William Holman Hunt

The English painter William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the only one to remain faithful to its precepts throughout his life.

William Holman Hunt was born in London. His father, a warehouse manager, reluctantly allowed him to enter the Royal Academy schools in 1844, where he met John Everett Millais. Profoundly influenced by his discovery of John Keats and his reading of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in 1847, Hunt developed a new approach to painting which involved the expression of significant moral ideas in a completely natural manner. To this end he evolved an intensely realistic technique, using brilliant, clear colors on a white ground instead of the traditional dark underpainting. These new ideas are embodied in his illustration inspired by Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Hunt, and Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Despite Ruskin's defense of the brotherhood in the Times, the hostile reception of Hunt's paintings in the academy, for example, Christians Sheltering a Priest from the Druids (1850), almost caused him to abandon painting. However, with Ruskin's praise for the Light of the World and the Awakening Conscience (1853), Hunt began to gain recognition, and he turned almost exclusively to the portrayal of religious themes.

Hunt was passionately determined to ensure absolute truth to nature in the rendering of his subjects. He painted most of the Light of the World outside by moonlight, and the Scapegoat (1854) was painted beside the Dead Sea on the first of Hunt's many journeys to the Holy Land in search of authentic settings for his biblical scenes.

In 1865 Hunt married Fanny Waugh; within a year, after the birth of their son, she died. In 1873 he married Edith Waugh. After about 1860 Hunt was acknowledged as a leading English painter, but he became increasingly isolated from contemporary trends by his long absences abroad and his continuing adherence to the ideals and realistic technique of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Following Rossetti's death (1882), Hunt began a vigorous defense of these ideals and of his role in their formation with a series of articles which culminated in his remarkable autobiography (1905-1906).

Although Hunt was obsessed throughout his life with light and its effect on color, his popularity was to a large extent founded on his vivid religious imagery, which received wide circulation in the form of engravings. The Miracle of the Sacred Fire (1899), painted in Jerusalem, shows the same scrupulous attention to minute detail which may have caused his eyesight to fail in the last years.

Hunt was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905, and his importance was recognized in a series of major exhibitions. He died on Sept. 7, 1910.

Further Reading

The most important book on Hunt is his autobiography, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (2 vols., 1905-1906; 2d ed. rev. 1914). Fascinating sidelights on his character are in Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I (1960). Background on the period is provided in Robin Ironside, Pre-Raphaelite Painters (1948), and Graham Reynolds, Victorian Painting (1966).

Additional Sources

Amor, Anne Clark, William Holman Hunt: the true Pre-Raphaelite, London: Constable, 1989. □

Hunt, William Holman (b London, 2 Apr. 1827; d London, 7 Sept. 1910). English painter, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. He was the only member of the Brotherhood who throughout his entire career remained faithful to Pre-Raphaelite aims, which he summarized as finding serious and genuine ideas to express, direct study from nature in disregard of all arbitrary rules, and envisaging events as they must have happened rather than in accordance with artistic conventions. Hunt's work was remarkable for its minute precision of handling, its accumulation of incident, and its didactic emphasis on moral or social symbolism, and he made three visits to the Middle East so he could paint biblical scenes with accurate local detail. One of the most famous paintings that resulted from his fanatical devotion to authenticity is The Scapegoat (1854–5, Lady Lever AG, Port Sunlight), showing the outcast animal on the shore of the Dead Sea. His colour tends to be painfully harsh and his sentiment mawkish, but he created some of the most enduring images of the Victorian age, among them The Hireling Shepherd (1851, Manchester AG), The Awakening Conscience (1853, Tate, London), and The Light of the World (1851–3, Keble College, Oxford; a smaller version, 1853–7, is in Manchester AG, and a larger replica, 1900–4, is in St Paul's Cathedral, London). Like the other Pre-Raphaelites, Hunt suffered critical attacks early in his career, but the moral earnestness of his work later made it immensely popular with the Victorian public and he earned a fortune from the sale of engravings of his paintings. In old age he became a patriarchal figure in the art world and he was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905. In the same year he published his autobiographical Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which is a basic sourcebook on the subject, though somewhat biased.

