William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) lived long enough to see his role as founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood embraced and dissected. Like John Everett Millais, he was later charged with abandoning his early revolutionary artistic goals and pandering to mainstream taste. Hunt’s popularity represented less of a movement away from early idealism than a gradual refinement and elaboration of it, and the public came to love the work that resulted. A catalogue accompanying an exhibition with the same title, Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision offers new insights into how this process unfolded in ten essays, which discuss Hunt’s work from a refreshingly wide range of perspectives.

The first essay, “Visions and Revisions” by Carole Silver, argues that Hunt redefined the relationship between word and image, using text and literature in unexpected ways both in his paintings and in the process of promoting them. She demonstrates how the artist evolved from the highly literal transcription of single narratives, to fashioning complex dialogues between multiple source materials, and ultimately exploring his own narrative inventions derived from personal interpretations of canonical texts. Also dealing with the early years of Hunt’s career is “Pre-Raphaelite Rebellion: Brotherly Love,” in which Carol Jacobi cautions readers from buying whole-heartedly into the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revisionist narratives about the birth of the Pre-Raphaelites. Jacobi offers a brief history of the Brotherhood as not dominated by a single genius or vision, and committed not only to a revolution in painting but to generating new ideas about poetry, philosophy, religion, and politics. Hunt’s particular contribution was his fascination with perception, and his plein-air experiments in representing illumination and reflection. It would have been interesting for Jacobi to probe the boundary between the scientific study of optical experience and the source of the intensity of Hunt’s color palette, which can seem almost garishly unnatural in so many of his early works, from Claudio and Isabella (1850) to The Scapegoat (1854–55).

Linda Parry’s essay, “Textile Background: Cloth and Costume,” encourages the reader to regard the specificity of Hunt’s textiles as more than an example of his Pre-Raphaelite love of detail. Parry traces the attention that Hunt lavished on describing cloth, from his childhood proximity to the textile industry and early education designing patterns, to his experiences in the Holy Land, which brought about a transition during the late 1850s from saturated, artificial colors to a more subtle communication of natural dyes and fabrics observed in bright sunlight. His own collection of modern and historic fabrics and garments created a corpus from which he drew inspiration for the costumes in his paintings. Parry convincingly demonstrates how the modern Middle Eastern garments and textiles acquired by Hunt willfully introduced anachronism through the costuming in his Biblical subjects.

In “Women: Portraits and Passion,” Jacobi looks at the intimate portraits that dominated Hunt’s production during the decade between 1858 and 1868. These were inspired by old master portraits he saw at the 1857 Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition and on trips to the Continent, which brought about a transformation in Hunt’s work toward a more sensuous style, Italianate composition, and Venetian color palette, informing his representations of single characters in the “historical present” (78). Hunt’s emotional connection to many of the sitters painted during this period tempered not only a purely sensual aesthetic but also what has been regarded as the potentially subservient character of a “truth to nature” approach to painting. Jacobi observes that the result is a series of perspicacious psychological studies that seek to filter modern beauty through the lens of history. She presents a constructive approach to portraits like those of Annie Miller in The Awakening Conscience (1853–54) or Fanny Waugh in Il Dolce far Niente (1859), which are usually considered to be more revealing of the artist himself (84–88).

Jan Marsh argues that the Victorian obsession with the fallen woman is as much a preoccupation with masculine sexual behavior. In “Men: Virtue and Honor,” she explains how Hunt’s pictures like The Awakening Conscience, The Eve of St. Agnes (1848), The Hireling Shepherd (1851–1852), and Claudio and Isabella offer a multi-faceted treatment of the themes of feminine and masculine sexuality, with an emphasis on masculine responsibility. Marsh goes on to interpret works executed by the artist in the Middle East, including The Lantern-Maker’s Courtship (ca. 1854–60), as manifestations of Hunt’s bafflement at the unfamiliarity of female seclusion, which was dealt with by casting it as a Western courtship ritual.

