Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The group sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art. They rejected what they regarded as the mechanistic approach first adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. The Brotherhood believed the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, the group objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, whom they called "Sir Sloshua". To the Pre-Raphaelites, according to William Michael Rossetti, "sloshy" meant "anything lax or scamped in the process of painting.. And hence.. Any thing or person of a commonplace or conventional kind". The group associated their work with John Ruskin, an English critic whose influences were driven by his religious background. Christian themes were abundant. The group continued to accept the concepts of history painting and mimesis, imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. The Pre-Raphaelites defined themselves as a reform movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, and published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. The group's debates were recorded in the Pre-Raphaelite Journal. The Brotherhood separated after almost five years.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house on Gower Street, London in 1848. 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 met in another loose association, the Cyclographic Club, a sketching society. At his own request Rossetti became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown in 1848. At that date, Rossetti and Hunt shared lodgings in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, Central London. Hunt had started painting The Eve of St. Agnes based on Keats's poem of the same name, but it was not completed until 1867. As an aspiring poet, Rossetti wished to develop the links between Romantic poetry and art. By autumn, four more members, painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, Rossetti's brother, poet and critic William Michael Rossetti, and sculptor Thomas Woolner, had joined to form a seven-member-strong brotherhood. Ford Madox Brown was invited to join, but the more senior artist remained independent but supported the group throughout the PRB period of Pre-Raphaelitism and contributed to The Germ. Other young painters and sculptors became close associates, including Charles Allston Collins, and Alexander Munro. The PRB intended to keep the existence of the brotherhood secret from members of the Royal Academy.

The brotherhood's early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations: • to have genuine ideas to express; • to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them; • to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote; and • most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues. The principles were deliberately non-dogmatic, since the brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced by Romanticism, the members thought freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles of realism which stress the independent observation of nature. In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and moved in two directions. The realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalists were led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and Impressionism. • Illustration — Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England depicting an emigrating couple, 1855 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was greatly influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp-focus techniques on a white canvas. In attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found in Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground in the hope that the colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity. Their emphasis on brilliance of colour was a reaction to the excessive use of bitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds, David Wilkie and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of muddy darkness, an effect the Pre-Raphaelites despised. In 1848, Rossetti and Hunt made a list of "Immortals", artistic heroes whom they admired, especially from literature, some of whose work would form subjects for PRB paintings, notably including Keats and Tennyson.

• Illustration — Christ in the House of His Parents, by John Everett Millais, 1850 In 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood became the subject of controversy after the exhibition of Millais's painting Christ in the House of His Parents was considered to be blasphemous by many reviewers, notably Charles Dickens. Dickens considered Millais's Mary to be ugly. Millais had used his sister-in-law, Mary Hodgkinson, as the model for Mary in his painting. The brotherhood's medievalism was attacked as backward-looking and its extreme devotion to detail was condemned as ugly and jarring to the eye. According to Dickens, Millais made the Holy Family look like alcoholics and slum-dwellers, adopting contorted and absurd "medieval" poses. After the controversy, James Collinson resigned from the Brotherhood due to his belief that it was bringing the Christian religion into disrepute. The remaining members met to discuss whether he should be replaced by Charles Allston Collins or Walter Howell Deverell, but were unable to make a decision. From that point the group disbanded, though its influence continued. Artists who had worked in the style initially continued but no longer signed works "PRB". • Illustration — Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, 1851–52 The brotherhood found support from the critic John Ruskin, who praised its devotion to nature and rejection of conventional methods of composition. The Pre-Raphaelites were influenced by Ruskin's theories. He wrote to The Times defending their work and subsequently met them. Initially, he favoured Millais, who travelled to Scotland in the summer of 1853 with Ruskin and Ruskin's wife, Euphemia Chalmers Ruskin, née Gray (now best known as Effie Gray). The main object of the journey was to paint Ruskin's portrait. Effie became increasingly attached to Millais, creating a crisis. In subsequent annulment proceedings, Ruskin himself made a statement to his lawyer to the effect that his marriage had been unconsummated. The marriage was annulled on grounds of non-consummation, leaving Effie free to marry Millais, but causing a public scandal. Millais began to move away from the Pre-Raphaelite style after his marriage, and Ruskin ultimately attacked his later works. Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti and provided funds to encourage the art of Elizabeth Siddal, later Rossetti's wife. By 1853 the original PRB had virtually dissolved, with only Holman Hunt remaining true to its stated aims. But the term "Pre-Raphaelite" stuck to Rossetti and others, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, with whom he became involved in Oxford in 1857. Hence the term Pre-Raphaelite is associated with a much wider and long-lived art movement.

• James Collinson (painter) • William Holman Hunt (painter) • John Everett Millais (painter) • Dante Gabriel Rossetti (painter, poet) • William Michael Rossetti (critic) • Frederic George Stephens (critic) • Thomas Woolner (sculptor, poet)

