Arthur Hughes

(b London, 27 Jan 1832; d Kew Green, London, 22 Dec 1915). English painter and illustrator. In 1846 he joined the School of Design at Somerset House, London, under Alfred Stevens (ii). The following year he won an art studentship to the Royal Academy Schools, where in 1849 he won the silver medal for antique drawing. In the same year he showed his first painting at the Royal Academy, Musidora (Birmingham, Mus. & A.G.), a conventionally painted nude. In 1850, while still a student, he saw a copy of the periodical The Germ, which converted him to PRE-RAPHAELITISM and led to his meeting William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown, though he never became an official member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Hughes's first exhibited work in the new style, Ophelia (exh. RA 1852; Manchester, C.A.G.), was admired by Millais, whose own Ophelia (1851-2; London, Tate) was in the same exhibition. They became friends and Hughes sat for Millais's The Proscribed Royalist (exh. RA 1853; priv. col., see 1984 exh. cat., p. 104). From about 1852 to 1858 Hughes shared a studio with the sculptor Alexander Munro.

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