The Pre-Raphaelite Collection
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery has an unrivalled collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. This includes some 2000 fine and decorative art works ranging from oil paintings, tapestries, drawings, sketchbooks, stained glass and related cartoons, to prints, illustrated books, watercolours, ceramics, and archive material. The scope of this public collection has made Birmingham a central resource for the study of the founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt – as well as the slightly older Ford Madox Brown and the Birmingham-born Edward Burne-Jones.
Further depth and context is provided by important holdings of associated artists such as Frederick Sandys, Arthur Hughes and Simeon Solomon, who extended the Pre-Raphaelite tradition in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also includes research on more recent acquisitions of less familiar areas, such as the work of women artists who contributed to Pre-Raphaelitism.