Pre-Raphaelitism
Julian Treuherz (Author)
Style originated by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), a group of English artists active between 1848 and 1853. Initially characterized by intense colour, tight handling and predominantly medieval subject-matter, during the later 19th century the style became broader and more muted in colour through the work of the Brotherhood’s followers.The group was founded in September 1848 by its three principal members, all students at the Royal Academy in London, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; they soon brought in their friends James Collinson, F. G. Stephens and Thomas Woolner and Dante Gabriel’s brother, William Michael Rossetti. These seven were motivated more by the impatient idealism of youth than by any clear programme; they aimed to restore to British art the freshness and conviction that they found in early Italian painting before the era of Raphael, hence their title ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ (a term of abuse, since at that time the early Italians were generally regarded as primitive)...
Encyclopedia Article, 2003
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003