
MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR
EDITED BY
T. LEMAN HARE
HOLMAN HUNT
1827-1910
Holman Hunt
BY MARY E. COLERIDGE
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
CONTENTS
Page | ||
I. | The Painter’s Youth (1827-1854) | 11 |
II. | The East | 48 |
III. | The Subject Pictures | 58 |
IV. | Portraits and Other Works | 74 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate | ||
I. | Portrait of Holman Hunt at the age of Fifteen | Frontispiece |
By kind permission of the painter | Page | |
II. | The Two Gentlemen of Verona | 14 |
From the Birmingham Art Gallery | ||
III. | Isabella and the Pot of Basil | 24 |
From the painting in the possession of Mrs. James Hall | ||
IV. | The Light of the World | 34 |
From the painting in Keble College Chapel, Oxford | ||
V. | The Scapegoat | 40 |
From the painting in possession of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, Bart. | ||
VI. | The Triumph of the Innocents | 50 |
From the painting lent by the painter to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool | ||
VII. | The Hireling Shepherd | 60 |
From the painting in the Manchester Art Gallery | ||
VIII. | May Morning | 70 |
By kind permission of the painter |

I
THE PAINTER’S YOUTH (1827-1854)
“Art is too tedious an employment for any not infatuated with it.”
“The only artists I ever knew who achieved work of note in any sense
whatever, went first through a steady training of several years and afterwards
entered their studios with as unwearying a punctuality as business men attend
their offices, worked longer hours than these, and had fewer holidays, partly
because of their love for art, but also because of their deep sense of the utter
uselessness of grappling with the difficulties besetting the happy issue of each
contest, except at close and unflinching quarters.”
“I have many times in my studio come to such a pass of humiliation that I
have felt that there was no one thing that I had thought I could do thoroughly
in which I was not altogether incapable.” W. H. H.
Upon a wintry afternoon in London, in the
year 1834, a little boy of six years old
was standing on the stairs of a poor artist’s[12]
house, watching, through a window in the
wall, the marvellous deeds of the man within.
The man within was painting the “Burning of
the Houses of Parliament.” Scarlet and gold!
Scarlet and gold! He used them up so quickly
that he had to grind and prepare more and more.
Every time he ground with the muller on the slab
a fresh supply of vermilion and chrome yellow,
there was a fresh flare up of the conflagration,
another outburst of applause from the little boy.
Meantime, the artist’s wife put the kettle on the
fire, and cut bread and butter as if nothing out
of the way were going on; and by-and-by she
and the father and their children sat down to tea.
It seemed very strange to the little watchman
that they could behave in this calm, everyday
manner when such wonders were all about them
in the room. Presently a porter came from a
warehouse in Dyer’s Court, Aldermanbury, where
dwelt a merchant, Mr. William Hunt; and he
took the little boy home to his father.[13]
The subject of this picture is taken from the last act of Shakespeare’s
“Two Gentlemen of Verona.” It will be remembered
that Proteus and Valentine had each gone from Verona to Milan
to improve by travel and by seeing the wonders of the world
abroad. Later on Julia, whose love Proteus had won, followed
him disguised as a page, only to discover that the false, fickle, and
treacherous wooer was endeavouring to supplant his friend Valentine
in the affections of Sylvia, the Duke’s daughter. But Valentine,
interposing at the critical moment, rescued her. This is the moment
the artist depicts. The scene is one of pure bright sunlight, in
which the brilliant colours of the gay costumes tell out with almost
startling vividness. In the background are seen advancing the
outlaws, with the Duke and Thurio whom they have captured. It
adds an interest to the picture to know that Sylvia was painted
from Miss Siddall, who afterwards became the wife of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti. The beech-tree forest scenery was painted in
Lord Amherst’s park at Knowle, Kent.
The picture is in the Birmingham Art Gallery.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
This little boy had been born on the 2nd
April 1827, in Wood Street, Cheapside, and
was christened William Holman at St. Giles’s,
Cripplegate. From the time that he could hold[15]
anything he held a pencil. When he was
about four years old he begged for a brush
and some paints, and his joy is thus described:
“How I idolised the implements when they were in my
possession! The camel-hair pencil, with its translucent
quill, rosy-coloured silk binding up its delicate hair at the
base, all embedded together as in amber, was an equal joy
with the gem-like cakes of paint. I carried them about
with me in untiring love. A day or two of this joy had not
exhausted it, when, alas, alas, the brush was lost! Search
proved to be all in vain. I remember going around and over
every track about the house and garden. Waking up from
sorrowing sleep, in which my continuing pain had been
finally relieved by a dream of the lost treasure lying ensconced
in some quiet corner, I hurried to the spot, only to
find it vacant. The loss was the greater trouble because it
was my first terrible secret. That my father should ever
forgive me for losing so beautiful an object was to my distracted
mind impossible. What could be done? My hair
was straight, fine, and of camel brush hue. I cut off pieces
to test its fitness for the office of paint-brush, and as I held
a little lock I found that it would spread the tints fairly
well; but what to do for a handle? Quill pens were too big,
and I could not see how they could be neatly shortened. A
piece of firewood carefully cut promised to make a more
manageable stick. With my utmost skill I shaped this, and
with a little length of coloured cotton I bound a stubborn
sprout of hair upon the splint. I was disconcerted to find
that it formed a hollow tube. It seemed perverse of fate to
ordain that just in the handle where it was needed to be
hollow it should be solid, and that the hair which should be[16]
solid would form an empty pipe. Attempts to drill the
stick into a tube failed, but there was an expedient for making
the tuft fuller. Cutting a cross cleft in the bottom of the
wood, I inserted a straight length of hair, which I then rebound
with its crimson thread. With gum I managed
patiently to bind down loose ends and to give an improving
gloss to the whole. My fears grew apace, since every hour
there was a danger of inquiry for the lost pencil. I summoned
up, therefore, an assumption of assurance, trusting
that my father would see no difference between my brush
and his. I went forward to him, holding the trophy very
tenderly lest it should fall to pieces. He turned his eyes,
they became bewildered, his usual loving look made a frown
from him the more to be dreaded. I fortified my spirit, saying,
‘Thank you very much, father, for your brush.’ He took
it with, ‘What’s this?’ and turned it over. Breathless I
sobbed; he burst out laughing, and so brought a torrent of
tears to my eyes. He exclaimed, ‘Oh, I see, it’s my brush, is
it?’ caught me up and tossed me aloft several times, ending
with a scrubbing on my cheek from his close-shaven chin.
This was the reception of my first work of art.”[1]
The warehouse was a mysterious place full of
laughter and talk by day; empty, silent, and vast
at night when the master went over it with a
bull’s-eye lantern. A funny man called Henry
Pinchers busied himself with velvet binding on
the third floor. The jests of Henry Pinchers were
of infinite charm. He had had to take two steps[17]
back for every step forward, he declared, one
cold morning. “Then how did you get to
the warehouse at all?” asked his delighted
auditor. “Don’t you see, you silly boy, I turned
round and walked backwards!” said Henry
Pinchers.
Other people were not much more clear than
he in their answers to questions. Temple Bar was
so called “because there was no other name”;
and the martyrs were burnt at Smithfield “because
they were martyrs.” Whether the child
found more satisfaction at the school to which,
soon after, he was sent, does not appear. The
lessons from the New Testament read to him
there made a deep impression upon his mind,
and were remembered in years to come. “The
gain in thoughtfully-spent life is the continual
disturbance of absolute convictions.” But there
are certain convictions of childhood which are
never effaced.
