Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists, poets, and critics—John Everett Millais, D. G. Rossetti, W. Holman Hunt, W. M. Rossetti, T. Woolner, Frederic George Stephens (1828–1907), and James Collinson (1825–81)—who first met as a group, led by the first three, in 1848. The initials ‘P.R.B.’ first appeared on their work in the RA exhibition of 1849. As its periodical the Germ (1850) suggests, the movement was strongly literary, and some of its most striking paintings were inspired by Keats (see Millais's Isabella), Dante, Shakespeare, and Tennyson. Common aspirations of the group included fidelity to nature (manifested in clarity, brightness, detailed first-hand observation of flora, etc.), and moral seriousness, in some expressed in religious themes or symbolic mystical iconography. Many of the subjects were medieval as well as literary, and the movement (much influenced by Ruskin, who became its champion) saw itself in part as a revolt against the ugliness of modern life and dress. Artists connected with the PRB include Ford Madox Brown, W. B. Scott, William Dyce, Henry Wallis, Arthur Hughes, Burne-Jones and De Morgan. In literary terms, the movement's most important recruits were perhaps W. Morris and, more indirectly, Pater. The brotherhood dissolved in the 1850s, but its influence was enduring, and the term ‘Pre- Raphaelite’ has come to denote a distinctive style of appearance, décor, design, etc.