Pre-Raphaelites

No open-access works for Pre-Raphaelites are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.

About Pre-Raphaelites

Every plant on the riverbank in John Everett Millais's Ophelia (1851–52) can be identified: he painted the background outdoors in Surrey over several months before adding the figure in the studio. That fierce attention to detail, and brilliant colour laid over a white ground, announced the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a small, secretive group formed in London in 1848 by Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti with four friends. They signed early works PRB and took art before Raphael as their model against Royal Academy teaching.

Early reviews were hostile until John Ruskin defended them in 1851. Hunt pursued moral and religious subjects in The Light of the World (1851–53); Rossetti turned to dreamy, symbolic images of women. Ford Madox Brown's Work (1852–65) brought the manner to modern life. Through William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, a second phase fed into the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements.

The makers