James Collinson

James Collinson (born in Mansfield, 9 May 1825 - died 1881) was a Victorian painter who belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from 1848 to 1850. His significance lies in representing the most devotional side of the movement, which sought in religious painting an expression of faith and of the high church tradition.

The son of a bookseller, he trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where he studied alongside Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. During his Pre-Raphaelite years he produced several religious works, most notably The Renunciation of St Elizabeth of Hungary (1850), and contributed a long devotional poem to The Germ. After leaving the Brotherhood, in the belief that it was bringing Christianity into disrepute following the blasphemy charges against Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents, he trained for the priesthood at a Jesuit college, though he did not complete his studies.

He returned to painting with secular genre scenes, the best known being To Let and For Sale, which show attractive women in situations suggesting moral temptation. In 1858 he married Eliza Wheeler, sister-in-law of the painter John Rogers Herbert, an early influence on the group. He was also secretary of the Society of British Artists from 1861 to 1870. In his later years he lived in Brittany, where he painted The Holy Family (1878).

His legacy is mainly biographical and literary. His conversion to Catholicism, his return to Anglicanism to propose to Christina Rossetti and his final return to Catholicism, which ended the engagement, deeply shaped her poetry.