1848

I've not often see it emphasised that 1848, the year the PRB formed was a revolutionary year throughout Europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

and perhaps deliberately was designed to shake the art establishment. There are still critics who dismiss the pre-raphaelites as some sot of temporary madness or aberration that filled in the gap till Impressionism arrived (late in their opinion) in Britain.

For me the PRB were about SEEING and feeling what they saw.

Walter Crane wrote "by their resolute and enthusiastic return to the direct symbolism, frank naturalism and poetic or romantic sentiment of medieval art, with the power of modern analysis superadded, and the more profound and intellectual study of both nature and art which the severity of their practice demanded, and last, but not least, their intense love of detail, turned the attention to other branches of design than painting.'

Fortnightly Review, Dec 1892

The work of the PRB, particularly Rossetti and Burne-Jones profoundly affected the French Symblists and on to Picasso and Kadinsky.