William_Holman_Hunt

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William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt OM (2 April 1827 - 7 September 1910) was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Life and work

Hunt's intended middle name was "Hobman", which he disliked intensely. He chose to call himself Holman when he discovered that his middle name had been misspelled this way after a clerical error at his baptism at the church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Ewell.Amor, Anne Clark, William Holman Hunt: the True Pre-Raphaelite, Constable, London, 1989, p.15 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. He formed the Pre-Raphaelite movement in 1848, after meeting the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Along with John Everett Millais they sought to revitalise art by emphasising the detailed observation of the natural world in a spirit of quasi-religious devotion to truth. This religious approach was influenced by the spiritual qualities of medieval art, in opposition to the alleged rationalism of the Renaissance embodied by Raphael. He had many pupils including Robert Braithwaite Martineau (best known for his work "Last Days in the Old Home") who was a moderately successful painter although he died young.

All these paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, their hard vivid colour and their elaborate symbolism. These features were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, according to whom the world itself should be read as a system of visual signs. 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. He eventually had to give up painting because failing eyesight meant that he could not get the level of quality that he wanted. His last major work, The Lady of Shalott, was completed with the help of an assistant (Edward Robert Hughes).

Hunt married twice. After a failed engagement to his model Annie Miller, he married Fanny Waugh, who later modelled for the figure of Isabella. When she died in childbirth in Italy he sculpted her tomb at Fiesole, having it brought down to the English Cemetery, beside the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His second wife, Edith, was Fanny's sister. 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. This led to a serious breach with other family members, notably his former Pre-Raphaelite colleague Thomas Woolner, who had once been in love with Fanny and had married Alice, the third sister of Fanny and Edith.

Hunt's autobiography [http://worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/8048610&referer=brief_results Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood] (1905) was written to correct other literature about the origins of the Brotherhood, which in his view did not adequately recognise his own contribution. Many of his late writings are attempts to control the interpretation of his work.

In 1905, he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII. At the end of his life he lived in Sonning-on-Thames. His personal life was the subject of Diana Holman-Hunt's book My Grandfather, his Life and Loves.

Gallery (chronological)

References in literature

Hunt's painting "The Hireling Shepherd" plays an important if enigmatic role in Brian Aldiss's "antinovel":

Report on probability A (1968, OCLC 44986)

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 implicitly referenced in scenes in Michel Faber's novel:

The Crimson Petal and the White (2002, ISBN 015100692X)

Hunt's painting The Awakening Conscience is explicitly referenced in Evelyn Waugh's novel:

Brideshead Revisited (1945, OCLC 964336)

The version of his painting The Light of the World which hangs in St. Paul's Cathedral, London and a print of that work are both mentioned in Alan Hollinghurst's novel:

The Line of Beauty (2004, ISBN 1582345082)

Reproductions of Hunt's paintings are hung by the highly religious character Grandmamma in Lawrence Durrell's first novel:

Pied Piper of Lovers (1935)

Media

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood have been the subjects of two BBC period dramas. The first, entitled The Love School, was shown in 1975, starring Bernard Lloyd as Hunt. The second was Desperate Romantics, in which Hunt is played by Rafe Spall. It was first broadcast on BBC 2 Tuesday, 21 July 2009.http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/08_august/07/romantics.shtml