Perhaps the most illuminating essay in the collection is Jonathan Mane-Wheoki’s “The Light of the World: Mission and Message,” in which he enumerates a long list of potential literary, poetic, theological, and artistic sources of inspiration for what was the most widely exhibited picture in history (113). He focuses on the controversy its doctrine provoked, and the significance of John Ruskin’s defense in making the picture emblematic of Victorian Christianity. Much is made of the resistance Hunt met from critics, and particularly authorities at Keble College Chapel, where the first version was contentiously and variously displayed. Moving from detailing the cities and nations in which millions of viewers flocked to see The Light of the World (1851–53) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, to the vitriol it has inspired from artists and critics in the last several decades, Mane-Wheoki succeeds in communicating the transformative spiritual and artistic struggle that it represented for the artist. Hunt’s vision for the work included its widespread reproduction and dissemination, which is in part responsible for how the picture’s reputation has suffered over the last century.

Hunt’s relationship to the Holy Land is sensitively dealt with by Nicholas Tromans in “Palestine: Picture of Prophecy.” A more nuanced picture is drawn of Hunt, who has been criticized as a supreme example of the Victorian artist as bigoted imperialist. The cumulative six-and-a-half years that Hunt spent in Palestine shaped not only his artistic vision but his spiritual beliefs concerning the role of prophecy in Christianity, beliefs that would by the 1890s crystallize in Zionist convictions. Tromans argues that Hunt understood and desired that the friction between the invasiveness of artistic scrutiny and the challenges of Western cultural intercourse with the Middle East be palpable in his painting. He does not, however, go on to suggest how the artist’s Zionism might have impacted either his selection or execution of religious subjects during his later career.

In “Painting: Materials and Methods," Joyce H. Townsend and Jennifer Poulin present the results of analyzing three of the artist’s palettes and samples of his pigments. Hunt was unusually preoccupied with the quality, consistency, and stability of his materials, and tirelessly campaigned for the regulation of artists’ materials. Recent analysis of some of his pictures, including Il Dolce far Niente and The Awakening Conscience, testify to Hunt’s practice of constantly altering his work as his vision evolved. Commitment to artistic integrity also lies at the heart of Brenda Rix’s essay, “Prints: Spreading the Word.” Rix underscores the fact that Hunt’s legacy was to a great degree shaped by his astute use of reproductive media. A lover of prints from an early age, Hunt was deeply invested in the medium as a practitioner and collector as well as a painter/businessman, who saw its capacity to greatly enlarge his sphere of influence. Throughout his career Hunt demanded a great deal of control over the reproductive process, whether it was engraving or photographic, producing his own replicas of the originals or retouching proofs when necessary. Hunt’s investment in the quality of these prints is a reminder of the value that reproductive works have lost since the Victorian era, when they were so highly regarded by artists and consumers alike.

Finally, in “The Canadian Diaspora: Last Rights,” Katharine Lochnan investigates correspondence that reveals Hunt’s fruitful friendships with the Zionist Henry Wentworth Monk, the theologian and archaeologist Charles Trick Currelly, and the banker and art patron Sir Edmund Walker. These friendships show Hunt as an emotionally demonstrative and industrious man still championing the cause of Zionism in his old age. Such accounts are useful since they challenge the opinions put by some, including the artist’s nephew Evelyn Waugh, that Hunt died a friendless and self-righteous man.

As befitting an exhibition catalogue, this book is richly illustrated, and most of the contributors engage in visual analysis that encourages the reader to look carefully while reading. Unfortunately, the images are awkwardly organized. Considering that the artist’s major works are analyzed by several authors in succession, keeping images always at hand is an impossibility, but having the figure or plate numbers in the margins without the page numbers means that the reader is always chasing images not illustrated nearby. This process is further complicated by the fact that the book has only a list of plates, without reference to page number, and no index. Nonetheless, this is a thoughtful study of Hunt the artist, the person, and the activist. Though a product of his age and its prejudices, in most of these essays Hunt is also revealed as a tirelessly inquisitive individual who was disenchanted by organized religion and fearful of both Western and Eastern imperialist agendas in the Middle East. This book is an essential source for any student of the Pre-Raphaelites as well as a valuable case study of an artist operating in those liminal decades around 1900. It also serves as a counterbalance to a modernist narrative of art history that has tended to eschew thoughtful consideration of popular artists like Hunt who retained connections to the academy.