Isabella replies, "HLAS, HLAS!"
Art Neuendorffer
<<In September of 1848 William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais
and Rossetti formed a group which they called the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood based on the ideals they had been exposed to through
the writings of John Ruskin, primarily Ruskin's Modern Painters.
The young artists sought the reform of art and to return it to a
pre-Renaissance style of painting with emphasis placed on symbolism,
purity of form, and simplicity. The term 'Pre-Raphaelite' was
chosen because the 3 admired early Italian art before Raphael
and 'Brotherhood' for it's secret-society connotations.
The number *SEVEN* was considered mystical so they decided that
this would be the number of members within the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. Soon four others were persuaded to join,
Thomas Woolner, Frederick George Stephens, James Collinson
and Michael Rossetti who would become the group's historian.
Often the artist would sit for each other's paintings
and the mysterious "PRB" became their signature.>>
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*SAND* : TRUE (OHG/Danish)
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of *SAND*:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it WOULD be grand!"
"If *SEVEN* maids with *SEVEN* mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
---------------------------------------------------------------
William Holman Hunt, Valentine Rescuing Silvia from Proteus (1851)
http://www.abcgallery.com/H/huntwh/huntwh3.html
<<Hunt typically chooses, as in his other pictures, an emotionally
charged moment to paint; in Act V, scene iv, of The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, Proteus menacingly threatens Silvia when he says, "I'll force
thee yield to my desire." Valentine then steps forward at the moment
of eminent rape and admonishes his best friend Proteus: "Ruffian, let
go that rude uncivil touch; / Thou friend of an ill fashion!" Julia,
disguised as a boy, meanwhile leans against a tree and looks on.
Valentine Rescuing Silvia from Proteus is a brilliant example of
Pre-Raphaelite technique; pure colors are painted on a wet white base
and the details of the scene, done on the grounds of Knole House in
Kent, are meticulously executed, down to the individual leaves and
blades of grass. This painting, one of Hunt's most significant works,
must actually be seen in the Birmingham Gallery if the viewer wants to
appreciate its stunning effect.
The attention to detail--what one reviewer disapprovingly called "a
singular devotion to the minute accidents of their subjects"--was in
fact one element of the style that evoked the contempt of the critics
for the "unabated absurdity" of this "class of juvenile artists who
style themselves PRB." Silvia, they noted, looked shopworn and jaded,
and Julia was portrayed as a "sulking lubberly schoolboy." Hunt was in
good company, however, for the critics equally condemned the paintings
of Millais, Collins and Brown--his Pre-Raphaelite brothers--that were
shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1851.
One critical voice rose above all the others when John Ruskin, noting
that the Times review had been "scornful as well as severe," in May
1851 wrote his own letter to the Times in answer to the critics. The
thing most despised by them was what he most admired: "finish or
detail, and brilliancy of colour" (Ruskin, Art Criticism 379). Ruskin
admits that Silvia, as she is painted by Hunt, is not a person that
Proteus or anyone else might love at first sight, but this deficit is
more than compensated for, he says, by the "truth, power, and finish"
of details like Julia's sleeve and Valentine's chain mail.
The greatest defect of Valentine Rescuing Silvia from Proteus is the
"commonness" of the faces in the four figures, but this, he remarks,
is, indeed, almost the only fault. Further examination of this picture
has even raised the estimate I had previously formed of its marvellous
truth in detail and splendour in colour; nor is its general conception
less deserving of praise: the action of Valentine, his arm thrown
round Sylvia, and his hand clasping hers at the same instant as she
falls at his feet, is most faithful and beautiful, nor less so the
contending of doubt and distress with awakening hope in the
half-shadowed, half-sunlit countenance of Julia. Nay, even the
momentary struggle of Proteus with Sylvia just past, is indicated by
the trodden grass and broken fungi of the foreground. But all this
thoughtful conception, and absolutely inimitable execution, fail in
making immediate appeal to the feelings, owing to the unfortunate
type chosen for the face of Sylvia. Certainly this cannot be
she whose lover was "As rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty seas, if all their *SANDS* were pearl.''
