Word.ws English Dictionary

Pre-Raphaelitism

Pre-Raphaelitism noun: a 19th-century art movement by a group of English artists who sought to reform art by rejecting the academic and idealized style of the Royal Academy, which they felt was influenced too heavily by the artist Raphael; favoring the detailed, realistic, and often medieval or literary-inspired style of art that came "before Raphael".

pre-raphaelitism: a 19th-century art movement by a group of English artists who sought to reform art by rejecting the...
Image: Ford Madox Brown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Pre-Raphaelitism (uncountable)

  1. (painting) A 19th-century art movement by a group of English artists who sought to reform art by rejecting the academic and idealized style of the Royal Academy, which they felt was influenced too heavily by the artist Raphael; favoring the detailed, realistic, and often medieval or literary-inspired style of art that came "before Raphael".

Origin of Pre-Raphaelitism

From pre- + Raphael + -ite + -ism.

Questions about Pre-Raphaelitism

What does Pre-Raphaelitism mean?
Pre-Raphaelitism means a 19th-century art movement by a group of English artists who sought to reform art by rejecting the academic and idealized style of the Royal Academy, which they felt was influenced too heavily by the artist Raphael; favoring the detailed, realistic, and often medieval or literary-inspired style of art that came "before Raphael".
What part of speech is Pre-Raphaelitism?
Pre-Raphaelitism is a noun.

Words near Pre-Raphaelitism in the dictionary

  1. pre-radicalization
  2. Pre-Raphaelism
  3. Pre-Raphaelite
  4. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
  5. Pre-Raphaelites
  6. Pre-Raphaelitism
  7. pre-record
  8. pre-recorded
  9. pre-recording
  10. pre-records
  11. pre-release

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Pre-Raphaelitism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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