Note 154 — THE P.R.B. JOURNAL, 1849-53

It will be understood that the year 1849, to which the beginning of this Journal belongs, was the first year when pictures pertaining to the “Præraphaelite” movement were exhibited. Hunt’s picture was Rienzi Vowing Revenge over his Brother’s Corpse; Millais’s was the Lorenzo and Isabella (from Keats), now a leading ornament of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Though that distinguished authority, The Court Journal, was thus contemptuous, the general tone of press-opinion regarding the Præraphaelite pictures of 1849 was moderate and sometimes laudatory; the systematic abuse developed in 1850.