Vernon Lushington Thomas Hughes, and Richard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College. He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms. Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865. Lushington, friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor. He was a close friend of Leslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughter Virginia (later Woolf) based her character
Dante and Beatrice (painting) Dante and Beatrice (painting) Dante and Beatrice is a painting dated 1883 by the artist Henry Holiday that is on display in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England. It is considered to be Holiday's most important painting. It is executed in oil on canvas, measuring by and was purchased by the gallery in 1884. When he died, Holiday was described as "the last Pre-Raphaelite". Many of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings, including "Dante's Dream", had as their subject the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, and this interest is the likely inspiration for Holiday's painting. It is based on Dante's autobiographical work