Pre-Raphaelites

In 1848, seven young men in their late teens and twenties formed something like a secret society in London. Their verdict: European painting had grown too skilled after Raphael, and skill had killed it. So they turned back to before Raphael, reclaiming medieval precision, unmixed color, and the heat of storytelling. The name was their own choice, but choosing it only made people angrier. In 1850, Charles Dickens saw Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents and tore it apart in a magazine. The rescue came from the critic John Ruskin: once he defended them, the tide turned, and Millais later became the first painter ever made a baronet. It began as an insult, found a defender, and ended in a title, one of the great reversals on this map. The group left one more mark. Rossetti and Burne-Jones, both original members, later joined William Morris to found a company (see Arts and Crafts), a painters' movement that turned into a movement for the objects of everyday life.