The choice of a profession was not left to
the last moment in those days. He was but
twelve when his father asked him what he would
like to be. “A painter!” he said at once; and
the sorrowful silence that followed told him what[18]
he knew already—that his choice was not looked
on with approval.
His father had taken him away from school,
and was about to find for him a situation in
which he would have to go about with invoices
for goods from nine in the morning till eight at
night. No time for drawing; no time for
painting in scarlet and gold! The idea did
not harmonise with his presentiment of that
which had to be. He set about to look for
a place for himself, and explained the various
qualifications that he possessed in the way
of reading, writing, and arithmetic, to the
master of a boy-friend who was leaving that
gentleman’s office. After some friendly chaff
as to why he had not thought of enlisting as
a Grenadier, to which he replied in all good
faith, “I really should like your place better,”
his services were accepted, and his father—amused,
and gratified, no doubt, by the master’s
ready interest in the boy—consented that he
should stay.
The master, Mr. James, drew and painted
himself. Far from discouraging his apprentice,
he gave him his own box of oil-colours with directions[19]
how to prepare them; draughtsmanship
was studied at a night school for mechanics, and
the little salary expended on weekly lessons from
a portrait-painter who had learnt from a pupil of
a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His father, who
had permitted this, was displeased, however, to
find that on Mr. James’s retirement he had time
to visit the National Gallery; and once again, to
avoid more unendurable subjection, he secured a
place at the London Agency of Richard Cobden’s
Manchester business. Here he sat by himself in
a little room that looked out on three blank walls,
made entries in a ledger, pondered over the
Bible stories heard at school, and the far-away
land where they happened, drew pen-and-ink
flies on the window with such accurate realism
that his employer took out a handkerchief to
brush them away, designed patterns for calicoes—taught
by an occasional clerk. Here,
too, he painted the portrait of an old orange-woman
called Hannah, a Jewess, who came into
the office and asked him to buy of her; “if
only for a handsel to break her ill-luck of the
morning.”
The portrait was such a good likeness that[20]
the employer laughed aloud when he saw it;
the fame of the thing spread fast. One night
his father told him of this remarkable picture,
adding that he certainly ought to see it; but
no sooner had he discovered the artist than
he threatened to take him away altogether if
stricter discipline were not observed. Hunt
was now sixteen; he had borne with the city
for four years; if he waited until he came of
age it would be too late to think of art as
a profession. He took his life into his own
hands, and declared that he meant to become a
student at the Royal Academy, that he must
be allowed to draw at the British Museum that
he might qualify himself to pass the entrance
examination.
He just contrived to make both ends meet
by copy and portrait work three days out of
the six. He learnt more from fellow-students
than from masters. The first real instruction
came from a pupil of Wilkie’s, who told him,
as he sat copying “The Blind Fiddler,” that
Wilkie painted without dead colour underneath,
and finished each bit in turn like a fresco-painter.
After this he found out for himself[21]
that quattrocentist work was very beautiful,
and that the beauty of it was due to the early
training of the artists in fresco. He was by
nature hasty and impatient, and the city portrait-painter
had encouraged rather than checked a
tendency to handle his tools with loose bravura.
He set himself to unlearn these lessons, to work
with accurate and humble patience.
The hardest part of the endeavour had yet
to come. Twice over he failed to find his name
upon the list of those accepted as probationers
for the Academy. Another precious year gone!
His father appealed to him to give it up.
“You are wasting time and energy. You can
paint well enough to make friends admire you;
but you cannot compete with others, who have
genius to begin with, who have received an
excellent education. Are you not yourself convinced?”
The sense of discouragement was
bitter. Six months more he asked for one
other trial; if, for the third time, he failed, he
would go back to business.
One day, as he stood at work in the Museum,
a boy dressed in a velvet tunic, and belt, his
bright brown hair curling over a turned-down[22]
white collar, darted aside as he went by, gazed
attentively at the drawing for a minute or two,
and was off again. He knew the boy, for he
had seen him take the Gold Medal at the
Academy over the head of all the older students.
He returned the visit on his way through the
Elgin room, where young Millais was at work
on the Ulysses. Quickly the younger artist
turned round.
“I say, are not you the fellow doing that good drawing
in No. XIII. room? You ought to be at the Academy.”
“That is exactly my opinion. But, unfortunately, the
Council have twice decided the other way.”
“You just send the drawing you are doing now, and
you’ll be in like a shot. You take my word for it; I ought
to know; I’ve been there as a student, you know, five years.
I got the first medal last year in the antique, and it’s not the
first given me, I can tell you.… I say, tell me whether
you have begun to paint? What? I’m never to tell; it is
your deadly secret. Ah! ah! ah! that’s a good joke! You’ll
be drawn and quartered without even being respectably
hung by the Council of ‘Forty’ if you are known to have
painted before completing your full course in the antique.
Why, I’m as bad as you, for I’ve painted a long while. I
say, do you ever sell what you do? So do I. I’ve often got
ten pounds, and even double. Do you paint portraits?”
“Yes,” I said; “but I’m terribly behind you.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Well, I’m seventeen,” I replied.[23]
[24]
“I’m only fifteen just struck; but don’t you be afraid.
Why, there are students of the Academy just fifty and more.
There’s old Pickering; he once got a picture into the
Exhibition, and he quite counts upon making a sensation
when he has finished his course; but he is very reluctant to
force on his genius. Will you be here to-morrow?”
“No,” I whispered; “it’s my portrait day, but don’t betray
me. Good-bye.”
“Don’t you be down in the mouth,” he laughed out, as
I walked away more light-hearted than I had been for
months.[2]
When Isabella found her murdered lover’s grave in the forest she
brought home his head in anxious secrecy.
Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,—
She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.”
Keats.
The picture is lent by Mrs. James Hall to the Laing Art Gallery,
Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
At the next examination Hunt passed. “I
told you so. I knew you’d soon be in,” said
Millais, when next they met at the Academy.
It was the beginning of one of those rare friendships
that make high things possible.
In the room at 83 Gower Street, where
Millais painted while his mother sat at her
work-table, Holman Hunt was now often to
be found.
“They both help me, I can tell you,” said Millais, as he
stood with one hand on his father’s shoulder, and the other
on Mrs. Millais’ chair. “He’s really capital, and does a lot
of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have
painted several of the old doctors from him. By making a
little alteration in each, and putting on different kinds of[26]
beards; he does splendidly. Couldn’t be better, could he?
And he sits for hands and draperies too. And as for
mamma, she reads to me and finds me subjects. She gets
me all I want in the way of dresses and makes them up for
me, and searches out difficult questions for me at the British
Museum—in the library, you know. She’s very clever, I can
tell you.” He stooped down and rubbed his curly head
against her forehead, and then patted the “old daddy,” as
he called him, on the back. The father was then only about
forty-seven.…[3]
Many and eager were the discussions that
took place among the students. Hunt’s first visit
to the National Gallery, while he was still at the
office, had not been altogether a success. The
Age of Brown was flourishing. “Bacchus and
Ariadne” was brown then. In fact when,
some few years later, it was cleaned, and the
original colours appeared, many people said they
preferred it brown. Lost in the brown air, and
quite unable to derive any pleasure from “Venus
attired by the Graces,” the new-comer, standing
in front of Titian’s masterpiece, inquired
where were “the really grand paintings of the
great master’s?”