Hunt, William Holman (1827–1910). English painter, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. He was the only member of the Brotherhood who throughout his entire career remained faithful to Pre-Raphaelite aims, which he summarized as finding serious and genuine ideas to express, direct study from nature in disregard of all arbitrary rules, and envisaging events as they must have happened rather than in accordance with artistic conventions. Hunt's work was remarkable for its minute precision, its accumulation of incident, and its didactic emphasis on moral or social symbolism, and he made three visits to the Middle East so he could paint biblical scenes with accurate local detail. One of the most famous paintings that resulted from his fanatical devotion to authenticity is The Scapegoat (1854–5, Lady Lever AG, Port Sunlight), showing the outcast animal on the shore of the Dead Sea. His colour tends to be painfully harsh and his sentiment mawkish, but he created some of the most enduring images of the Victorian age, among them The Hireling Shepherd (1851, Manchester AG), The Awakening Conscience (1853, Tate, London), and The Light of the World (1851–3, Keble College, Oxford; a smaller version, 1853–7, is in Manchester AG, and a larger replica, 1900–4, is in St Paul's Cathedral, London). Like the other Pre-Raphaelites, Hunt suffered critical attacks early in his career, but the moral earnestness of his work later made it immensely popular with the Victorian public and he earned a fortune from the sale of engravings of his paintings. In old age he became a patriarchal figure in the art world and he was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905. In the same year he published his autobiographical Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which is a basic sourcebook on the subject, though somewhat biased.

Hunt, William Holman (1827–1910). Painter. The eldest son of a warehouseman, one of his early jobs was as a clerk in the London agency of Richard Cobden, the manufacturer and MP. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1844, where he met Millais and Rossetti, with whom he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Hunt devised the technique of the brotherhood, using bright colours with no strong contrasts of light and shade. He travelled extensively in Egypt and the Holy Land to paint biblical and moral subjects in authentic settings. Among his best-known works were The Light of the World and The Hireling Shepherd, which were reproduced in great numbers in Victorian Britain. In 1905, the year he was awarded the OM, he published a memoir, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

June Cochrane

William Holman Hunt 1827-1910, English painter. Hunt was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and one of its most conscientious exponents. His paintings are often crude in color and laborious in technique, but are completely sincere in their devotion to Pre-Raphaelite principles. In 1854 he visited Palestine in order to have authentic material for his religious paintings. Among his best-known works are The Light of the World (Univ. of Oxford) and The Triumph of the Innocents (Liverpool Gall.).

Bibliography: See his Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905-6); studies by F. G. Stephens (1860) and A. C. Gissing (1936).

Hunt, William Holman (1827–1910). Painter. The eldest son of a warehouseman, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1844, where he met Millais and Rossetti, with whom he founded the Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood. Hunt devised the technique of the brotherhood, using bright colours with no strong contrasts of light and shade. Among his best‐known works were The Light of the World and The Hireling Shepherd, which were reproduced in great numbers in Victorian Britain.

Hunt, William Holman (1827–1910), Pre-Raphaelite painter. In 1848 Hunt, with D. G. Rossetti, founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1854 Hunt completed his famous Light of the World, representing the Lord knocking at the door of the soul. The original is in Keble College, Oxford; a larger version, begun in 1899, is in St Paul's Cathedral. All his art is imbued with strong religious feeling.

Hunt, (William) Holman (1827–1910) English painter, who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Hunt's works, such as The Light of the World (1854) and The Scapegoat (1856), combine meticulous precision with heavy, didactic symbolism.

http://www.tate.org.uk; http://nhil.com

Hunt, (William) Holman (1827–1910), painter and founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His autobiographical Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905) is a full but personal history of the movement.

Holman Hunt see Hunt, William Holman .