When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (the PRB) exhibited their first works in 1849 it heralded a revolution in British art. Styling themselves the Young Painters of England this group of young men aimed to overturn stale Victorian artistic conventions and challenge the previous generation with their startling colours and compositions.

Think of the images created by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others in their circle, however, and it is not men but pale-faced young women with lustrous, tumbling locks that spring to mind, gazing soulfully from the picture frame or in dramatic scenes painted in glowing colours. Who were these women? What is known of their lives and their roles in a movement that, in successive phases, spanned over half a century?