Pot of Basil confused the fifth grade, and so on until the denunciation of Catiline sent the eighth-graders on to high school with a sense of civic pride. Cal and Aron were assigned to the seventh grade because of their age, and they learned every detail of its picture—Laocoön completely wrapped in snakes."
Comparisons with contemporary European movements
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood focused on British artistic style. However, they were also connected to other 19th-century European art movements. French Realism, promoted by artists like Gustave Courbet, focused on showing the truth of modern life and work. The Pre-Raphaelites aimed to return to the spiritual and artistic standards of the medieval and early Renaissance periods. Their use of realistic details and storytelling differed from the social and political focus of European Realism.
Impressionism in France centered on brief moments of light and modern leisure activities. This is visible in the PRB’s emphasis on clear storytelling, moral themes, and lasting ideas. The Pre-Raphaelites valued lasting, meaningful art, while artists like Monet and Renoir, the Impressionists, focused on capturing quick, temporary scenes. These differences in beliefs and style made the Brotherhood unique, as they shared more similarities with the early German Nazarenes’ moral romanticism than with the focus on modern life and material aspects of their French contemporaries.