William Holman Hunt
The most faithful Pre-Raphaelite.
William Holman Hunt co-founded the Brotherhood in 1848 and held to its ideals all his life. He travelled to Palestine several times to paint biblical subjects on the spot, and The Light of the World became one of the most widely reproduced religious images of the 19th century.
William Holman Hunt was born in London in 1827. His father wanted him to become a clerk, and he worked in an office for a time before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1844. There he met John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1848 the three founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which sought to break with the rules of the Academy and return to the study of nature and the sincerity of art before Raphael.
His early works provoked both admiration and ridicule. The Hireling Shepherd of 1851 is in Manchester Art Gallery. The Light of the World, which shows Christ with a lantern knocking at a door, was painted in 1851–53 and is at Keble College, Oxford. A later, larger version from the early 1900s hangs in St Paul's Cathedral in London and toured the world. The Awakening Conscience of 1853, showing a young woman rising from her lover's lap, is in Tate Britain.
Hunt wanted to paint biblical scenes as truthfully as possible and therefore travelled to the Middle East several times. The Scapegoat was painted in 1854–56 on the shore of the Dead Sea and is now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery outside Liverpool. He worked slowly and meticulously, with sharp detail across the whole surface, bright colours on a white ground and a dense symbolism in which every object carries meaning.
In 1865 he married Fanny Waugh, who died the following year in Florence after giving birth. He later married her sister Edith. Such a marriage was illegal in England, so the wedding took place in Switzerland, and it caused a scandal. Towards the end of his life his eyesight deteriorated. In 1905 he published a two-volume work on the Pre-Raphaelites in which he presented himself as the movement's real leader, a claim others have disputed.
Hunt died in 1910 and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. He was the only one of the founders to remain faithful to the Brotherhood's principles throughout his life. The Light of the World became one of the most widely reproduced religious images in the English-speaking world, and his imagery has influenced both religious art and later realist painting.