William Holman Hunt
1827-1910
Romantic British, Victorian Era, Painter and Fine Arts Educator and
Co-Founder of The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)
Artistically and
stylistically influenced the following painters and art periods;
Early
Renaissance,
Byzantine Style,
Gothic era, ,
Sassetta,
Taddeo di Bartolo,
Giotto, Rosseti and
John Everett
Millais
Education - Royal Academy in London, England
cause of death - old age
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About The Artist
Hunt is one of the founding members of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters opposed to the stale, academic style of art required by the oppressive Royal Art Academy of England. Like the work of Rossetti and John Everett Millais, his paintings are centered around classical mythology, medieval legends, and the biblical stories. His work is luminous, romantic and unforgettable, overflowing with symbolic realism.
As a young man Hunt was extremely religious, reading his bible daily. According to his biographer, Mary Schell Hoke Bacon, "He hated school and at twelve years of age was taken from it. His father wanted him to become a warehouse merchant like himself, and he began life as clerk or apprentice to an auctioneer. He next went into the employment of some calico-printers of Manchester. The designing of calicoes can hardly be called art, even if the department of design had fallen to Holman Hunt's lot and we have no evidence that it did, but he started to be an artist nevertheless, there in the print-shop."
Hunt rejected the crass materialism of Victorian society and spent his leisure hours in payer and scripture study. He was compelled to reconnect with the lost spirituality of Gothic, Medieval and Early-Renaissance imagery and was especially drawn to the symbolic realism and mysticism of Sassetta' s paintings. He sought to attain the moral and spiritual state of a bygone era. John Ruskin, famous Victorian Art Critic and major influence on the PRB advised "You must have the right moral state first, or you cannot have the art. But when the art is once obtained, its reflected action enhances and completes the moral state out of which it arose, and, above all, communicates the exultation to other minds which are already morally capable of the like."
William Hunt Quotations
"The earliest truth that we're taught is that there's a world
alongside this world, with spirits, not mortals, an enchanted universe
of fairies, wizards, leprechauns and trolls. They are all around us. One
has only to open his eyes." -- William Holman Hunt Quote
Information About The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)
The term Pre-Raphaelites refers to High Renaissance artist Raphael. Some members of the PRB referred to Raphael's work utter rubbish and criticized his decadent themes and depraved lifestyle. Raphael died of syphilis and was known as a drunkard and carouser. They took particular issue with Raphael's leering cherubs and eroticized angels. Dante Rossetti and the other (PRB) artists embraced the artistic manner of Mediaeval and Early Renaissance painters; Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Paolo Veneziano, Andrea del Verrocchio and Giotto Bondone. The (PRB) felt that these painters infused their works with spiritual meaning, godliness and sacred themes. John Ruskin asserted "the fineness of the possible art is an index of the moral purity and majesty of the emotion it expresses."
The Founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was founded in 1848. The most important artist was a handsome and charming painter named Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti and his chums, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, rejected Neoclassical and High Renaissance art and embraced the spiritually infused works of the Early Renaissance, Byzantine Style and Gothic painters. They sought to created a new artistic style using biblical, mythological, and literary imagery as the subjects of their art-works. Their paintings often contain obscure visual symbols and secret riddles.
William Holman Hunt's
favorite
subject matter
mythology
Arthurian legends
femme fatale
Italian themes
classical themes
historical themes
literary themes
mermaids
wood nymphs
Writers who influenced William Holman Hunt
Margaret Gatty
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
John Keats
Shakespeare
Coventry Patmore
Charles Dickens
Tennyson
Dinah Maria Mulock
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