Pre-Raphaelites

The pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of young English artists in the Victorian era who rejected contemporary middle-class taste and academic painting.  The Pre-Raphaelites sought to create a “truthful”, serious art, one that harkened back to Early Renaissance models. For subject matter, they looked to literature (especially Shakespeare and medieval poetry), to religous scenes, and to moralizing genre subjects. Artists associated with the group include William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and John Everett Millais. Web resources here and here.

John Everett Millais. Ophelia. 1851-52. Oil on canvas. Tate Britain, London.