Arthur Hughes - A Music Party

Arthur Hughes (1832–1915) was born in London. Hughes was educated at Archbishop Tenison's Grammar School, and entered the School of Design, Somerset House, London in 1846, studying under Alfred Stevens. In 1847 he won an art studentship at the Royal Academy Schools, exhibiting his first picture, Musidora, at the Academy two years later. Although he never was a member of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he became very close to its ideals and style in 1850s. In 1857 he joined with Rossetti, Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and others in painting murals on the walls of the Oxford Union Debating Hall (now the Library), an effort which perhaps inspired his later Arthurian works such as The Knight of the Sun and Sir Galahad.