The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters founded in 1848 who were influenced by both romanticism and realism. They called themselves Pre-Raphaelites because they wanted to revive the purity and sincerity they saw in Italian art before Raphael. The leading Pre-Raphaelite painters were William Holman Hunt, Sir John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Many of their works deal with everyday life, such as scenes of woodcutters, roadbuilders, poor children, and young lovers. Other works deal with the Bible and literature.
Whatever their subject, many of the Pre-Raphaelites painted in great detail, often copied literally from nature. Millais's Ophelia is based upon a character from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Millais showed Ophelia slowly drowning after she had been driven out of her mind by her father's death and Hamlet's cruel rejection of her love. The choice of colors was unusually vivid as the artist attempted to copy actual sunlight. Many Pre-Raphaelite landscapes capture a sense of brilliant light as effectively as the impressionist painters did 10 or 20 years later.
Excerpt adapted from the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" article, The World Book Encyclopedia © 1999