William Holman Hunt,
London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage
of the Prince and Princess of Wales, 1863-1866.
Oil on canvas, 65 x 98 cm.
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology,
University of Oxford, Oxford.
In January of 1854, Holman Hunt left England for Syria and Palestine, driven by the desire to depict the story of the Scriptures through painting, “immersed in the people and the conditions of life of ancient Judaea.” The first product of this idea was The Scapegoat, a rejected and solitary animal on the salt-encrusted banks of the Dead Sea, with the Edom Mountains in the background. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856, with three landscapes of the Middle East. In 1857 he collaborated with Moxon in publishing the poems of Alfred Tennyson. His 1860 painting Christ in the Temple was one of his most elaborate and admired works. Like all his important paintings, it was the fruit of years of work. The work was difficult to complete; a series of obstacles considerably slowed its execution, including a sentence akin to excommunication for all of the Jews who posed for it (the sentence was later lifted). This painting, exhibited in London and many provincial towns, attracted crowds.
In 1865 Hunt married Fanny Waugh. They left England together in August 1866, but during quarantine in Florence, Fanny gave birth to a boy and died shortly afterwards. Hunt returned to England in September 1867 and paid homage to Fanny the next year by returning to Florence. In 1869 Hunt was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, which also counted Edward Burne-Jones among its members. In August of the same year he returned to Jerusalem. His next great religious painting was The Shadow of Death of 1871, an imaginary incident in the life of Jesus. Weary after a day of work, Jesus raises his arms, which cast the shadow of his coming crucifixion on the wall, thus frightening his mother.
In 1875, after marrying the sister of his deceased wife, Hunt returned to Jerusalem where he began his painting The Triumph of the Innocents, which was one of the most important works of his life. The subject is an imaginary episode of the Flight into Egypt where the Holy Family is accompanied by a procession of innocents illuminated by a supernatural light. After coming back to London in 1878, he preferred to show his works in galleries or exhibitions less public than the Royal Academy.
The first retrospective of his work took place in London in 1886. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905 and published his autobiography.
Holman Hunt occupies a slightly different position to that of other artists, and he was not at all affected by art movements after 1850. He possessed a strong and constant personality and used particular working methods, and his stated ambition was to “serve as high priest and expounder of the excellence of the works of the Creator.” He devoted too much time to each of his works to make very many, but their power makes up for their small number.
William Holman Hunt,
The Scapegoat, 1854-1855.
Oil on canvas, 87 x 139.8 cm.
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
John Everett Millais, Mrs. James Wyatt
Jr. and her Daughter, Sarah, c. 1850.
Oil on mahogany, 35.3 x 45.7 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
William Holman Hunt,
John Everett Millais, 1853.
Pastel and colour chalk, 32.7 x 24.8 cm.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Sir John Everett Millais
(Southampton, 1829 - London, 1896)
From very early on in life, Millais demonstrated an exceptional gift for painting. In Jersey, where he spent most of his childhood, he briefly attended school before being dismissed. His mother then took charge of his education, placing a particular accent on history, literature, and poetry. He later said that it was she who taught him everything. The local drawing teacher, Mr Bessell, gave him a basic artistic education. At that time, the German painter Edward Henry Wehnert lived in the region, and he also participated in Millais’ education. In 1835 the Millais family moved to Dinan in Brittany, where the young John Everett drew officers of the Dinan garrison with great skill. Realising his potential, the family decided to move to London to allow the young artist’s talent to completely develop. At nine years old, he was introduced to the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Martin Archer Shee, who predicted that he would conquer the art world. He studied at Henry Sass Preparatory Art Academy in Bloomsbury and, at the age of eleven, he was the youngest student to enter the Academy, where he obtained numerous prizes and honours. He met Hunt in 1844, and in 1846 he exhibited his painting Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru at the Royal Academy. At the beginning of 1848, Millais, Hunt and Rossetti, disappointed by the theory and practices of English art, which they found too conventional and academic, initiated the Pre-Raphaelite movement, hoping to break with tradition. According to Millais, Pre-Raphaelitism had a single purpose; to “present Nature on the canvas.” The first painting he made in accord with this principle was the banquet scene inspired by Keats’ poem Isabella (1849). Millais devoted all his effort to painting the minute details of nature and the characters in this painting. The story is told forcefully and the expressions of the figures are captivating.
John Everett Millais,
The Order of Release 1746, 1852-1853.
Oil on canvas, 102.9 x 73.7 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
John Everett Millais,