HUNT, William Holman (1827-1910), was born in London and educated in “a private school” (DNB, 323) until his thirteenth year, when he began working as an apprentice to a surveyor.  In 1843 he “left his mercantile employment” (DNB, 323), and became a student at the British Museum; in 1844 Hunt was accepted into the Royal Academy schools as a probationer. Hunt was raised an Anglican, but later in life took to the study of Islamic and Jewish mysticism during his travels to the Holy Land.  Hunt is known for faithfully painting according to the original tenets of Pre-Raphaelitism--minute attention to detail and fidelity to nature.
	When Hunt met John Everett Millais (q.v.) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (q.v.) at the Academy in the late 1840’s, the three became the nucleus of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Hunt’s contributions to their “list of Immortals,” included “the author of the book of Job, . . . Homer. . . Chaucer, Leonardo, Goethe, Keats, Shelley, King Alfred, . . . Thackeray, Washington, and Browning” (Hilton, 34), and show his early interests in religion, philosophy, and contemporary authors--of this last most notably John Ruskin’s (q.v.) Modern Painters (1846)(Hilton, 38).
	Hunt’s paintings take their subjects from his reading: Rienzi Vowing to Obtain Justice (1849) is taken from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s (q.v.) novel Rienzi: The Last of the Roman Tribunes (1848). During the years 1854-56, 1869-71, and 1875-78, Hunt traveled in the Holy Land, reading the Bible and the Koran (W. Hunt, 2: 260), which brought about paintings such as The Scapegoat (1854) and A Street Scene in Cairo(1854).  
	When he was not traveling, Hunt lived in London, meeting the very authors whom he was reading, including Alfred Tennyson (q.v.), who chastised Hunt for painting The Lady of Shalott(c. 1889-1892)--based on Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” (1842)--with too much artistic license (W. Hunt, 2: 124).  Hunt also read Shakespeare; witness Claudio and Isabella (1850).  He describes encounters--in books and in person--with Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (q.v.)(W. Hunt, 2: 126), William Makepeace Thackeray (q.v.)(W. Hunt, 2: 240), George Meredith (q.v.)(W. Hunt, 2: 242), and Thomas Carlyle (q.v.) (W. Hunt, 2: 130).
Archives.
Correspondence of Frederick George Stephens, Bodleian Lib. (MSS. Don. e.78, d. 116-119, e. 57-87).
Printed Sources.
Armstrong, Walter, “Hunt, William Holman,” The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, Supplement, Ed. Sidney Lee, 3 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1901), Vol. 1, 323-328.
Gissing, A. C., William Holman Hunt:  A Biography (London: Duckworth, 1936).  Reference to reading notebooks and travel journals.
Hilton, Timothy,  The Pre-Raphaelites (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1970).
Hunt, Diana Holman,  My Grandfather, His Wives and Loves (New York: Norton, 1969).  Use of family diaries and marked books.
Hunt, William Holman,  Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1906).
Rossetti, William Michael,  The P.R.B. Journal 1849-1853, Together with other Pre-Raphaelite Documents. Ed. and introd. William E. Fredeman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975).  Extensive collection of letters to and from W. H. H.
Thomas J. Tobin
Duquesne University