One of the world’s most important collections of British Pre-Raphaelite art is not in London. It is in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Delaware Art Museum holds the largest collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art and manuscript materials outside the United Kingdom, thanks largely to Wilmington collector Samuel Bancroft Jr. His decades of collecting brought works and archival materials connected to artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt to Delaware.
But the museum goes well beyond Victorian British art. Its collections also explore the work of Wilmington illustrator Howard Pyle and his influential students, along with American artists including John Sloan, Edward Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth…