The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the London Royal Academy of Arts

Includes bibliographical references.Includes illustrations.An examination o~ the relationship between the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the London Royal Academy o~ Arts is actually a history o~ nineteenth century En~lish instructional methods of art. That is, the Royal Academy re-oresented the official and recognized art of the time; by seeking ins~iration from the aesthetics of John Ruskin and what they considered to be the unadorned purity and grace of form of the Quattrocento neriod, the Pre-Raphaelites endeavored to create an alternative to academic art. During the summer exibition season of 1849 they jointly produced their first Pre-Ra~aelite paintings: William Holman Hunt's Rienzi, John Rverett Millais' Lorenzo and Isabella, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. I suggest that the events and conditions which I culminated in the 1849 exhibition reveal more of the Brotherhood's character than the next five years of its existence. For example, Hunt and Millais became friends when they ~rere students at the Royal Academy; during their studies, they develo-ped a form of coeval art based on a common bond of technique, aesthetics, hard work, and a great dislike for the Academy's instructional methods. After a series of halt-interested attempts at different art schools and tutor~ Bossetti .1oined Hunt at his studio to be Hunt's student. Emerging from the coeval art of Hunt and Rossetti 1 embellished with the rhetoric and s"Oirit of Rossetti, something known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was forged.M.A. (Master of Arts