[ *SAND* : TRUE (OHG/Danish) ]
Nor is it, perhaps, less to be regretted that, while in Shakspeare's
play there are nominally "Two Gentlemen," in Mr. Hunt's picture there
should only be one,--at least, the kneeling figure on the right has by
no means the look of a gentleman. But this may be on purpose, for any
one who remembers the conduct of Proteus throughout the previous
scenes will, I think, be disposed to consider that the error lies more
in Shakspeare's nomenclature than in Mr. Hunt's ideal. (Ruskin 375-6)
Ruskin says in this remarkably prescient review of Hunt, Millais and
Brown that he knew none of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood personally,
but the great critic saw in these young artists a strength and power
which, he concludes, will in time "lay in our England the foundations
of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for 300 years".>>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
<<William Holman Hunt was born in London and entered the schools of
the Royal Academy in 1844, where he met John Everett Millais, his
life-long friend. In 1848-9, Hunt and Millais, together with D. G.
Rossetti and several other painters, formed the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood; as a group these artists turned from the Royal Academy
and its styles of painting and pledged themselves instead to paint
accurately and faithfully from nature in precise detail. In dedication
to these principles Hunt visited the Holy Land three times--in 1854,
1869 and 1873--to study and capture the correct historical and
natural backgrounds and lighting for his religious paintings.
His best-known painting in this genre is The Light of the World
(1853), which now hangs in Keble College, Oxford (the original) and
in St. Paul's Cathedral (a larger copy). Like all his paintings, the
details are meticulously rendered, the craftsmanship superb, and the
canvas filled with allusion and symbolic implications.
Hunt did several paintings on scenes from Shakespeare, and he felt
an affinity for the playwright, who, he says in his memoirs,
impressed him with his ability to speak to people of all classes,
the rich and the poor, the educated and the manual laborer:
As a dramatic teacher he did not despise the groundlings; indeed I
concluded that the great measure of welcome awarded to this kingly
genius was but a just response to his own large-hearted sympathy with
his fellows of every class; he catered to the unlearned not less than
for the profoundest philosopher.
This reflected his own attitude towards art, "to rate lightly that
kind of art devised only for the initiated" and to strive to speak
through his paintings to the largest possible audience.>>
http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/Hunt.html
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William Holman Hunt, Claudio and Isabella (1850)
http://www.abcgallery.com/H/huntwh/huntwh2.html
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<<The painting depicts a moment from Act III, scene i of Measure for
Measure when the novice Isabella visits her brother Claudio in prison
to tell him that her plea for mercy from Angelo has failed and that he
has lewdly proposed to her that she might trade her virginity for her
brother's life. George Landow assigns Claudio and Isabella to the
second rank of Hunt's paintings; one way employed by Hunt to prevent
"his art from presenting nature 'claylike and finite'," says Landow,
"was to depict emotionally powerful scenes from literature and from
sacred and secular history." The scene in Claudio and Isabella, unlike
Hunt's Lady of Shalott and his religious paintings that portray "such
powerful moments of illumination or conversion," simply depicts a more
"conventionally theatrical subject"
Most of the critics who first reviewed the painting in 1853 agreed
with Landow; they saw little in the picture to admire. The reviewer
for The Examiner, for example, praised Hunt's depiction of Isabella,
but of he says that Claudio, "whose fear of death is represented by a
look and posture of imbecile lunacy, is a distressing and exaggerated
feature of the scene. If it is to be supposed that Claudio expressed,
in such a way of Mr. Hunt depicts it, his distress of mind, it is a
thing that we had much rather suppose than see deliberately painted."
Richard Altick, who quotes from this review in The Examiner, perhaps
helps us understand why the painting does not ring true as a
representation of the action in Act III; he says in his note on the
painting that it describes the exchange between the two when "Claudio
pleads with his sister Isabella to give herself to Angelo in order
that he can be released from prison" (279).
If Altick correctly identifies the exact moment the painting captures,
then I would agree that the expressions on the faces of Claudio and
Isabella and their gestures do not genuinely reflect the action. That
is why I would suggest another interpretation for the painting. In the
earlier part of their conversation, Isabella has explained to Claudio
what transpired when she had her audience with Angelo; she asks then,
"What says my brother?"
CLAUDIO: Death is a fearful thing.
ISABELLA: And shamed life a hateful.