“That picture before you, sir, of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’
is one of the finest specimens existing of the greatest[27]
colourist in the world.” Here the custodian stopped to
understand my paralysed expression. “Can’t you see its
beauty, sir?” “Not much, I must confess,” I slowly
stammered; “it is as brown as my grandmother’s painted
tea-tray.” He stared hopelessly and then left me, only
adding as a parting shot, “In the other rooms there are
some wonderful Rubens, a consummate Guido, and miraculous
heads by Vandyke, and several supremely fine Rembrandts;
they will at least equal your grandmother’s
tea-tray; perhaps you’ll be able to see some beauty in
them.”[4]
It took wonderful courage in those days to
go on thinking that grass and trees were green,
when all the eminent teachers maintained that
so far as Art was concerned, they were brown,
and that if you only painted them brown for
several years “an eye for Nature” would come.
They were green, however, at Ewell in Surrey,
whither the young artist went one autumn.
While he was there, his first picture, “Woodstock,”
was sold for £20. Furthermore, a fellow-student
borrowed from Cardinal Wiseman vol. i.
of “Modern Painters,” and lent it to him for
twenty-four hours. He sat up most of the night
to read it.
He had fished out a copy of Keats from a box[28]
marked “This lot 4d.,” and determined to paint a
scene from “The Eve of St. Agnes.” “It’s like a
parson,” said Millais, laughing—a curious commentary
on the reading of “Isabella”; but he
soon came round. Millais had begun to assert
his independence of judgment, to the no small
wrath of his mother.
“Johnnie is behaving abominably,” she said. “I want
you, Hunt, to hear; you would not believe it; he shuts us
out of the studio altogether; he is there now all alone. For
twelve days now neither his father nor I have been allowed
to enter the room. I appeal to you; is that the way to treat
parents? He cannot expect to prosper, can he, now? I
hope you will tell him so.”
At this point a voice was heard from the studio. “Is not
that Hunt? Don’t mind what they say. Come here.”[5]
Some time afterwards, a wonderful conversation
on the relative merits of the Old
Masters was interrupted by a quiet knock at
the door.
“Who’s there?” asked my companion.
“I have brought you the tea myself,” said the mother.
I was hurrying forward when Millais stopped me with
his hand, and a silent shake of the head.
“I really can’t let you in, mamma; please put the tray
down at the door, and I’ll take it in myself.”
The mother made one more attempt; in vain.
On went the talk. When Hunt had risen to say
Good-bye,
“Oh no!” said Millais, “you must come in and see the
old people,” which brought to my mind the prospect of a
terrible quarter of an hour.
Johnnie burst into the sitting-room, I came very bashfully
behind. “Now, we’ve come to have a nice time with
you, mamma and papa.”
“We don’t wish,” said the mother, “to tax your precious
time at all; we have our own occupations to divert us and
engage our attention,” and the crochet needles were more
intently plied.
“Hoity-toity, what’s all this? Put down your worsted
work at once. I’m going to play backgammon with you
directly;” and he straightway fetched the board from its
corner, and laid it on the table before her.
“You know, Hunt, how shamefully he has been behaving,
and I appeal to you to say whether it is not barefacedness
to come in and treat us as though nothing had occurred,”
appealed the mother.
The us was chosen because at the time Johnnie had
gone to his father with the guitar, placing it in his hand and
remarking, as he put his arms round the paternal shoulders:
“Now, as we are too busy in the day to see one another, it’s
more jolly that we should do so after work, so just you be a
dear old papa, and now prove to Hunt what a splendid
musician you are. Hunt used to practise the violin once,
but his family didn’t like it, and he could not be annoying
them in music and painting, too, so he gave up his fiddling;
but he’s very fond of music. You play that exquisite air out[30]
of Rigoletto!” And then turning to me he added, “There’s
no one in England has such an erect back as he has;” while
to him he railingly said, “You want pressing, like a shy
young lady.”
His father was, however, already tuning the strings,
when his son went over to the still irreconcilable mother,
took her needles away, kissed her, and wheeled her in the
chair round to the table where the opened chess-board was
arranged awaiting her. The father had already commenced
the air, which at my solicitation he repeated, and afterwards
played “The Harmonious Blacksmith.” The radiant faces
of both parents gradually witnessed to their content; while
the son beat time to the music, he paid no less attention to
the game with the mother.
The two boys worked hard. They sat up all
night long in Millais’ studio; they kept themselves
awake with coffee; they encouraged one another
with talk; when Millais was tired to death of his
own picture he worked on Hunt’s, and Hunt on
his. “Cymon and Iphigenia” and “The Eve of
St. Agnes” were sent in to the Academy at eleven
o’clock on the last night possible for sending in
at all, and next day, in the exuberance of their
joyful relief, they accompanied the Chartist procession
to Kensington Common—Millais keen to
see more of the fray than his companion thought
prudent.
One great disappointment bravely borne by[31]
Millais, marked the Academy of that year;
“Cymon and Iphigenia” was not hung. Hunt,
however, gained an outspoken admirer in the
person of an Italian student, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. “The best picture there!” said he, as
he stood before “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and he
said it loudly too. He did not admire it the less
because the subject was taken from Keats, whom
he adored. He loved and studied “the Golden
Gates of Ghiberti”—another point of agreement.
He was passionately fond of Art, but dejected by
the enforced study of glass bottles under the stern
guidance of Ford Madox Brown. What was he
to do? He could not go on with those bottles.
Hunt consented that they should share a studio:
and he became an ardent, fascinating, but very
troublesome learner. He hummed and moaned,
rocking himself to and fro as he sat thinking;
he raved and raged while he was painting,
causing angelic little girl models to weep; he
sat up night after night before his easel, eating
or sleeping as the fit came upon him. He was
perpetually encircled by a crowd of noisy followers,
and he had a most inconvenient way
of showing them everything in the studio, and[32]
asking them all to supper when the cupboard
was bare—a very different friend from the un-Bohemian
Millais, who in those days would
not even smoke a pipe.
“I have always been told by artists that a
pipe is of incalculable comfort to the nerves, that
when harassed by the difficulties of a problem
it solaces them.”
“That is the very reason, it seems to me, for
not smoking. A man ought to get relief only by
solving his problem,” said Millais.
Very different, too, from the genial atmosphere
of his home was that of the Rossetti household,
where there were strange gatherings of Italian
exiles by the hearth.[33]
“My types were of natural figures such as language had originally
employed to express transcendental ideas, and they were used by me
with no confidence that they would interest any other mind than
my own. The closed door was the obstinately shut mind, the weeds
the cumber of daily neglect, the accumulated hindrances of sloth;
the orchard the garden of delectable fruit for the dainty feast of the
soul. The music of the still small voice was the summons to the
sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the Divine
Master; the bat flitting about only in darkness was a natural type
of ignorance; the kingly and priestly dress of Christ, the sign of His
reign over the body and the soul to them who could give their
allegiance to Him and acknowledge God’s over-rule. In making it
a night scene, lit mainly by the lantern carried by Christ, I had
followed metaphorical explanation in the Psalms, ‘Thy word is a
lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,’ with also the accordant
allusions by St. Paul to the sleeping soul, ‘The night is far spent,
the day is at hand.’”
