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Hunt's works were not initially successful, but he became famous with his religious paintings, notably The Light of the World, which toured Britain and the United States. After travelling to the Holy Land in search of accurate topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works, Hunt painted The Scapegoat, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Shadow of Death, along with many landscapes of the region.
Hunt also painted many works based on poems, such as Isabella and The Lady of Shallot.
All these paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, their hard vivid colour and their elaborate symbolism. These features were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas CarlyleFor the Carlyle Group, see Carlyle Group Thomas Carlyle ( December 4, 1795 February 5, 1881) was a Scottish essayist and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era. He was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, and was educ, according to whom the world itself should be read as a system of visual signs. For Hunt it was the duty of the artist to reveal the correspondence between sign and fact. Out of all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt remained most true to their ideals throughout his career. Millais was best at capturing detail and the quality of his paintings was what they all aspired to, but Millais' work degenerated later in life when he realized that he could sell less time consuming works for less. Rossetti maintained the quality of his work throughout his career, but to a large extent he had always been geared toward mass production and would churn out copies of his previous paintings on demand. Holman Hunt, however, kept to the Pre-Rapaelite ideals and attention to detail throughout his life. (He eventually had to give up painting because failing eyesight meant that he could not get the level of quality that he wanted, although he probably could have begun to sell inferior works.)
Hunt's autobiography Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was written to correct other literature about the origins of the Brotherhood, which in his view did not adequately recognise his own contribution. Many of his late writings are attempts to control the interpretation of his work.
See also English school of paintingThe English school of painting is an expression for English (or British) painters who produced characteristically English paintings. Generally, the term "school" is used to designate a special collection of traditions and processes, a particular method, a
Hunt, William Holman Hunt, William Holman Hunt, William Holman Hunt, William Holman