Pre-Raphaelites (the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) were a group of English artists, poets and others and was founded in the mid-19^th century by Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt.

As with all later art movements it was a reaction against an earlier style.  In this case Mannerism as epitomised by earlier artists Raphael and Michelangelo.  For Millais et al the method of composition was too mechanical, that Classicism had been destroyed by the teaching of art at school – they looked back to a time before Raphael had influenced artists.

The quartet and their followers particularly disliked the ideas of the English Royal Academy of Arts and its founder Joshua Reynolds.

Early doctrines were:

1. to have genuine ideas
2. to study Nature
3. to sympathise with earlier movements
4. to produce quality finished works of art – they emphasised the personal responsibility of artists

From the very start of the movement they courted with controversy being called blasphemous and not forward-looking, as they produced medieval inspired work.  Some even thought that because they were devoted to detail that it made the paintings ugly.  Dickens, himself, was a severe critic.

The critic, Ruskin, by contrast admired their work and they in inspired later artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.