HUNT, HOLMAN

   painter, born in London; became a pupil of Rossetti, and "his greatest disciple," and joined the Pre-Raphaelite movement; he began with "worldly subjects," but soon quitted these "virtually for ever" under Rossetti's influence, and "rose into the spiritual passion which first expressed itself in his 'Light of the World,'" with this difference, as Ruskin points out, between him and his "forerunner," that whereas Rossetti treated the story of the New Testament as a mere thing of beauty, with Hunt, "when once his mind entirely fastened on it, it became ... not merely a Reality, not merely the greatest of Realities, but the only Reality"; in this religious realistic spirit, as Ruskin further remarks, all Hunt's great work is done, and he notices how in all subjects which fall short of the religious element, "his power also is shortened, and he does those things worst which are easiest to other men"; his principal works in this spirit are "The Scape-Goat," "The Finding of Christ in the Temple," "The Shadow of Death," and the "Triumph of the Innocents," to which we may add "The Strayed Sheep," remarkable as well for its vivid sunshine, "producing," says Ruskin, "the same impressions on the mind as are caused by the light itself"; b. 1827.