W. H. H.
The picture hangs in Keble College Chapel, Oxford.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
“Then you are Pre-Raphaelite!” the other
students cried, laughing, when self-willed Hunt
quoted Sir Charles Ball to prove that the action
of the demoniac boy in Raphael’s “Transfiguration”
was all wrong. The word was caught up,
turned into a challenge, P and R, two of the
mystic initials that were so soon to charm and
to enrage London, were formed. The B was
added at the suggestion of Rossetti, whose love
of the mediæval at once required a “Brotherhood.”[35]
Need it be said that there had to be
seven Brothers, and that the Brotherhood was to
be kept a secret? Rossetti’s brother William,
who had never learnt how to draw; a nominal
pupil of Hunt’s, F. G. Stephens, who had never
learnt how to paint; Woolner, who was a
sculptor, and James Collinson, were quickly enlisted.
“Collinson,” said Rossetti, “is a born
stunner.”
“Where’s your flock?” shouted out Millais.
“I expected to see them behind you. Tell me
all about it.”
They held their first meeting in his studio, over
a set of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo
Santo at Pisa. The three leaders were all, at
this time, eager to establish some starting-point
for their art “which would be secure, if it were
ever so humble.” They admired what was true
in the works of Raphael as much as any one else.
“Pre-Raphaelitism is not Pre-Raphaelism,” but
they held that, since his day, pride and the dogged
observance of rule without reference to Nature
had destroyed sincerity. As they turned over the
pages of the book, they hailed with delight in
the old frescoes of Gozzoli that “freedom from[36]
corruption, pride, and disease” for which they
sought. “Think what a revelation it was to find
such work at such a moment, and to recognise it
with the triple enthusiasm of our three spirits!”
They all agreed that they would make a series of
designs from Keats in the new manner. Millais’
“Lorenzo and Isabella,” in his friends’ judgment
the most wonderful picture ever painted by a
man under twenty, was the immediate fruit of
this resolve.
Nature had gifted Rossetti with a hopeful
temperament which was of no small service to
Hunt in the dark days of discouragement that
followed. When the latter was tempted to
mourn over the waste of his young years in
the city, the former pointed out to him that
he had learnt to know men, and the ways
of men, instead of mere bookish things that
were “of very little use in life.” What did
it matter whether the sun went round the
earth or the earth went round the sun? What
did anything scientific matter in comparison
with Dante, with the poetry of Browning, which
he would recite, over the fire, by twenty pages
at a time, with Tennyson and Henry Taylor[37]
and Coventry Patmore?[6] When Mr. James, the
city man, the owner of the original colour-box,
reduced Hunt to despair by his damning criticism
of the new picture “Rienzi,” “But the man’s a
born fool!” exclaimed Rossetti, with screams of
laughter. When pounds, shillings, and pence
ran low, “Can you not understand,” said he,
“that there are hundreds of young aristocrats
and millionaires growing up who will be only
too glad to get due direction how to make the
country as glorious as Greece was, and as
Italy?” In Paris, in Belgium, in the country
he was the most delightful of companions, and
it was he who led as the Brethren walked up
and down Stanhope Street after their work,
singing the Marseillaise or Mourir pour la
patrie.
Throughout his youth, however, Rossetti
acted on impulse, without consideration as to
the effect upon others. When it was time to
send in for the Academy he was not quite
ready with the charming picture painted in
Hunt’s studio, and, for the sake of a few more[38]
days in which to finish, he sent instead to the
Hyde Park Gallery, which opened a week
earlier than Burlington House. “The Girlhood
of Mary, Virgin,” signed with the mystic P.R.B.,
the meaning of which was then unknown, except
to the seven Brothers, appeared, therefore,
a week earlier than Hunt’s “Rienzi” and
Millais’ “Lorenzo and Isabella,” signed with
the same initials, and, for good and for evil,
Rossetti began to be spoken of as the precursor
of a new school. The effect on him
was twofold. Unable to endure hostile criticism,
at the first touch of it, the year after, when
he showed “The Annunciation,” he resolved
that he would never again exhibit in public;
but, pleased at the pre-eminence given him by
those who were not behind the scenes, he withdrew
from partnership with Hunt in the studio;
and more and more, as time went on, from his
society and that of Millais.[39]
“The Apostles regarded it (the Scapegoat) as a symbol of the
Christian Church, teaching both them and their followers submission
and patience under affliction.… One important part of the ceremony
was the binding a scarlet fillet round the head of this second
goat when he was conducted away from the Temple, hooted at with
execration, and stoned until he was lost to sight in the wilderness.
The High Priest kept a portion of this scarlet fillet in the Temple,
with the belief that it would become white if the corresponding fillet
on the fugitive goat had done so, as a signal that the Almighty had
forgiven their iniquities.… The whole image is a perfect one of
the persecution and trials borne by the Apostolic Church, and perhaps
by the Church, as subtly understood, to this day.”
The picture was originally called “Azazel”: it was painted near
Oosdoom by the Dead Sea. “Every minute the mountains became
more gorgeous and solemn, the whole scene more unlike anything
ever portrayed. Afar all seemed of the brilliancy and preciousness
of jewels, while near, it proved to be only salt and burnt lime, with
decayed trees and broken branches brought down by the rivers feeding
the lake. Skeletons of animals, which had perished for the most
part in crossing the Jordan and the Jabbok, had been swept here,
and lay salt-covered, so that birds and beasts of prey left them untouched.
It was a most appropriate scene for my subject, and each
minute I rejoiced more in my work.”
W. H. H.
Sir Cuthbert Quilter is the owner of this picture.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
“Rienzi” honourably hung in the large room,
pendant to “Lorenzo and Isabella,” made a
favourable impression, but was not sold until
after the closing of the Academy; and meantime,
the landlord seized Hunt’s books, furniture,[41]
and sketches, and he was obliged to return to
his family. As soon as he could he paid the
man, who thought he had been “shamming
poverty.” At one time he was not able to
post a letter because he had not even a penny
wherewith to buy the stamp; as he threw himself
back on a chair, he thrust his hand between
the back and the seat, and lo, it came in contact
with half-a-crown! When he went to
Lambeth to paint the background of “Claudio
and Isabella,” the man who carried his traps
was so much better dressed that the porter was
taken for the artist. Still, he was in good
heart, and he and Millais, eager to improve the
reputation already gained, were hard at work
upon two large works, “Christians escaping
from Persecuting Druids” and “Christ in the
Carpenter’s Shop,” when all at once a derisive
paragraph appeared in one of the papers,
betraying the significance of the three letters,
P.R.B., and holding up the new school to ridicule.
Munro the sculptor had wormed the secret out
of Rossetti, and, after promising not to tell, he
had passed it on to a journalist.
The storm of anger which followed was[42]
curiously out of proportion to the cause. The
Germ, a magazine started at Rossetti’s instigation,
to be the organ of Pre-Raphaelites,
would have failed, it may be, in any case, for
lack of funds; but jealousy, and that hatred of
light which is peculiar to old institutions, can
alone account for the venomous reception of
the new pictures, when once the secret of the
letters became known. The Academy sprang
to arms; the older artists, and their pupils,
waxed furious. They enlisted literature on
their side. Dickens joined in the hue and cry.
With the honourable exception of The Spectator,
every single paper attacked the men
who had dared to break with tradition. Raphael
had been insulted; Raphael was, it appeared,
the idol of all England.
