The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists, poets, and critics who admired and emulated late Medieval or Proto-Renaissance art in late Victorian England. This type of art can be traced back to a time before the appearance of artists like Raphael or Michelangelo. John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt were the first and most famous Pre-Raphaelites. The Pre-Raphaelites aimed for a return to bright, rich colors and meticulous detail, as well as a focus on a spiritual response to art and the importance of nature observation, all of which are classic examples of late Medieval art.
In 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was founded in London at John Millais’ parents’ home. Hunt and Millais were both students at the Royal Academy of Arts and were members of the same sketching group, the Cyclographic Club. After seeing Hunt’s painting “The Eve of St. Agnes,” based on the Keats poem of the same name, Rossetti met him. Rossetti, who was both a poet and a painter, was drawn to the connection between poetry and art. By the end of the year, four more members had joined the Pre-Raphaelites, including Rossetti’s brother William Michael, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner.
In 1849, the Pre-Raphaelites held their first exhibition of paintings. All of the artists signed their work with their initials, then PRB. Between January and April of 1850, they also published The Germ, a literary magazine that was not well received. After an 1850 exhibition of Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents elicited a divisive response from viewers and critics, many of whom objected to the Medieval portrayal of the Holy Family, the Pre-Raphaelites disbanded. One of the most outspoken critics of the painting was Charles Dickens, while John Ruskin was one of the few to praise Pre-Raphaelite art.
The Brotherhood was also brought to an end a split among the Pre-Raphaelites. The ideals of Medievalism and Realism began to diverge, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his followers outside the Brotherhood favoring the former and Hunt and Millais pursuing the latter, both with an emphasis on idealism and purity in art. Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, who later founded the Arts and Crafts movement in design, were among Rossetti’s supporters during this split. The Pre-Raphaelites had a significant impact on the world of art, serving as a precursor to the Symbolist movement and inspiring later artistic movements despite their brief existence.