| Admin_History | James Collinson was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, 9 May 1825 and was the son of a bookseller. He entered the Royal Academy School, and was also a fellow-student with Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Collinson was a devout Christian who was attracted to the devotional and high church aspects of Pre-Raphaelitism. A convert to Catholicism, he left the Brotherhood in 1850 on the grounds that, as a sincere Catholic, he thought the society secular and latitudinarian.
Collinson entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Hodder Place near Stonyhurst 15 January 1853. He left the Society before taking his final vows 27 March 1855. His entry in the Province Register (ref. 14/2/5) has 'Pictor eximius' - Great Painter - written at the end.
At least two of his paintings, painted during his novitiate, were at Manresa House in the early 20th century: a representation of a youthful saint, probably St Stanislaus, the patron saint of the novices, and a portrait of the gardener at Hodder. These paintings seem to have since been lost. |