Ruskin came, flashing, to the rescue a year
later, with a letter to The Times, in which
he declared that since the days of Albert
Dürer, there had been nothing in art so earnest
or so complete as the pictures of Millais and
Holman Hunt. They were not this year hung
together; they were placed in a less favourable
light. The onslaughts of the press were well[43]
sustained. “Valentine and Sylvia” (the subject
taken from Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen
of Verona”) had suffered, in part, from Hunt’s
distress of mind and the want of means occasioned
by the bad conduct of a man whom he
trusted; even after Ruskin’s letter no one
ventured to buy. Nobody came to him for a
portrait now. His father’s acquaintance in the
city offered to bet £10 that any picture of his
would be sent back within a week. Anonymous
insults poured in upon him. A publisher,
who had asked for illustrations of Longfellow,
declined to publish them. Debt was staring
him in the face, and failure seemed absolute.
At this crisis of fortune, when he had resolved
that he must give up Art and adopt
some other line of life—preferably that of a
settler in the backwoods—Millais came forward.
He had freed himself from personal straits only
a week or two earlier; now, with the warm
concurrence of his father and mother, he offered
to share every penny he had with his friend.
His generous will to help overcame all resistance;
the money—repaid the following year—was
advanced; and the two Brothers went[44]
off to Surbiton together, to paint “Ophelia”
and “The Hireling Shepherd.” “Valentine and
Sylvia” had been retouched and sent to Liverpool,
where a prize of £50 was offered for the
finest painting.
Never did the two gentlemen, even in
their native Verona, provoke more comment
than followed their footsteps wherever they
appeared in England. Immediately, anonymous
insults in letters and papers began again.
Week after week went by; there was not a
word from the authorities. At last it grew
intolerable. The painter turned on his tormentors.
He had never seriously expected such
distinction for a moment; but he determined
to write to the committee, and ask, by way
of bitter satire, why the prize had not been
awarded to him. Happily, his designs, and a
book in which he was interested, kept him up
too late to begin that night. Next morning, as
he sat at work not far from the house, he
heard Millais’ voice, “Another letter from Liverpool”!
“Valentine and Sylvia” had won the
prize; and they gave three cheers for the
Council in chorus.[45]
The happy days of comradeship at the old,
ghost-haunted house called Worcester Park
Farm glided by all too fast. Millais became
intent upon “The Huguenot”; Hunt continued
“The Hireling Shepherd” while the sun shone;
after dark he threw his strength into “The
Light of the World.” Whenever the moon was
full, although it was so cold that people skated
in the daytime, he would work out-of-doors
from nine at night until five the next morning.
For the most part he enjoyed undisturbed
solitude, but now and then a friendly guardian
of the public peace came to see what he was
about.
“Have you seen other artists painting landscape
about here?” he inquired.
“I can’t exactly say as I have at this time o’
night,” said the policeman.
His nocturnal studies continued to arouse
interest even after the return to London. As
he was coming back to Chelsea on a ’bus
one night the driver entertained him with
descriptions of the eccentric persons who lived
there, Carlyle among them, “and I’ve been
told as how he gets his living by teaching[46]
people to write.” Then he went on confidentially,
“But I’ll show you another queer
cove if you’re coming round the corner. You
see him well from the ’bus. He’s a cove,
in the first place, as has a something standing
all night at one winder, while he sits
down at the other, or stands, and seemingly
is a-drawing of it. He doesn’t go to bed like
other Christians, but stays long after the last
’bus has come in; and, as the perlice tells
us, when the clock strikes four, out goes the
gas, down comes the gemman, opens the
street door, runs down Cheyne Walk as hard
as he can pelt, and when he gets to the
end he turns and runs back again, opens
his door, goes in, and nobody sees no more of
him.”
Pre-Raphaelitism went steadily forward.
“The Light of the World” was not yet ready,
but the wonderful Academy of 1852 contained
“The Hireling Shepherd,” Millais’ “Ophelia” and
“The Huguenot,” and Ford Madox Brown’s fine
picture, painted after the same method, “Christ
Washing Peter’s Feet.” “The Strayed Sheep,” a
beautiful little landscape begun for a gentleman[47]
who admired “The Hireling Shepherd,” but did
not wish for so large a picture, was painted at
Fairlight, soon afterwards. At the Academy of
1853 “Claudio and Isabella” hung in the first
room. In 1854 “The Light of the World” was
finished, and sold to Mr. Combe of Oxford. “The
Awakened Conscience” went to the Academy the
same year.
And now a plan that had been in the artist’s
mind ever since, as a child, he listened to
the words of the New Testament at school,
found sudden fulfilment. The cry of the East
was in his ears; he would go to the East, and
paint a sacred picture there. As on so many
other occasions throughout his life, he met
with violent opposition. He would lose all that
he had gained at such cost and have to begin
over again on his return; he would find nothing
but overgrown weeds, no beauty that was not
tenfold more beautiful in England; he would
get Syrian fever and be an invalid for the rest
of his days; he would die like Wilkie. Rossetti
said that local colour interfered with the poetry
of design. Ruskin said that he was giving up
the real purpose of his life, which was to train[48]
a new school of art. What Millais said does
not appear. What Millais did was to help in
the packing, which had been left to the last
minute, so that there was no time for dinner,
and to rush to the buffet for any “likely food”
that he could find and toss it into the railway
carriage after the train had begun to
move.
Upon a parting gift from Rossetti were written
these lines from “Philip van Artevelde”:
Till they forget themselves, till all’s forgot,
Till the deep sleep falls on them in that bed
From which no morrow’s mischief knocks them up.”
II
THE EAST
“I regard the man who has not sojourned in a tent as one who has not
thoroughly lived.”
W. H. H.
The first period of life was over. The mystic
letters were used no more; after the savage onslaughts
of the press it had been determined that[49]
Pre-Raphaelites should be recognised by their
work alone, not by any arbitrary signal. Henceforth
each of the Brothers followed his own line.
Marriage came in due course. Mr. Holman Hunt
has been twice married; he has two sons and a
daughter.[50]
“You know that in the most beautiful former conceptions of the
Flight into Egypt, the Holy Family were always represented as
watched over and ministered to by attendant angels. But only the
safety and peace of the Divine Child and its mother are thought of.
No sadness or wonder of meditation returns to the desolate homes
of Bethlehem.
“But in this English picture all the story of the escape, as of the
flight, is told in fulness of peace and yet of compassion. The travel
is in the dead of the night, the way unseen and unknown; but
partly stooping from the starlight, and partly floating on the desert
mirage, move with the Holy Family the glorified souls of the Innocents.
Clear in celestial light, and gathered into child garlands of
gladness, they look to the Child in whom they live, and yet for whom
they die. Waters of the River of Life flow before on the sands;
the Christ stretches out His arms to the nearest of them—leaning
from His mother’s breast.… You may well imagine for yourselves
how the painter’s … better than magical power of giving effects of
intense light, has aided the effort of his imagination, while the passion
of his subject has developed in him a swift grace of invention which,
for my own part, I never recognised in his design till now.”
Ruskin.
The canvas is now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Mr. J. T.
