Though Ruskin had offered his support to a number of the PRB, because Rossetti did not show his work at major venues it was some time before he came to the critic's notice. When Effie left Ruskin for Millais, Ruskin turned to Rossetti as his new protegé.
He was hugely impressed by Rossetti's treatment of the Middle Ages in his Dante pictures
and admired the way in which he used symbolism in his biblical subjects. He found a number of patrons for Rossetti and lent material support to both him and to Elizabeth Siddal.
Around 1854, however, Ruskin began to find the subjects Rossetti was choosing too forthright, and too explicit in a number of ways. Paolo and Francesca was a Dante subject, but not one that Ruskin thought would meet with approval with female patrons.
Rossetti also began to look once again at the Morte d'Arthur and found the stories more and more to his taste. Dante's poetry, especially the Vita Nuova was tender and spiritual; the stories of King Arthur were more vigorous, energetic and filled with political and sexual intrigue.
In the mid-1850s Rossetti was asked by the publisher Moxon to contribute to an illustrated Tennyson. Rossetti chose four some of which were Arthurian in subject.
Though the PRB was largely disbanded as a group, other members were invited to contribute including Holman Hunt who provided his famous image of the Lady of Shalott.
William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones were young undergraduates who had gone to Exeter College Oxford to study for the ministry. Jones was brought up by a poor father in Birmingham, Morris came from an affluent family in London. Knowing nothing at first of the PRB, they shared a love of art and a love of the chivalric Middle Ages. The decided to set up a brotherhood around the legend of the chaste figure of Sir Galahad.
Burne-Jones, coming across a copy of The Germ, learned of Rossetti and was determined to meet him. Both Morris and Jones abandoned the Church for a life in art. Morris, at first chose architecture; Jones wanted to be a painter, and when he travelled to London to meet his hero, Rossetti welcomed him as a new disciple. Burne-Jones's early drawings were chivalric, delicate and mystical.
In 1857 Rossetti was invited to decorate the newly built Oxford Union debating chamber. He agreed, decided that the subjects of the murals must be Arthurian, and asked a number of friends to join him. These included Morris and Jones.
None of the artists other than Hungerford Pollen had any experience of the highly specialist art of mural painting.
Rossetti, whose relationship with Lizzie Siddal was very strained, chose an incident from the legend of Sir Lancelot where he failed to enter the Chapel of the Holy Grail because of his adultery with Guinevere. The figure of the angel of the Grail was modelled on Lizzie Siddal and Guinevere on the daughter of an ostler who Rossetti saw one evening at the theatre.
She was Jane Burden.
Morris also painted her as Guinevere.
And she appeared in another design for Lancelot in the Queen's Chamber created for the debating chamber, but never used.
Guinevere was a controversial figure in British culture where Arthurianism had come very much into vogue. Tennyson in his developing poem The Idylls of the King, published his Guinevere episode in 1858, in which she was strongly condemned for her affair with Lancelot and its political repercussions.
In the same year Morris wrote The Defence of Guenvere that took a very different view of the Queen.
In 1858 Morris proposed to Jane Burden to whom Rossetti was also deeply attracted, beginning a triangular situation that was to affect their lives for years to come.
