William Holman Hunt Part I

William Holman Hunt was born in 1827 and was one of the major Pre Raphaelite artists.  He was a Londoner, and his parents were not well off.  He had to go to work at the age of 12, as a clerk.  He was a very serious man, with a preoccupation with sin and religion which showed in his paintings.   He was criticised at times for clumsiness in his work but he was a talented painter.  One of his most famous works shows the interest in morality and religion that was a large part of his life –.  Called the Awakening Conscience, it is about a young “kept woman”, who remembers her childhood morality while in the arms of her seducer.

Hunt tried very hard to make his paintings accurate scientifically and in other ways, like most of the pre Raphaelites and he worked very hard and was rarely satisfied with his efforts.

In the 1850s he travelled to the Holy Land because he wanted to paint religious works about the life of Christ and form the Bible. He was willing to make the long journey because he was so was anxious to ensure that his work was correct. He painted the works known as The Scapegoat, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, and The Shadow of Death, along with many landscapes of the region.

In 1865 Hunt married.  He had had a long running on and off relationship with one of his models - a working class girl called Annie Miller. She was from a poor background and had had no education, but Hunt (like many Victorian men with a young bride or one from a different class) tried to educate and fit her to become his wife.  However Annie was a flirtatious young woman, who enjoyed the company of other men (including the notorious rake Lord Ranelagh) and she broke off their engagement.  She did not want to be pushed into a mould that did not suit her and she married someone else. 

Hunt then married Fanny Waugh, who was from an artistic and intellectual middle class family... (They were related to the novelist Evelyn Waugh)…Their marriage was sadly short lived.  She gave birth to a son while they were travelling abroad and then died of fever in Florence  a few years after their marriage.

In 1875 after a period of grieving -Hunt scandalised society by marrying Fanny’s younger sister Edith.  Such a marriage was illegal under British Law, and the couple had to go to Switzerland to have the ceremony.  For many years, the British parliament had tried to legalise “Marriage with a deceased wife’s sister” but the Bishops in the House of Lords had regularly thrown out the bill and such marriages were considered wrong by many religious people at the time. 

Edith’s marriage was not accepted very well by many of her own family... and she herself suffered a certain stress because she was living in a union which was considered wrong by so many people.