Middlemore has a replica.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
“The Scapegoat”—a subject which he had
thought of suggesting to Landseer—was painted
by the shore of the Dead Sea. After many
negotiations, for the country was in a troubled
state and he risked his life by going, he encamped
there, with a little band of followers
to protect him, and a goat. Soleiman, one of
the Arabs, desired—though only seven years
younger than himself—to be his son. By what
name should he call him? Hunt? That was
no name at all. Holman? That was not
much better. William, however, pronounced
“Wullaum,” he “found very good.”
One night, when the dews fell heavily, and
they were some way from the encampment,
Hunt, afraid of the effect of a chill, began
waltzing—with his gun for a partner—to keep
himself warm. Soleiman was overcome with
amazement. “Henceforth let me be your brother,”[52]
said he—unconscious that he had become a Pre-Raphaelite—as
he flung his arms round the neck
of this wonderful man. “You are indeed inspired;
you dance like a dervish; you are one.
Can you do it again?” “Yes, my brother,” and
away the wonderful man went, a second and
a third time, again and yet again. He was
asked to repeat the performance for the benefit
of the others, who yelled with delight when
they heard of it, but this he declined to do;
and the next day Soleiman invited him to
marry the daughter of the sheik his uncle, and
to become sheik instead of himself when the
old man died, that he might lead the tribe in
battle, and act as dancing-dervish in times of
peace. Where had he been born? In London?
What was London?—a mountain? or a plain?
Not a city like Jerusalem with walls and gates
and shops?—“Never, my brother! I will never
believe that you are a citizen—never! I know
you are an English bedawee, and you were
born in a tent.” In spite of all this filial and
fraternal affection, Soleiman was not much
good when danger threatened. “There are
robbers,” he declared one day; “they are[53]
coming this way—one, two, three, on horseback,
and two—wait, three—yes, four on foot.
You must put down your umbrella, shut up
your picture, cover it with stones. They will
not be here for an hour. We will go up in
the mountains.” “No,” said Hunt, he should
stay where he was, it was a good work that
he had in hand; Allah would help him; he was
quite content. After several passionate appeals,
off went Soleiman by himself, taking
the donkey. The robbers presently appeared,
seven of them, on foot and on horseback, armed
with long spears, with guns and swords and
clubs. The painter painted on unconcernedly.
They drew up in a semicircle round him, and
the chief shouted for water. The artist looked
at him from his head to his horse’s feet—at
the others also, and then resumed his work.
Again the chief clamoured. They might have
water, the artist said at last, since the day was
hot; but Englishmen were not the servants of
Arabs, and he was an Englishman; they must
fetch it themselves. And he continued to paint.
“Are you here alone?” they inquired. “No;
there was an Arab.” Thereupon they requested[54]
that he might be called. “But I don’t want him,”
said the artist. “We want him.” “Well then,
you call him. His name is Soleiman.” Soleiman,
however, made no reply. “There is no one, or
he would answer,” they said distrustfully. “He
is afraid. You know best how to reassure him.”
At length Soleiman came slowly down through
the rocks, driving the donkey. A long conversation
followed—a wonderful description by his
“brother” of the gun with two souls which he
had, of the pistol that would fire more than five
times without reloading, of his accomplishments
as a dancing-dervish and as a story-teller (especially
about Lot), of the manner in which he wrote
all day in coloured inks the sky, the mountains, the
plain, the sea, even the salt, on that large paper.
The Arabs became intensely suspicious. What
could these things mean? He had the white
goat led over the ground, they supposed, to
charm it. He was a magician. He would go
back to England; he would wipe out the
coloured inks with a sponge; he would find
the Cities of the Plain underneath; he would be
lord of a great treasure. For the present they
agreed that they would let him alone; but[55]
he considered it prudent to waltz home that
night.
“My dreams kept me with the Brotherhood,”
he says. Once he had fallen asleep
within his tent, he was back in England among
the old set, “talking of plans and thoughts
beloved of both.”
The Academy hung “The Scapegoat” on
the line; and it was sold for £450, but “The
Finding of the Saviour in the Temple,” begun
in Jerusalem, could not be finished for some
time; he was compelled to work at smaller
pictures which would bring in ready money.
In the end, after a friendly consultation with
his old foe, Dickens, he asked and obtained
for it £5500, the largest sum that had ever
yet been paid for an English picture.
“Isabella” was painted in Florence in days of
great sadness; a year after the artist completed,
with his own hand, the marble monument designed
for his young wife.
“The Shadow of Death” (“Is not this the
Carpenter”?) was painted on his return to
the East, and yet again he went thither, to
bring back with him “The Triumph of the[56]
Innocents” and “The Holy Fire.” A number
of Mahommedan ladies, from the harem of a
neighbouring “effendi,” came to the house at
Jerusalem, and asked to see “The Innocents,”
while it was still in progress. The leading lady
counted up the figures.
“Seventeen babies in the large picture, and several more
in the smaller one, with the Sib Miriam,[7] Al Issa Messiah,
and Mar Jusif. This is very well,” she said, “but on the Day
of Judgment what will you do?” “Ah,” I returned, “I can
trust only in the mercy of the Beneficent; but why, pray, ask
me that question?” She returned, “Because the souls of
these beings that you have made will be required of you,
and what will you say then?” My reply, justified on metaphysical
principles, was, “I hope every one of these will be
present to justify me.” She looked bewildered, but then
turning to her flock, re-echoed my assurance, saying, “Oh,
if indeed you can satisfy God the Just with their souls, it
will be well with you!”[8]
Music and rosy dawn are the inspiration of
“May Morning”; on Magdalen Tower a band of
choristers chant their hymn to the Light of
Heaven, according to ancient custom, upon the
1st of May. “The Lady of Shalott” is fresh in[57]
the recollection of all who have seen her.
A larger version of “The Light of the World”
has been purchased recently by Mr. Charles
Booth, for the benefit of the nation. Since
that time the artist has not been able to
work.
In 1881 Rossetti died. His former comrade
offered to visit him when he heard of the
illness; but the offer was courteously declined
by Mr. William Rossetti. In 1896 grave
fears began to be expressed about Millais.
“The truth of his doomed condition, at first
resolutely ignored, came very suddenly to
him, and then day by day he stepped down
into the grave, but never lost his composure
or noble personality.” These quiet words are
the fitting close of the tribute paid to him by
his oldest and greatest friend, in that book
which is a record as much of friendship as
of art.
III
THE SUBJECT PICTURES
“One scarcely express purpose in our reform, left unsaid by reason of
its fundamental necessity, was to make art a hand-maid in the cause of justice
and truth.” W. H. H.
“The vital ambition of an artist is to serve as high priest and expounder
of the excellence of the works of the Creator—choosing the highest types
and combinations of His handiworks, as the Greeks taught the after-world to
do, so that men’s admiration may be fascinated by the perfection of the
works of the Great Author of all, and men’s life thus may be a continual joy
and solace.”
The aim set forth in this declaration is not
the aim of any school, however distinguished,
but the aim, conscious or unconscious, of
all great painters. It has been constantly
pursued throughout the life of him who wrote
these words; if we did not put this first, we
should err.
The secondary purpose of his work—to give
England what she has never had before, a school
of artists of her own—of vast and infinite grandeur
though it be, is yet subservient.[59]
“As to the pure white ground, you had better adopt that at once,
as, I can assure you, you will be forced to do so ultimately, for Hunt
and Millais, whose works already kill everything in the exhibition
for brilliancy, will in a few years force every one who will not drag
behind them to use their methods.”
Ford Madox Brown to Lowes Dickenson.
