Later Pre-Raphaelite Circle  Detail from a painting showing the
face of a woman with dark hair and the left side of her face in
shadow  After the early 1850s the members of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood| gradually grew apart from one another. The
charismatic Rossetti began to gather a new circle around
himself.  In 1856 he met Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris,
still undergraduates at Oxford University. With Rossetti's
encouragement both embarked on artistic careers, Burne-Jones as
painter, Morris as designer and poet.  The alliance produced a
new social and artistic grouping, often called the 'second
generation' of Pre-Raphaelitism. Rossetti himself was the
crucial link between the earlier phase of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood and this later grouping. Now, women played an
increasingly prominent part, as artists, models, wives or
lovers.  Rossetti's confidence in the talents of his friends, as
well as his inspirational artistic leadership, made possible the
remarkable flowering, encompassing the fine a