The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood came together in 1848 in reaction against what they perceived as the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy. The original Brotherhood was formed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais (1829-1896), and they invited James Collinson (1825-1881), the sculptor Thomas Woolner (1825-1892), and the critic William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) to join them. While others were associated with the movement in a wider sense, the original Brotherhood was a small group, and only remained intact for five years, going in different directions by 1854.

On 9 December 1853, Hunt wrote to Thomas Combe, ‘Millais has done a pencil drawing of me, which is pronounced to be very like’ (National Portrait Gallery, London). The present drawing dates from the same session, as the two young artists drew each other. Hunt had drawn Millais earlier that year, on 12 April, when Rossetti wrote to William Bell Scott, ‘the P.R.B. all made portraits of each other, which have been forwarded to [Thomas] Woolner. Millais did Stephens – Hunt did Millais and myself – Stephens did Millais – I did Hunt and William [Rossetti] – and William did the whole lot of us in his own striking style.’ The drawing Hunt made of Millais and gave to Woolner, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, has coloured chalk and a stiffer, more formal air, whereas the present drawing has the immediacy and intimacy of two friends drawing together for pleasure. Hunt, who is perhaps not best known for his portraiture now, was hugely prolific in the genre in 1852 and 1853, extensively recording friends and family before he set off for his journey to the Holy Land in 1854.