This picture is to be seen at Manchester Art Gallery.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
Many technical questions beset a true revival
which are of deeper interest to the actors
in it than to the public at large. Such was
the question of the introduction of oil as a[61]
medium in the old days; such was the question
of the proper way to render brightness in our
air. “You vagabond!” said Millais—as he
watched Hunt painting in transparent colour,
with light sable brushes, over a ground of half-moist
white, the landscape of “The Hireling
Shepherd”—“that’s just the way I paint
flowers!” They had arrived at this method by
independent lines of thought. To them, and
to their brother artists, it was most important.
Millais, delighted, proposed that they should
keep it a secret—and instantly confided it to
Ford Madox Brown. The outer world was
more concerned with the fact that the sun
could be made to shine upon canvas than
with the way in which it was brought about.
The one inevitable condition of the truth of
a revival is always, by one method or by another,
a return to Nature. This had been
accomplished; and the world, as ever, divided—the
few hailing what they saw as a revelation,
the many denouncing it as heresy.
When a picture by the first Pre-Raphaelite
was carried in triumph through the streets of
Florence there were those who named that[62]
quarter Borgo Allegri; but there were those who
declared that art was at an end now the Byzantine
tradition had been broken. When the
pictures of the last Pre-Raphaelite shone out at
Burlington House, there were happy people who
vowed they looked like “openings in the wall”;
there were also those who declared that art had
come to an end now the tradition of Raphael
was ignored. Steadily, through evil report and
good report, the painter went his way. He did
not hold—as Millais came to hold in after years—that
it was the business of the artist to find out
what most people wanted, and to paint that. He
did not hold—as Rossetti held—that it was the
business of the artist to impose his will on a
select band of followers, trained by himself to
believe that the age of Dante was the Golden
Age, and that colour should be based on
the principles of illumination. He held that
an artist was accountable to God. He held
that an Englishman should study those minds,
those words, which have more power over
England than any others—should help to make
those clear.
Shakespeare had led him to “rate lightly[63]
that kind of art devised only for the initiated,
and to suspect all philosophies which assume
that the vulgar are to be left for ever unredeemed.”
He hated newspapers because “the influence
of writers who have had no other qualification
to judge of art matters than the possession
of more or less literary facility, has been
deterrent and ever fatal to a steady advance of
taste.”
There are two aspects. Art “presents the
form of a nation’s spirit, exactly as the sounding
atoms on a vibrating plane make a constant
and distinct pattern to the sound of a given
note.” Likewise, “All art from the beginning
served for the higher development of men’s
minds. It has ever been valued as good to
sustain strength for noble resolves.”
Determined to serve his generation, not as a
playfellow, not as a tyrant, but as a master, he
followed singly and faithfully that conviction
which had led him from childhood to think of
the Bible as the great factor in human existence.[64]
To the interpretation of the Life of Christ
he gave the best years of his manhood. In
order to understand it more thoroughly he
broke away from comfort, he risked success
at the moment when first she smiled on him,
he left the friend whom he loved. It was not
enough to paint “The Light of the World,”
to set before the eyes of his countrymen the
eternal King, the eternal Priest, knocking at
the door of the human heart, barred darkly in
behind the weeds of selfishness. He would go
to the country where the King dwelt. He would
show:
(1) The coming of God to earth, as it was seen by the
dim eyes of tradition, of mortal learnedness, when there was
found within the precincts of the Temple, among the Rabbis,
a Child who had forgotten to return to his parents.
(2) The oneness of Creation in the form of the suffering
creature dying by the Dead Sea shore—the Goat, the type of
the Lamb.
(3) The sacredness of labour, in the form of the Son of
Man resting from toil in that low workshop where the
Virgin Mother hoarded the gifts of regal wisdom.
(4) The young immortal beauty ever to be seen by the
Child of God, by the spirit of maiden purity, turning the
torrent of death into the river of life, making the darkness
as the noon-day.
To the Bible, Holman Hunt gave his manhood—to
Shakespeare, his youth! No one
who desires to add to the store of England’s
thought but must, at one time or another,
plunge deep into the mind of her greatest
thinker. It is a sign of the unthinking nature
of English art that, before this time, there
were no illustrations of Shakespeare worth the
name. It is characteristic of the pre-eminently
thoughtful nature of this artist that he should
have chosen two subjects that are often misunderstood,
from two plays that are hardly ever
acted—the subject of Forgiveness from the
“Two Gentlemen of Verona;” the subject Death-to-be-preferred-before-slavery
from “Measure
for Measure.”
The duty of the Forgiveness of Sins—which
has been well defined in the one word, Affection—a
duty canvassed and discussed everywhere—is,
in Shakespeare, deprived of the very
aspect of a duty. It seems to have appeared
to him not only natural but inevitable that
anybody should forgive anybody anything. The[66]
most astounding of all his reconciliations is
that of the “Two Gentlemen.” Valentine has
to forgive Proteus; Sylvia has to forgive Proteus
and Valentine into the bargain; Julia has
to forgive Proteus; and Proteus has to forgive
himself. Upon the stage we have seen an
actress, in despair at the difficulty of the
thing, turn her back to the audience and lean
against a tree while the discussion was going
on; but in the picture Sylvia kneels, her hand
left trustingly in that of Valentine, and we
have no sooner looked at it than we believe
and understand. It is the same with
that difficult moment of “Measure for Measure,”
when the two sides of life speak in the
brother and sister:
“And shamed life a hateful.”
The nun, we are sometimes told, is a repellent
person; what business had she to urge
her brother to die when she could save him by
doing wrong herself? To look at “Claudio and
Isabella” is to believe her and to understand.[67]
Another picture owes its motto to one
of Edgar’s mad bursts of song in “King
Lear.”
Thy sheep be in the corn;
And yet one blast of thy minnikin mouth,
Thy sheep shall take no harm.”
It is not an actual shepherd and shepherdess
who are seated in this leafy English landscape,
among the green pastures and by the still
waters. Still less is it the kind of shepherd
and shepherdess that Watteau, Fragonard,
and the china manufactory of Dresden have
accustomed us to associate with the words.
Who and what are they, those careless people
in the bright sunshine, letting the sheep eat
the corn that kills them and the unripe apples?
The shepherd’s crook lies idle on the ground.
He has found a death’s-head moth; he is
too busy showing it to his companion to have
any use for that. She is flattered and pleased
that he should attend to her rather than to
the sheep.[68]
When this picture was painted, the Oxford
Movement was in the air; the shepherd and
the shepherdess were alike busy with the death’s-head
moth.
Turning to modern minds, the poet whose
word weighed most with England at the time
was undoubtedly Tennyson. A verse from “In
Memoriam” describes “The Ship.” “The Lady
of Shalott” gave the subject of a work which
took twelve years in painting. It was enlarged
from a small design in a volume of Tennyson
illustrated by Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti; and
by several other artists, not of their persuasion.
This particular illustration did not find favour
with the poet, he objected to the lady’s hair,
to her manner of wearing it. The dream has
been changed into a profound allegory. The
lady is—if we mistake not—the artist who,
through neglect of the divine gift of reflective
imagination, has failed in the high purpose of
art. It was hers to weave the Quest of the
Holy Grail, as she saw it in the magic mirror.
