"In England, John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896) was among a group of artists who refused to be limited to the contemporary scenes strict Realists portrayed. These artists chose instead to represent fictional, historical, and fanciful subjects but to do so using Realist techniques.  So painstakingly careful was Millais in his study of visual facts closely observed from nature that Baudelaire called him the 'poet of meticulous detail.' Millais was the founder of the so-called Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  This group of artists, organized in 1848, wished to create fresh and sincere art, free from what they considered the tired and artificial manner the successors of Raphael propagated in the academies.  Influenced by the intellectual critic, artist, and writer John Ruskin (1819 - 1900), Millais agreed with his distaste for the materialism and ugliness of the contemporary industrializing world and Millais also shared the Pre-Raphaelites' appreciation of spirituality and idealism (as well as the art and artisanship) of past times, especially the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance. " 

 - Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 903