James Collinson

He entered the Royal Academy Schools where was a fellow-student of Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

[1] Collinson was a devout Christian who was attracted to the devotional and high church aspects of Pre-Raphaelitism.

During his period as a Pre-Raphaelite, Collinson contributed a long devotional poem to The Germ and produced a number of religious works, most importantly The Renunciation of St Elizabeth of Hungary (1850).

When Millais's painting Christ in the House of his Parents was accused of blasphemy, Collinson resigned from the Brotherhood in the belief that it was bringing the Christian religion into disrepute.

In 1858, he married Eliza Wheeler, one of the sisters-in-law of the painter John Rogers Herbert, an early influence on the Pre-Raphaelites.