The Victorian Era

Who Was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood?

Article · Literature & Theatre · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of young English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who were joined by the critic William Michael Rossetti, the sculptor Thomas Woolner, the painter James Collinson, and the critic Frederic George Stephens, making a brotherhood of seven members. The Brotherhood was a reaction against the academic art of the period, which it traced to the influence of Raphael and his imitators, and it sought to recover the truth to nature, the brilliance of colour, and the seriousness of subject that its members admired in the art of the period before Raphael. The history of the Brotherhood’s influence on poetry is examined in Victorian Poetry. The context of the period is set out in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word.

The Founding of the Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in the autumn of 1848, when a group of young artists associated with the Royal Academy Schools in London, led by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed a secret society dedicated to the reform of British art. The Brotherhood adopted the initials PRB as a signature on its paintings, and its members agreed on a set of guiding principles: the rejection of the academic conventions taught at the Royal Academy and derived, as they believed, from Raphael and his followers; fidelity to nature in detail and in colour; and the choice of serious subjects, often drawn from the Bible, from medieval history and legend, and from poetry. In 1850 the Brotherhood published a short-lived journal, The Germ, which ran for four issues and carried poems and essays by its members.

The founding of the Brotherhood was influenced by the writings of John Ruskin, particularly Modern Painters, with its call to young artists to go to nature in all singleness of heart, rejecting nothing and selecting nothing. When the Brotherhood’s paintings were fiercely attacked in the press in 1850 and 1851, Ruskin came to their defence in letters to The Times, and his support did much to establish their reputation.

The Major Members of the Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood included several artists of the first rank. John Everett Millais (1829 to 1896), the most technically gifted of the group, painted Christ in the House of His Parents (1849 to 1850), Ophelia (1851 to 1852), and The Blind Girl (1856), and he later became President of the Royal Academy. William Holman Hunt (1827 to 1910) remained faithful to Pre-Raphaelite principles throughout his career, and his paintings include The Hireling Shepherd (1851), The Light of the World (1851 to 1853), The Awakening Conscience (1853), and The Scapegoat (1854 to 1856). Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 to 1882), painter, poet, and translator, produced The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849), Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), and, in later years, Beata Beatrix and Proserpine, and his poetry and personality made him the central figure of the movement’s second phase. The other founding members were the sculptor Thomas Woolner, the painter James Collinson, and the critics William Michael Rossetti and Frederic George Stephens.

The Legacy of the Brotherhood

The legacy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is substantial. Although the Brotherhood itself had dissolved by the mid-1850s, its influence shaped a second generation of artists, including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and it fed directly into the Aesthetic movement and the Arts and Crafts movement of the later nineteenth century. Pre-Raphaelite painting and poetry remained a touchstone for artists and writers into the twentieth century, and the paintings of the Brotherhood are today among the most popular works in British public collections.

Conclusion

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of seven young painters, sculptors, and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti together with four of their associates. Rejecting the academic conventions that had dominated British art since the eighteenth century, the Brotherhood pursued truth to nature, brilliance of colour, and seriousness of subject, qualities its members associated with the art of the period before Raphael. The history of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is examined in Victorian Poetry and in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word.