By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2021
What this article is about
William Holman Hunt was a principal founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which he set up at just 21 with John Everett Millais and the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and which was soon joined by the sculptor Thomas Woolner and others. The movement had its counterpart among writers, including the polymaths John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle.
Holman Hunt and his fellow artists sought to depict their take on truth, vividly colouring in a world where every detail might be symbolic. The Brotherhood harked back to the religiousness, or at least the spirituality, of medieval times, before the Renaissance supposedly made everything rational and explicable by science. They celebrated enduring mystery, seeing God's hand in every aspect of creation: nature, beauty and love included. But the artist's first fame came from religious work.
Birth and education
He was born in Cheapside, London, as William Hobman Hunt, and adopted 'Holman' when he found that 'Hobman' had been misspelled that way in the record of his baptism. His father, William Hunt, was a warehouse manager. His mother, Sarah Hobman, came from a well-to-do Rotherhithe family, a contrast that must have set tongues wagging.
He was at first refused a place at the Royal Academy of Arts (his fellow Pre-Raphaelite Millais had set a record by getting in at 11). Once admitted he was considered a rebel, because he disliked an ethos that he saw as a dated leftover from the previous century and from the institution's founder, the portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds.
A scandalous love life
The artist had a failed engagement to the model Annie Miller. He then married Fanny Waugh, who died within a year, shortly after giving birth to their son. He clearly loved her, and designed her ark-like tomb in Florence.
Almost a decade later he married her younger sister, Marion Edith Waugh, known as Edith. They had to marry abroad, in Switzerland, because marriage to a dead wife's sister was then illegal in Britain. The family didn't like it. One of the family was his fellow Pre-Raphaelite Thomas Woolner, who had married the middle sister, Alice, having previously been in love with Fanny himself. The scandal has to be seen against Holman Hunt's established success as a painter of religious subjects. The two strands of his life sat awkwardly together.
He painted Annie Miller in 'The Awakening Conscience', finished a portrait of Fanny after her death, and years later drew Edith, who seems to have featured in other work too.
He had three children: a son, Cyril Benoni, with Fanny, and with Edith a daughter, Gladys Millais Mulock, and a son, Hilary Lushington.
Travels and a search for authenticity
Holman Hunt's first success came through religious work, beginning with 'The Light of the World', which he started in 1851. During that decade he set off on the first of several journeys to the Holy Land. Eventually he even had a house built in Jerusalem.
His aim was to portray realistically the landscapes, architecture and dress of the time of Jesus Christ. That fits the Pre-Raphaelite aversion to the religious art of the Renaissance, which was largely painted by artists who had never left Europe. And it showed!
Painting poetry
After that early success the artist painted works based on poems. It was the age of readers devoted to John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He painted Keats's 'Isabella', a lady who falls for a lowly worker (a little as the artist's mother had done) and keeps his head in a pot of basil after her brothers murder him. He painted Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott', a lady confined to a tower and doomed the moment she looks out at Sir Lancelot.
He illustrated poetry of other eras too, including a frontispiece for the 14th-century 'Pearl', a poem by an unknown author about the death of a young child.
Decline and continued faith
The artist died in 1910, aged 83. By then his eyesight had failed so badly that he felt carrying on would damage the quality of his work and his reputation.
Two late works, 'The Importunate Neighbour' and 'The Miracle of the Sacred Fire', underline his faith to the end. The second is not what it seems. It is an elaborate, critical record of the Holy Fire ceremony in Jerusalem, which the artist regarded as a fake miracle that brought Christianity into disrepute.
Conclusion
William Holman Hunt was a consummate Victorian artist who took advantage of a world newly opened to travellers. Before then, most people only went abroad on military campaigns.
You can see his work, and find prints of it, through the Tate at www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-holman-hunt-287.
You'll want to frame whatever you buy. Any good framers will show you a range of solutions and advise on what suits the work and where it will hang. EasyFrame is on 01234 856 501 and sales@EasyFrame.co.uk, and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!