Victorian Art & Design
Holman Hunt 1853-1910

In 1853 Hunt sent Claudio and Isabella and Our English Coasts to the Academy. Our English Coasts was renamed Strayed Sheep when it was exhibited in France. 

In 1854 Hunt exhibited a pair of paintings at the Academy. The Light of the World shows Christ knocking at a door which is overgrown with weeds. Hunt painted the background outdoors by moonlight  in the freezing cold. Ruskin defended the painting in a letter to The Times as 'one of the very noblest works of sacred art.'

  The Awakening Conscience is in the Tate. It shows a 'fallen woman' whose lover is playing the piano. The music has struck her conscience with remorse. Ruskin praised the painting and explained the symbolism in a letter to The Times. It includes a bird escaping from a cat, just as the woman will escape from her lover.

 Hunt did not exhibit in 1855, as in 1854 he had left to paint in the Holy Land and did not return until 1856.


In 1856 Hunt exhibited The Scapegoat. The striking landscape background was painted by the Red Sea. He had also started another painting in the Holy Land of The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple but Jews were reluctant to pose for it. (He eventually finished it in Britain and sold it in 1860 to the art dealer Gambart for the enormous sum of £5,500.)

Hunt continued to paint according to Pre-Raphaelite principles for the rest of his life. This can be seen in his May Morning started in 1888. This shows the choir which sings on top of the tower of Magdalen College on May 1st. every year.  In 1905 Hunt published his book, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He died in 1910.
Millais 1853-56      Books on the Pre-Raphaelites       

  Pre-Raphaelite Quiz                            D.G.Rossetti  

Pre-Raphaelites in Art Galleries

Other followers of Pre-Raphaelite ideas also showed their paintings at the 1856 Royal Academy. The Liverpool artist, William Windus, sent Burd Helen and Henry Wallis exhibited The Death of Chatterton, the poet. Ruskin so admired Arthur Hughes' April Love that he asked his father to buy it. They were too late, however as William Morris had already sent his friend, Burne-Jones with a cheque to 'nobble' it for him.