In 1848, he and two friends of about his own age, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt, conceived the idea of making a practical protest against the inefficiency of the work which was being done by the more popular artists of the time. The three youths had come under the influence of Ford Madox Brown, who with splendid sincerity was labouring to realise an ideal based not upon fashion, but upon an earnest desire for truthful expression, and by his example they were induced to study a purer type of art than any they could see about them. For this purer art they turned to the works of the Italian Primitives, whose childlike unconventionality and unhesitating naturalism touched a responsive chord in the natures of these youths who still retained some of the simple faith in reality which is one of the charms of childhood. They decided that for the future they would base their own practice upon that of the early Italians, and that they would have none of the artificialities of the age in which they found themselves. Their resolve was a bold one, but the manner in which they proceeded to make it effective was bolder still. [Illustration: PLATE III.--THE KNIGHT ERRANT (Tate Gallery) It is generally recognised that the effective representation of the nude figure imposes the severest test not only upon an artist's powers of drawing and painting but upon his sense of æsthetic propriety as well. The "Knight Errant" proves beyond dispute that Millais was able to pass this test triumphantly, for the picture is a magnificent technical achievement and is absolutely discreet in treatment. The subject, a lady rescued from robbers by a wandering knight, is one which occurs frequently in mediæval romance.] They organised an association, the title of which, "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood," significantly asserted the nature of their artistic aims, and as the founders of this association they pledged themselves to seek the inspiration of their art in those Italian painters who had lived before Raphael was born, and whose sterling principles were abandoned by Raphael and his successors. To the three founders of the Brotherhood were joined two other painters, James Collinson, and F. G. Stephens, a sculptor, Thomas Woolner and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's brother, William Michael, who, being a writer, was given the office of secretary. The Brotherhood, so constituted, was formally inaugurated in the autumn of 1848, and the members at once set to work to prove by their acts the reality of their belief in the creed they had adopted.