If she had stayed at her appointed work, all[69]
had gone well. But she looked out of window
to see Sir Lancelot—not the Sir Lancelot of
Tennyson, but a boastful, pleasure-loving knight,
going on his way in the sunlight, with two
trumpeters before him. Then came the curse
upon her, for the order of the world was
broken, the order of the world all about her,
in the flower of the earth, in the bird of
the air, in the stars, governed and guided each
by its own angel. On one side of her room
order is strength as seen in Hercules—on the
other submission, as typified in the earlier
design by the Cross, in the later by the
Nativity. This order she has broken, against
this order she has sinned. The lovely picture
of her weaving the likeness of the
Holy Grail itself will come to naught. But
up above there chimes the one word, Spes;
even for those who have failed there is
hope.[70]
“This subject was the ceremony of May Morning, Magdalen
Tower, Oxford, at sunrise, when the choristers, in perpetuation of a
service which is a survival of primitive Sun-worship—perhaps
Druidical—sing a hymn as the sun appears above the horizon.…
For several weeks I mounted to the Tower roof about four in the
morning with my small canvas to watch for the first rays of the
rising sun, and to choose the sky which was most suitable for the
subject. When all was settled I repeated the composition upon a
larger canvas.”
W. H. H.
The picture is at the painter’s home in Kensington.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
The lady was trying to be a realist:
The mirror cracked from side to side.”
“A man’s work must be the reflex of a
living image in his own mind, and not the
icy double of the facts themselves. It will be
seen that we were never realists. I think art
would have ceased to have the slightest interest
for any of us had the object been only to make
a representation, elaborate or unelaborate, of
a fact in nature. Independently of the conviction
that such a system would put out of
operation the faculty making man “like a God,”
it was apparent that a mere imitator gradually
comes to see nature claylike and finite, as it
seems when illness brings a cloud before the
eyes.”
The practice of making independent studies
for pictures which was dear to the heart of
Rossetti, was discouraged by Hunt and Millais
because they feared to lose unity of effect if they
dwelt upon details except in their relation to
the whole. They painted, first the background,
after the manner described, straight from Nature;
if possible, they placed the figures in the open
air and studied them outside the studio walls.[73]
There are curious differences to be noted
whenever the picture is repeated, and they
seem to be always in the direction of something
more complex than the original. In the
larger version of “The Hireling Shepherd,” he
is far more subtle and sophisticated, while the
shepherdess looks older and more scornful. In
the smaller version of “The Triumph of the
Innocents,” the hues of a soft, moonlit night
prevail, the Virgin is just a sweet mother, the
Child is blessing the children. In the larger
version moonlight intensified, which was found
by means of a lens to be that of the sun,
bathes the children; the Virgin, who is much
older, gazes upon them with eyes in which a
joyful wonder seems to be fighting still with
almost unconquerable sorrow; the Child, a
wheat-ear in his hand, has thrown himself back
in an ecstasy of divine laughter. The large
water-colour of “Christ among the Rabbis,”
the rainbow halo encircling the head of the
Child as he meditates, while the dark-eyed
boys, Nicodemus and Stephen, look on, is[74]
different in every respect from “The Finding
in the Temple.”
IV
PORTRAITS AND OTHER WORKS
“An artist should always make sure that in his treatment of Nature alone
he is able to incorporate some new enchantment to justify his claim as a
master of his craft, doing this at times without any special interest in the
subject he may illustrate.” W. H. H.
The principle given above has been followed
in such works as “Amaryllis,” “The Bride of
Bethlehem,” and “Sorrow.”
There is but one portrait reproduced in this
book, and that a copy of a very early one which
was rescued from destruction by the artist’s
mother. He was going to rub it out that he
might use the ground for something else, and he
objected to the rescue because it would cost him
3s. 6d.; but she stood firm. The portrait painted
of himself in later life, palette in hand, was
executed for the gallery of great artists by
themselves at the Uffizi. The haunting “Head
of Rossetti,” with fixed, intent eyes, was taken[75]
from a pastel sketch, made for Woolner when
he was out in Melbourne. He had appealed
to his Pre-Raphaelite Brothers to give him
some tangible proof of their kinship which
would help him to find clients, because their
names were better known than his, and often
in the paper. They held a meeting, therefore, in
Millais’ studio, worked the whole day, and sent
him out their portraits by each other. Rossetti’s
absorbed gaze is explained by the fact that he
was drawing Hunt at the moment. “Bianca”
was painted in tempera from a beautiful young
American.
One portrait called “The Birthday”—the
picture of a lady—could not but be wronged by
any description whatever.
Day after day last autumn, two little rooms in
Leicester Square were crowded with eager
thousands, thronging to gaze upon the pictures
that, when they first appeared, no one would
buy. Outside, the fog often held sway. Within,
light shone from every wall, the light of dawn
from “May Morning”; the glowing light of[76]
noonday from “The Strayed Sheep”; moonlight
from “The Ship”; soft starlight from “The
Triumph”; the light upon the sea, the downs,
the mountains, the faces of men and women in
the open field; the light of strange fire; the light
of human eyes inspired with hope and purpose;
the radiant light of spiritual force.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE
CHIEF PICTURES MENTIONED
Portrait of the Artist by Himself at Seventeen | 1844 |
Woodstock (first picture sold—for £20) | 1846 |
The Eve of St. Agnes (The Flight of Madeline’s Porphyro) | 1846 |
Rienzi | 1848 |
A Converted British Family sheltering a Missionary | 1850 |
Claudio and Isabella | 1850 |
Valentine and Sylvia | 1851 |
The Hireling Shepherd | 1851 |
The Strayed Sheep | 1852 |
The Light of the World | 1853 |
The Awakened Conscience | 1853 |
The Scapegoat | 1854 |
The Finding of Christ in the Temple | 1854 |
Isabella, or The Pot of Basil | 1867 |
The Shadow of Death | 1869 |
The Ship | 1875[78] |
The Triumph of the Innocents | 1875-1882 |
May Morning | 1889 |
The Lady of Shalott | 1889 |
The Holy Fire | 1892 |
These dates are approximate; the painting of
many of the pictures extended over several years.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” vol. i., by
W. Holman Hunt.
[2] “Pre-Raphaelitism,” vol. i. p. 56.
[3] “Pre-Raphaelitism,” vol. i. p. 61.
[4] “Pre-Raphaelitism,” vol. i. p. 19.
[5] “Pre-Raphaelitism,” etc., vol. i. p. 80.
[6] Hunt, who had written poetry himself, mostly in couplet form, and
in the Spenserian stanza, gave it up on account of Rossetti’s greater
proficiency.
[7] The Virgin Mary.
[8] “Pre-Raphaelitism,” etc., vol. ii p. 328.
Transcriber’s Notes:
The following corrections have been made, on page:
16 ” changed to ’ (my brush, is it?’ caught me up and)
37 “artistocrats” changed to “aristocrats” (hundreds of young aristocrats)
74 “incorporat” changed to “incorporate” (he is able to incorporate some).
All other inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and italisation were preserved from the original.
The illustrations have been moved slightly for reader convenience. The links in
the Table of Contents are edited so that the reader will go to the correct page
even though the original page numbers have been retained.
Links to the mentioned paintings have been added to The Chronological List
of the Chief Pictures Mentioned. A picture of “Woodstock” however was not found.
Every effort has been made to faithfully preserve the illustrations of the
original book. Newer representations of these and other paintings by Holman Hunt
may be available on the internet, for instance here.