Hunt, William Holman

Related Category: European Art, 1600 to the Present: Biographies

1827–1910, English painter. Hunt was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and one of its most conscientious exponents. His paintings are often crude in color and laborious in technique, but are completely sincere in their devotion to Pre-Raphaelite principles. In 1854 he visited Palestine in order to have authentic material for his religious paintings. Among his best-known works are The Light of the World (Oxford Univ.) and The Triumph of the Innocents (Liverpool Gall.).

See his Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905–6); studies by F. G. Stephens (1860) and A. C. Gissing (1936).