• John Brett (painter) • Ford Madox Brown (painter, designer) • Lucy Madox Brown (painter, writer) • Richard Burchett (painter, educator) • Edward Burne-Jones (painter, designer) • Charles Allston Collins (painter) • Frank Cadogan Cowper (painter) • Fanny Cornforth (artist's model) • Evelyn De Morgan (painter) • Walter Deverell (painter) • Fanny Eaton (artist's model) • Frederick Startridge Ellis (publisher, editor, poet) • John William Godward (painter) • Effie Gray (artist's model) • Henry Holiday (painter, stained-glass artist, illustrator) • Arthur Hughes (painter, book illustrator) • Edward Robert Hughes (painter and artist's model) • Frederic, Lord Leighton (painter) • Mary Lizzie Macomber (painter) • Robert Braithwaite Martineau (painter) • Annie Miller (artist's model) • Jane Morris (artist's model) • Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford (painter and artist's model) • May Morris (embroiderer and designer) • William Morris (designer, writer) • Christina Rossetti (poet and artist's model) • John Ruskin (critic) • Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (painter) • Emma Sandys (painter) • Thomas Seddon (painter) • Frederic Shields (painter) • Elizabeth Siddal (artist, poet, and artist's model) • Simeon Solomon (painter) • Marie Spartali Stillman (painter) • Algernon Charles Swinburne (poet) • Henry Wallis (painter) • William Lindsay Windus (painter)

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema (painter) • Sophie Gengembre Anderson (painter) • Wyke Bayliss (painter) • George Price Boyce (painter) • Joanna Mary Boyce (painter) • Sir Frederick William Burton (painter) • Kate Elizabeth Bunce (painter) • Julia Margaret Cameron (photographer) • James Campbell (painter) • Joseph Clare (painter) • John Collier (painter) • Marian Collier (painter) • William Davis (painter) • Frank Bernard Dicksee (painter) • Thomas Cooper Gotch (painter) • John Atkinson Grimshaw (painter) • Charles Edward Hallé (painter) • John Lee (painter) • Edmund Leighton (painter) • James Lionel Michael (minor poet, mentor to Henry Kendall) • Charles William Mitchell (painter) • Joseph Noel Paton (painter) • Charles Edward Perugini (painter) • Gustav Pope (painter) • Henry Meynell Rheam (painter) • Frederick Smallfield (painter) • James Tissot (painter) • Elihu Vedder (painter) • John William Waterhouse (painter) • George Frederic Watts (painter, sculptor) • William James Webbe (painter) • Daniel Alexander Williamson (painter) • James Abbott McNeill Whistler (painter) • Aubrey Beardsley (painter)

The story of the brotherhood, from its controversial first exhibition to being embraced by the art establishment, has been depicted in two BBC television series. The first, The Love School, was broadcast in 1975; the second is the 2009 BBC television drama serial Desperate Romantics by Peter Bowker. Although much of the latter's material is derived from Franny Moyle's factual book Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, the series occasionally departs from established facts in favour of dramatic licence and is prefaced by the disclaimer: "In the mid-19th century, a group of young men challenged the art establishment of the day. The pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were inspired by the real world around them, yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit." Ken Russell's television film Dante's Inferno (1967) contains brief scenes on some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites but mainly concentrates on the life of Rossetti, played by Oliver Reed. Chapter 36 of the 1952 novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck references pre-Raphaelite influenced images used to identify different classrooms: "The pictures identified the rooms, and the pre-Raphaelite influence was overwhelming. Galahad standing in full armor pointed the way for third-graders; Atalanta's race urged on the fourth, 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 high civic virtue. Cal and Aron were assigned to the seventh grade because of their age, and they learned every shadow of its picture—Laocoön completely wrapped in snakes".

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was not only about the British aesthetic; they could be linked to other 19th-century European art movements. French Realism, for example, that was promoted by artists like Gustave Courbet, was about the truth of modern life and work. The Pre-Raphaelites wanted to go back to spiritual and aesthetic standards of the medieval and early Renaissance. Their naturalism and storytelling was different from the social and the political emphasis of continental Realism. Impressionism in France was about fleeting light and modern leisure. We can see this in the PRB's love of narrative, clarity and moral themes. The Pre-Raphaelites preferred permanence, while Monet and Renoir, the Impressionists, captured the moment. This difference on ideology and style was what made the Brotherhood different, i.e. being more in line with the early German Nazarenes' moral romanticism than the material modernity of their French contemporaries.

There are major collections of Pre-Raphaelite work in United Kingdom museums such as the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, Lady Lever Art Gallery, and Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery. The Art Gallery of South Australia and the Delaware Art Museum in the US have the most significant collections of Pre-Raphaelite art outside the UK. The Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico also has a notable collection of Pre-Raphaelite works, including Sir Edward Burne-Jones' The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, Frederic Lord Leighton's Flaming June, and works by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Frederic Sandys. The Ger Eenens Collection The Netherlands includes a work by John Collier, Circe (signed and dated 1885), that was exhibited at the Chicago World Fair 1893. The British exhibit occupied 14 rooms, showcased a theme familiar with the Fair's outlook, hence they had a sizeable exhibit of Pre-Raphaelite and New-Classical painters. They were extremely well received. • Illustration — Circe, 1885, by John Collier, depicts the seductive enchantress from Homer's Odyssey and was exhibited at the Chicago World Art Fair 1893, World's Columbian Exposition, Department K Britannica There is a set of Pre-Raphaelite murals in the Old Library at the Oxford Union, depicting scenes from the Arthurian legends, painted between 1857 and 1859 by a team of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones. The National Trust houses at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton, and at Wallington Hall, Northumberland, both have significant and representative collections. Andrew Lloyd Webber is an avid collector of Pre-Raphaelite works, and a selection of 300 items from his collection were shown at an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 2003. Kelmscott Manor, the country 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 is featured in Morris' 1890 novel News from Nowhere. It also appears in the background of Water Willow, a portrait of his wife, Jane Morris, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1871. There are exhibitions connected with Morris and Rossetti's early experiments with photography.