The Festival of St Swithin (The Dovecot)

Ashmolean

Portrait of Thomas Combe, Printer to the University (1797-1872)

Ashmolean

The School-girl Hymn, 1859

Ashmolean

The Hireling Shepherd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hireling_Shepherd

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/the-collections/search-the-collection/display.php?EMUSESSID=1828ea76fa2d8c31480c6725ca3ed106&irn=195

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/whh/replete/hireling.html

The Awakening Conscience : Light of the World

Hunt meant the two pictures to be seen side by side. The girl is responding to Christ's knock on the door.

The Awakening Conscience - discarded glove

foretelling her future

The Awakening Conscience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awakening_Conscience

William Holman Hunt - The Haunted Manor 1849

Most of this landscape was painted in the open air in Wimbledon Park, in south-west London. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed strongly in painting directly from nature.The picture has a low view point, filled with close and fastidious studies of plants, rocks and water. The murky tones of the waterfall and tangled vegetation contrast strongly with the narrow, brightly-lit strip of landscape at the top of the picture. It is likely that this and the deserted manor house in the top right were added later, to give the scene a mysterious atmosphere.

William Holman Hunt - the versions of Light of the World

The Light of the World (1853–54) is an allegorical painting by William Holman Hunt representing the figure of Jesus preparing to knock on an overgrown and long-unopened door, illustrating Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me". According to Hunt: "I painted the picture with what I thought, unworthy though I was, to be by Divine command, and not simply as a good Subject." The door in the painting has no handle, and can therefore be opened only from the inside, representing "the obstinately shut mind".Hunt, 50 years after painting it, felt he had to explain the symbolism.

The original, painted at night in a makeshift hut at Worcester Park Farm in Surrey, is now in a side room off the large chapel at Keble College, Oxford.Toward the end of his life, Hunt painted a life-size version, which was hung in St Paul's Cathedral, London, after a world tour where the picture drew large crowds. Due to Hunt's increasing infirmity, he was assisted in the completion of this version by English painter Edward Robert Hughes. Hunt also painted a third version. The first version is now to be found in Keble College, Oxford. Another version  is in Manchester Art Gallery. 

The version which is found in St. Paul’s, was painted in Hunt’s old age. His eyesight was failing and he was helped by pupil, Edward Hughes. There are small differences between the different versions, most notably, in the Cathedral’s version, Jesus’ halo is not painted as the full moon as it appears in the other two.

Charles Booth, a wealthy ship owner and philanthropist, was a great devotee of Hunt’s work. He organised for the large version of the work to be taken around the world where it was seen by around two million people. Whilst in Australia, for example, reports state that it was viewed by a hundred people every minute.  Booth donated the painting to the Cathedral in 1907 and it has hung in there for most of past hundred years. 

 It inspired several musical works, including Sir Arthur Sullivan's 1873 oratorio The Light of the World.

http://www.stpauls.co.uk/StPauls/documents/spc_light_of_the_world_booklet.pdf

Maas, Jeremy (1984). Holman Hunt and the Light of the World

Holman Hunt's Light of the World in the side chapel at Keble College, Oxford.

Manchester Art Gallery : First floor: Pre-Raphaelites

William Holman Hunt - The Lady of Shalott

True Painters of Light Stephanie Piña

Brilliant post
http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/true-painters-of-light/

The Old Church, Ewell by William Holman Hunt 1847

William Holman Hunt - The Haunted Manor 1849

Most of this landscape was painted in the open air in Wimbledon Park, in south-west London. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed strongly in painting directly from nature.The picture has a low view point, filled with close and fastidious studies of plants, rocks and water. The murky tones of the waterfall and tangled vegetation contrast strongly with the narrow, brightly-lit strip of landscape at the top of the picture. It is likely that this and the deserted manor house in the top right were added later, to give the scene a mysterious atmosphere.

William Holman Hunt - The Triumph of the Innocents 1883-4

Hunt began painting this subject while on a visit to the Holy Land in the 1870s. It shows Mary, Joseph and infant Jesus escaping to Egypt as King Herod kills all the first-born males or 'innocents' in Bethlehem, described in The Gospel of Matthew, 2: 16-18. Hunt originally intended to show just the Holy Family, but he later decided to add the martyred innocents. The Holy Family are surrounded by the spirits of the children slain by Herod. Hunt wanted the bubbles, or ‘airy globes’ which accompany the procession, to convey a sense of the waves of ‘the streams of eternal life’.

From a letter from William Holman Hunt to William Bell Scott, 5 January, 1880, reproduced in W. Minto (ed), Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, vol 2, 1892

The beings I want to represent really differ in this, that they have only just left this life instead of having got altogether established as celestial creatures. Some of them, if not all, may indeed scarcely have altogether lost the last warmth of mortal life. It seems desirable, therefore, to avoid a treatment which would make them like the angels who regard the face of our Father in heaven. A support to this view I find also in the desirability of avoiding to distinctly pronounce the figures to be either subjective or objective. I wish to avoid positively declaring them to be more than a vision to the Virgin conjured up by her maternal love for her own child, the Saviour, who is to be calling her attention to them.

How Victorian artist gave his ex the brush off, repainting over her face with the image of his new lover

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2196569/How-Victorian-artist-William-Holman-Hunt-gave-ex-brush-painting-face-new-lovers.html

William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853

The Children’s Holiday - William Holman Hunt 1864

The Birthday (A Portrait Of The Artist’s Wife, Edith) - William Holman Hunt 1868

Bianca - William Holman Hunt 1859