ABSTRACT
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), unlike the Irvine crowd, sought full material support from an audience. The art worlds of English painting were raw and primitive compared to those across the Channel, and the rawness gave freer rein to influences via audiences external to the artists. The Pre-Raphaelites were gloriously though erratically open to much of the greater world in which they were trying to re-shape some sorts of new being, some new identities. The Pre-Raphaelites were preprofessionals who mixed with literati and, in addition to painting, wrote. London was able to beckon provincials toward a whole nexus of arts, but information and connections in any art did have to be spun out to the provinces. Some external influences reach artists directly along personal networks from social kindred not tied into arts at all. Yet PRB art celebrated a new individualism, via medievalism and a new femininity.