CLAUDIO: Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Isabella replies, "Alas, alas!" This is the precise moment, I think,
depicted in the painting. Isabella sympathetically lays her hands upon
her brother's heart to comfort him and looks up at him with obvious
pity and concern. But Claudio looks away with furrowed brow and
awkwardly fiddles with the shackles on his leg. He knows that what he
is to say next must be put in the most diplomatic terms, for he is
going to ask her to trade her virginity for his life. Now the scene
makes sense: Isabella's expression, Claudio's awkwardness, the
half-open mouth prepared to ask for this sacrifice, and his gaze
directed away from sister, whom he cannot look in the eye as he asks
of her what he must.
CLAUDIO: Sweet sister, let me live:
What sin you do to save a brother's life,
Nature dispenses with the deed so far
That it becomes a virtue.
ISABELLA: O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
>From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
CLAUDIO: Nay, hear me, Isabel.
ISABELLA: O, fie, fie, fie!
Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade.
Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd:
'Tis best thou diest quickly.
CLAUDIO: O hear me, Isabella!
Thus Hunt captures the moment just before Isabella's violent eruption
of disdain and disgust in defense of what one critic has called her
"rancid chastity." Her accusation--"O you beast!"--and his plea, "O
hear me, Isabella!" suggests an entirely different painting than the
one we see. Christopher Wood is correct when he says Claudio and
Isabella is "typical of Hunt's preoccupation with sin and guilt and
his intensely moralistic approach to art," but he, like most critics,
incorrectly assumes that the painting describes a scene where Claudio
"pleads with her to save his life" (Wood, Pre-Raphaelites, 19).
Few critics would argue, however, with the craftsmanship and the
execution of the painting; Hunt had gone to the Lollard prison at
Lambeth Palace for the background of the picture to get the details
right. Hanging in the casement is the lute with which he might have
wooed his young lady, and carved in the wood just above the ring that
fastens his chain is a reminder of how he came to be in this mess in
the first place: the names Claudio and Juliet. The fallen petals of
the flower on his cloak at his feet contrasts poignantly with the
blossoms on the tree and the blue skies just outside the bars of the
window in cell. All in all, it is a powerful depiction of an awkward
and dramatically charged moment in Measure for Measure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
William Holman Hunt. The Hireling Shepherd, 1851.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/William_Holman_Hunt_001.jpg
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<<A viewer might look a long time at this painting for the source in
Shakespeare and never find it, but these lines from Act II, scene vi
of King Lear, spoken by Edgar disguised as the madman Tom, accompanied
the picture when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy:
[S]leepeth or waketh thou, jolly shepherd?
[T]hy sheep be in the corn;
[A]nd for one blast of thy minikin mouth,
[T]hy sheep shall take no harm.
The association may begin to come into focus, but the
implications of the song from King Lear are not totally clear
without these comments from a letter written by Hunt.
Shakespeare's song represents a Shepherd who is neglecting his real
duty of guarding the sheep: instead of using his voice in truthfully
performing his duty, he is using his "minikin mouth" in some idle way.
He was a type thus of other muddle headed pastors who instead of
performing their services to their flock--which is in constant
peril--discuss vain questions of no value to any human soul. My fool
has found a death's head moth, and this fills his little mind with
forebodings of evil and he takes it to an equally sage counsellor
for her opinion. She scorns his anxiety from ignorance rather than
profundity, but only the more distracts his faithfulness: while she
feeds her lamb with sour apples his sheep have burst bounds and got
into the corn. It is not merely that the wheat will be spoilt, but
in eating it the sheep are doomed to destruction from becoming
what farmers call "blown."
The painting, Hunt says, is thus to be read allegorically as
a comment on good and bad pastors, a topic of particular concern
at mid-century with the debate between evangelical and high church
factions in the Church of England. Following Hunt's lead for a
religious interpretation of the painting and the passage from
King Lear, critics have as well suggested other possible
sources in John 10:11-14 and John Milton's Lycidas.
Hunt was perhaps the firmest adherent to the principles of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of which he was a founding member: The
Hireling Shepherd is a brilliant and faithful depiction of a natural
rural scene (some say that he is the best artist at reproducing the
actual effects of sunlight and shadow) and at the same time says
something important and timeless that reaches beyond the actual
painting itself. As George Landow puts it in William Holman Hunt and
Typological Symbolism, the artist wanted to create an art "that could
marry realism and elaborate iconography, fact and feeling, matter
and spirit. . . . an art that demanded both an immediate emotional
response and one that was meditative and analytical. . . . he wanted
to create an art that would be simultaneously intellectual and deeply
moving, popular and appealing to an elite, objective and subjective".
