(William) Holman Hunt - Literary references

Painter, born in London, UK. He studied at the Royal Academy, shared a studio with Rossetti, and helped inaugurate the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which aimed at detailed and uncompromising truth to nature. His first public success was ‘The Light of the World’ (1854, Keble College, Oxford). The influence of several visits to the East appeared in ‘The Scapegoat’ (1856) and ‘The Finding of Christ in the Temple’ (1860). His Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905) is a valuable record of the movement.

William Holman Hunt (born 2 April 1827 – died 7 September 1910) was a British painter.

Hunt's intended middle name was "Hobman", which he disliked intensely. Though his surname is "Hunt" his fame in later life led to the inclusion of his middle name as part of his surname, in the hyphenated form "Holman-Hunt", by which his children were known.

After eventually entering the Royal Academy art schools, having initially been rejected, Hunt rebelled against the influence of its founder Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Hunt's works were not initially successful, and were widely attacked in the art press for their alleged clumsiness and ugliness. He achieved some early note for his intensely naturalistic scenes of modern rural and urban life, such as The Hireling Shepherd and The Awakening Conscience. However, it was with his religious paintings that he became famous, initially The Light of the World (now in the chapel at Keble College, Oxford, with a later copy in St Paul's Cathedral), which toured Britain and the United States. After travelling to the Holy Land in search of accurate topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works, Hunt painted The Scapegoat, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Shadow of Death, along with many landscapes of the region. Hunt also painted many works based on poems, such as Isabella and The Lady of Shalott.

All these paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, their hard vivid colour and their elaborate symbolism. For Hunt it was the duty of the artist to reveal the correspondence between sign and fact. Out of all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt remained most true to their ideals throughout his career.

Hunt married twice. At this time it was illegal in Britain to marry one's deceased wife's sister, so Hunt was forced to travel abroad to marry her.

Hunt's autobiography Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was written to correct other literature about the origins of the Brotherhood, which in his view did not adequately recognise his own contribution.

In 1905, he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII.

Literary references

Hunt's painting "The Hireling Shepherd" plays an important if enigmatic role in Brian Aldiss's "antinovel" Report on Probability A (1968). Other paintings and drawings feature in Aldiss's short story The Secret of Holman Hunt and the Crude Death Rate (1975). Hunt's painting The Awakening Conscience is also implicitly referenced in scenes in Michel Faber's novel The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) and explicitly in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945).