Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English artists, poets, and critics founded in 1848, who sought to challenge the dominant academic art conventions of their time. Formed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, along with several other artists, the Brotherhood opposed the Royal Academy’s strict adherence to idealized forms and heavily stylized techniques championed by artists like Raphael and his followers. Instead, they sought inspiration from early Italian and Flemish art—"pre-Raphaelite" works—celebrating vivid realism, attention to natural detail, and a return to intense color and symbolic depth.