The allusion to King Lear does not stop here, for Hunt returned again
to the subject of lost sheep in another painting, Our English Coasts,
1852, which he exhibited in 1853 and then later renamed Strayed Sheep.
Ideas similar to The Hireling Shepherd are, A. C. Gissing notes,
hinted at in Strayed Sheep.
http://www.abcgallery.com/H/huntwh/huntwh4.html
In this painting the sheep are in imminent danger as they wander along
the precipice of the cliff, and here there is no shepherd in sight to
protect them from falling over the edge. They are completely
abandoned. Critics immediately associated Our English Coasts with
Hunt's earlier painting, The Hireling Shepherd and suggested that the
painting had another meaning and spoke "of men, and not of sheep."
Others read into the painting political overtones and speculated about
not only negligent pastors but irresponsible political leaders who
allowed the electorate to wander dangerously. Given Hunt's "intense
nationalism," Landow suggests that some sort of political as well as
religious interpretation may be plausible.
A political reading of both the passage from King Lear and the
painting is more than plausible in our own century. Critics note that
Lear is in a sense the bad shepherd in Tom's song, for his subjects do
indeed suffer from the initial act of foolishness when he gives up
kingship and throws his country into chaos and civil war. Much like a
painter, Grigori Kozintsev graphically depicts this fact in his 1970
film of King Lear. Jack Jorgens in Shakespeare on Film analyzes the
opening scenes of this "Christian-Marxist" Russian King Lear and notes
that the groups of citizens coming to Lear's meeting with his
daughters in the opening scene of the play "become larger until they
cover the hillsides like ants. Having gathered, they wait in silence
before the massive walls of Lear's castle. . . . Kozintsev shows us a
wasteland peopled, masses of subjects who have suffered from Lear's
tyranny, blindness, and neglect, who after his rash, fatal act are
ravaged by the civil war and must rebuild when it is over". Modern
critics of King Lear certainly would not reject a political reading
of either The Hireling Shepherd or Strayed Sheep.>>
------------------------------------------------------------
_AFTER THREE DAYS_ by Lewis Carroll (Feb. 16, 1861)
["Written after seeing Holman Hunt's picture,
The Finding of Christ in the Temple."] -
http://thriceholy.net/JPGs/temple.jpg
I STOOD within the gate
Of a great temple, 'mid the living stream
Of worshippers that thronged its regal state
Fair-pictured in my dream. -
Jewels and gold were there;
And floors of marble lent a crystal sheen
To body forth, as in a lower air,
The wonders of the scene. -
Such wild and lavish grace
Had whispers in it of a coming doom;
As richest flowers lie strown about the face
Of her that waits the tomb. -
The wisest of the land
Had gathered there, three solemn trysting-days,
For high debate: men stood on either hand
To listen and to gaze. -
The aged brows were bent,
Bent to a frown, half thought, and half annoy,
That all their stores of subtlest argument
Were baffled by a boy. -
In each averted face
I marked but scorn and loathing, till mine eyes
Fell upon one that stirred not in his place,
Tranced in a dumb surprise. -
Surely within his mind
Strange thoughts are born, until he doubts the lore
Of those old men, blind leaders of the blind,
Whose kingdom is no more. -
Surely he sees afar
A day of death the stormy future brings;
The crimson setting of the herald-star
That led the Eastern kings. -
Thus, as a sunless deep
Mirrors the shining heights that crown the bay,
So did my soul create anew in sleep
The picture seen by day. -
Gazers came and went-
A restless hum of voices marked the spot-
In varying shades of critic discontent
Prating they knew not what. -
"Where is the comely limb,
The form attuned in every perfect part,
The beauty that we should desire in him?"
Ah! Fools and slow of heart! -
Look into those deep eyes,
Deep as the grave, and strong with love divine;
Those tender, pure, and fathomless mysteries,
That seem to pierce through thine. -
Look into those deep eyes,
Stirred to unrest by breath of coming strife,
Until a longing in thy soul arise
That this indeed were life: -
That thou couldst find Him there,
Bend at His sacred feet thy willing knee,
And from thy heart pour out the passionate prayer,
"Lord, let me follow Thee!" -
But see the crowd divide:
Mother and sire have found their lost one now:
The gentle voice, that fain would seem to chide,
Whispers, "Son, why hast thou"- -
In tone of sad amaze-
"Thus dealt with us, that art our dearest thing?
