Hunt's colouring and many other technical matters are often far from perfect, but there is something besides technicality to be considered in judging a picture.
For a time, while the three men, Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais, kept together, their pictures were signed P. R. B., as a sign of their league; but this did not last very long, and afterward Hunt signed his pictures independently.
After the "Brotherhood" had worked against the greatest discouragements for a long time, and felt nearly hopeless of success, John Ruskin, one of the greatest of critics and most fearless of men, who was so much respected that his words had great influence, suddenly published a defence of these Pre-Raphaelites. He declared that they were the greatest artists of the time, and while scorning their critics he applauded those three young men, till he turned the tide, and everybody began to know what truly brilliant work they were doing. Ruskin's words came, Hunt said, "as thunder out of a clear sky."
When the "Brotherhood" was formed the three young men thought they should have a paper--a periodical of some sort, in which they might tell of their purposes and express their ideas; and so Rossetti, who wrote as well as painted, proposed that they print such a periodical once a month, and call it the Germ; and the P. R. B's. were to be joint proprietors. Rossetti had first thought of a different title, Thoughts Toward Nature, and his brother, W. M. Rossetti, who was going to take charge of the monthly, thought that expressed the Pre-Raphaelites' idea; but it was finally agreed to call it the Germ. Only two numbers could be published by the Pre-Raphaelites, because nobody bought it and the young men's money gave out, but the printers came to the rescue, and put up the money to issue two or three more Germs.
Although that journal failed utterly, its four numbers were worth publishing, and are to-day worth reading. They were truly valuable, for they contained a story and poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, besides work of the other P. R. B's.
Above all things Hunt was conscientious in his work, trying with all his might to represent things as be believed them to be. When he made his "Scapegoat," he went to the shores of the Dead Sea to paint, accompanied only by Arab guides, and there he found the desolate, hard landscape for his picture. The hardships he experienced were very many. The wretched goat he took with him died in the desert of that dreary place after it had been no more than sketched in, but back in Jerusalem Hunt finished the goat. Ruskin's description of the picture helps one to feel all the desolation of the subject: "The salt sand of the wilderness of Ziph, where the weary goat is dying. The neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous, polluted by the decaying vegetables brought down by the Jordan in its floods, and the bones of the beasts of burden that have died by the way of the sea, lie like wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures and bleached by the salt ooze."
Even the superstitious Arabs would not go near the spot which Hunt chose as the scene of his picture, but Hunt endured all things, believing it due to his art.
When he painted "Christ in the Temple," he needed Jewish models, and it was almost impossible for him to get them. He could not let them know what they were to represent, or they would not have sat for him at all but he succeeded in painting the "first Semitic presentment of the Semitic Scriptures." In Jerusalem the Jews heard that he had come "to traffic with the souls of the faithful," and they forbade him to have any Jews come into his studio; so that he could not finish the picture there. Back in London he had to find his models in the Jewish school. He left the figures of Christ and the Virgin till the last and then painted them "from a lady of the ancient race, distinguished alike for her amiability and beauty, and a lad in one of the Jewish schools, to which the husband of the lady furnished a friendly introduction."
Thus, step by step, through the greatest difficulties, Holman Hunt established a new school of painting--allegory with a modern treatment which all could understand.
PLATE--THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD