1851 -1905 · Consciousness, light, legend and desert

Hunt's famous works show the breadth of Pre-Raphaelitism: moral interior, Christian allegory, Arthurian poetry and Holy Land landscape share haunting precision.

William Holman Hunt remained throughout his life the most faithful defender of the principles of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood founded in 1848. The Awakening of Conscience, painted in 1853 -1854, placed a young woman maintained at the moment when she stood up, seized by a possibility of conversion. The mirror, the thrown glove, the cat and the tangled wires give objects a moral function. The Light of the world represents Christ in front of a door overgrown with vegetation and devoid of an exterior handle: conversion must come from within. The Light of the world represents Christ in front of a door overgrown with vegetation and devoid of an exterior handle: conversion must come from within. The Light of the world represents Christ in front of a door overgrown with vegetation and devoid of an exterior handle: conversion must come from within. The Scapegoat pushes the truth of the place to the saline shores of the Dead Sea, where Hunt studies a landscape which becomes an image of sacrifice. The Lady of Shalott, work a late revival for decades transforms Tennyson's poem into a material catastrophe: tapestry, threads and hair are unleashed when the heroine looks at the forbidden world. These paintings are famous because they make the symbol inseparable from observation. Pure color, equal detail and calculated light require reading each surface. Hunt sometimes produces several versions of a subject in order to respond to sponsors and spread his message. His Victorian fame sometimes relies as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the images as on their circulation through engraving. His Victorian fame is based as much on the narrative power of the light of the world. His reading favors figures.

In Hunt, the masterpiece does not hide its message behind beauty: each color, object and gesture participates in a demanding moral reading.