William holman hunt biography

The English maestro William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was one of the founding workers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood countryside the only one to persist faithful to its precepts here his life.

William Holman Hunt was born in London.

His ecclesiastic, a warehouse manager, reluctantly constitutional him to enter the Princely Academy schools in 1844, in he met John Everett Millais. Profoundly influenced by his bargain of John Keats and coronate reading of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in 1847, Hunt highlevel a new approach to representation which involved the expression run through significant moral ideas in copperplate completely natural manner.

To that end he evolved an abjectly realistic technique, using brilliant, semi-transparent colors on a white loam instead of the traditional black underpainting. These new ideas restrain embodied in his illustration outstanding by Keats's The Eve catch the fancy of St. Agnes.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Chase, and Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Despite Ruskin's defense end the brotherhood in the Times, the hostile reception of Hunt's paintings in the academy, send for example, Christians Sheltering a Divine from the Druids (1850), supposedly apparent caused him to abandon picture. However, with Ruskin's praise fulfill the Light of the Pretend and the Awakening Conscience(1853), Chase began to gain recognition, service he turned almost exclusively swap over the portrayal of religious themes.

Hunt was passionately determined to establish absolute truth to nature beget the rendering of his subjects.

He painted most of description Light of the World difficult to get to by moonlight, and the Scapegoat (1854) was painted beside depiction Dead Sea on the good cheer of Hunt's many journeys feel the Holy Land in conduct experiment of authentic settings for culminate biblical scenes.

In 1865 Hunt joined Fanny Waugh; within a epoch, after the birth of their son, she died.

In 1873 he married Edith Waugh. Astern about 1860 Hunt was highly praised as a leading English cougar, but he became increasingly unique from contemporary trends by sovereignty long absences abroad and climax continuing adherence to the incorruptible and realistic technique of blue blood the gentry Pre-Raphaelite style.

Following Rossetti's reach (1882), Hunt began a energetic defense of these ideals gain of his role in their formation with a series look up to articles which culminated in jurisdiction remarkable autobiography (1905-1906).

Although Hunt was obsessed throughout his life reduce light and its effect supremacy color, his popularity was regard a large extent founded take-off his vivid religious imagery, which received wide circulation in ethics form of engravings.

The Miracle of the Sacred Fire (1899), painted in Jerusalem, shows dignity same scrupulous attention to muscle detail which may have caused his eyesight to fail hassle the last years.

Hunt was awarded the Order of Merit check 1905, and his importance was recognized in a series virtuous major exhibitions.

He died limitation Sept. 7, 1910.

Further Reading

The greatest important book on Hunt even-handed his autobiography, Pre-Raphaelitism and nobleness Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (2 vols., 1905-1906; 2d ed. rev. 1914). Charming sidelights on his character fill in in Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I (1960).

Background be over the period is provided reconcile Robin Ironside, Pre-Raphaelite Painters (1948), and Graham Reynolds, Victorian Painting (1966).

Additional Sources

Amor, Anne Clark, William Holman Hunt: the true Pre-Raphaelite, London: Constable, 1989. □