Behold, thy sire and I, three weary days,
Have sought thee sorrowing." -
And I had stayed to hear
The loving words, "How is it that ye sought?"-
But that the sudden lark, with matins clear,
Severed the links of thought. -
Then over all there fell
Shadow and silence; and my dream was fled,
As fade the phantoms of a wizard's cell
When the dark charm is said. -
Yet, in the gathering light,
I lay with half-shut eyes that would not wake,
Lovingly clinging to the skirts of night
For that sweet vision's sake. -
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/artists/hunt.htm
William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was born in Cheapside, London, and was
from the start keen to be an artist, despite discouragement from his
father, a warehouseman. He gained admission to the Royal Academy
Schools on his third attempt, and there met Millais and afterwards
Rossetti, and together they founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Arguably, of the three, Holman Hunt was the one who stayed most
faithful to the Pre-Raphaelite ideas and painting techniques, or as he
put it, he never modified his 'uncompromising assertion of the
principles of truth in preference to beauty'. His paintings - nearly
all religious or moralistic - are characterised by extreme detail and
a brightness of light that makes his colours somewhat harsh. His
paintings are always interesting, but not typically pleasant or
beautiful to look at. They were painted as a result of painstaking
efforts, and he worked long on each one. To quote from a contemporary
description of his Triumph of the Innocents:
We expected a picture. What we found was a confused but earnest and
honourable achievement in literature, expressed in the most strenuous
terms, with a patience, a laboriousness, a determination of symbolical
intention worthy of all respect.
He made various journeys to the middle east, and painted scenes of
Jerusalem, along with The Scapegoat (two versions, at the Lady Lever
Gallery in Port Sunlight and in Manchester), one of his best known
paintings. The best known of them all is The Light of the World, which
is in Keble College, Oxford, and A Converted British Family is at the
Ashmolean Museum in the same city. Others of his major pictures are
The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (Birmingham), featuring East
End London Jews as none in Jerusalem would sit for him; The Afterglow
in Egypt - perhaps his most attractive-to-look-at painting (two
versions - Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight and Ashmolean), and
The Awakening Concience, (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) his most
moralistic painting. Two other famous paintings are at Manchester -
The Hireling Shepherd and The Lady of Shalott.
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http://www.abcgallery.com/H/huntwh/huntwh.html
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<<William Holman Hunt (April 2, 1827 ? September 7, 1910) was a
British painter. He was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. After eventually entering the Royal Academy art schools,
having initially been rejected, Hunt rebelled against the influence of
its founder Sir Joshua Reynolds. He formed the Pre-Raphaelite movement
in 1848, after meeting the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Along with John Everett Millais they sought to revitalise art by
emphasising the detailed observation of the natural world in a spirit
of quasi-religious devotion to truth. This religious approach was
influenced by the spiritual qualities of Medieval art, in opposition
to the alleged rationalism of the Renaissance embodied by Raphael.
Hunt's works were not initially successful, and were widely attacked
in the art press for their alleged clumsiness and ugliness. He
achieved some early note for his intensely naturalistic scenes of
modern rural and urban life, such as The Hireling Shepherd and The
Awakening Conscience. However, it was with his with his religious
paintings that he became famous, initially The Light of the World (now
in the chapel at Keble College, Oxford, with a later copy in St Paul's
Cathedral). 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 Shalott.
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 Carlyle,
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. He eventually had to give up painting because
failing eyesight meant that he could not get the level of quality that
he wanted. His last major work, The Lady of Shalott, was completed
with the help of an assistant.
Hunt married twice. After a failed engagement to his model Annie
Miller, he married Fanny Waugh, who later modelled for the figure of
Isabella. When she died in childbirth in Italy he sculpted her tomb up
at Fiesole, having it brought down to the English Cemetery, beside the
tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His second wife, Edith, was
Fanny's sister. At this time it was illegal in Britain to marry one's
deceased wife's sister, so Hunt was forced to travel abroad to marry
her. This led to a serious breach with other family members,
notably his former Pre-Raphaelite colleague Thomas Woolner,
who had married Fanny and Edith's third sister Alice.
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.
In 1905, he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII.
At the end of his life he lived in Sonning-on-Thames.>> - Wikipedia
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Art Neuendorffer