Why were the original bad boys of Brit art so popular?
London, April 10, 1848. Shops had been barricaded and extra policemen shipped into the capital. Thousands of un-enfranchised working men were rallying under the Chartist banner, marching on Whitehall. Two young artists decided to join the throng: 19-year-old John Everett Millais, and 21-year-old William Holman Hunt. Within a year they, too, would be marked out as anti-Establishment agitators, waving their own banner of reform. Their target was not Parliament but the art world. They would become known as the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood. Looking at Pre-Raphaelite pictures today, with their literary, mythical or religious scenes so often littered with dreamy, long-haired women, it is hard to see them as the product of rebellious minds. But 160 years ago these pictures shook the foundations of the British art establishment, drawing criticism that secured initial notoriety and ultimate fame for the artists. That the brotherhood members went on to enjoy bohemian liaisons with the models so fre
