HOLMAN HUNT.* This most interesting book is both a history
of a movement and a record of a striking personality. Coming of Puritan ancestry, Mr. Holman Hunt in boyhood showed a determina- tion and a toughness of endurance which stood him in good stead when the battle of Preraphaelitism had to be fought. A characteristic instance of this determination is found in the account which Mr. Holman Hunt gives of the means he adopted directly he left school to get work with an employer who sympathised with his artistic bent, knowing that if he did not take the initiative his father would have started him in his own business. The father was greatly averse from an artistic career for his son. What hardships and difficulties the chosen profession brought are told us in detail. The struggle of the young artist to make a living was acute and prolonged, and was of course greatly increased by the fact that the painter was a reformer of the most uncompromising kind. First of all, Mr. Holman Hunt had to clear his own mind and consolidate his practice, and then to force a reluctant world to acknowledge the new style.
By no means the least interesting part of the book is the account of the writer's stay in the Holy Land and of his work there. Whether carried on in Jerusalem or on the shores of the Dead Sea, the difficulties for the artist were appalling. In the city Mr. Holman Hunt hoped to get Jews to sit to him for his picture of Christ found by His mother in the Temple. But superstition was stronger than the temptation of gain. A model would come and stay a few hours, and promise to return the next day. This promise was seldom kept, and new models were constantly being tried and found impossible to depend on. Mr. Holman Hunt's system of work, so minute and so conscientious, made this fickleness of his models doubly distracting to him. In the country a different set of harassments had to be endured, which culminated in the painting of the background of "The Scapegoat." To get the appropriate landscape the artist put himself under the escort of a party of Arabs, and encamped with them on the heights above the Dead Sea. The danger from hostile tribes was real and constant, and the artist's gun -was as much a part of his equipment as his palette. Of course, difficulties of production do not affect the artistic value of a picture, but it is impossible not to admire sada persistence as we are shown in this book. Mr. Holman Hunt never flinched for a moment in carrying out his ideals. If his picture demanded a background of the Dead Sea, at the Dead Sea it had to be painted. So it was with every detail, and a story quoted by the artist humorously sums up his attitude. A schoolmaster told his class that "Holman Hunt is so superlatively conscientious that were he painting a picture in which Everton toffee had to be introduced, he would never be satisfied unless he went to Everton to paint it, in order to make sure of representing the purest example of the article under the best local conditions." There are many picturescre incidents of the artist's life in Palestine on which • Pre-Raphaelitiant and tha Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. By W. Holm= Hunt, 0.M., D.C.L. S vole. London : Macmillan and Co. [428. net.J we should like to dwell, but we must be content with recalling one of them. One day a black boy came to the Jerusalem
studio and asked if the ladies of a neighbouring Effendi might visit the house. Presently about a dozen veiled ladies appeared, and were shown the studio. They went into raptures over the beauty of the lay figure, praising its face and hands, and stated that when the image was finished—they took it for the artist's work—it would be truly beautiful. The com- ment on the unfinished picture of "The Triumph of the Innocents" was : "'On the Day of Judgment what will you do because the souls of these beings that you have made will be required of you, and what will you do then P' My reply, justified on metaphorical principles, was, hope every one of them will be present to justify me."
We must now turn to what, no doubt, Mr. Holman Hunt would consider the most important part of this book,—that is, the history of the formation of the Preraphaelite Brother- hood. Many are the accounts that have been written of this famous movement, and the originating force has been attri- buted to both Rossetti and Mados Brown. Mr. Holman Hunt gives a different version, and one so fully supported by facts that there can be no doubt as to its accuracy. To summarise from the volumes before us, what happened was this. Millais and Holman Hunt in 1848 began to consider that they should, in their work, make protest against all conventionality, as they believed that the reigning Academic art of the day was hopelessly unreal and false. With the Gothic revival which was influencing German art they had no sympathy, because it did not go to Nature, but aimed at reproducing the early Italian masters. To these two innovators the name "Preraphaelite" did not mean accept- ing the paintets of the early Renaissance as models. It meant the acceptance of the attitude towards the study of
Nature to be found in those early painters rather than the formalism of the followers of Raphael, or Raphaelites. With Millais and Holman Hunt there was no desire to revive mediaeval ideas. Their ambition was to be purely natural in their treatment. If they chose a subject from a past age, they tried to reconstruct it exactly as they imagined the incident would have appeared at the time of its occurrence. This is an entirely different thing from trying to revive a mediaeval atmosphere. So the two friends called themselves "Preraphaelites." While these ideas were germinating Mr. Holman Hunt tells us that he made the acquaintance of Rossetti, who became his pupil for a time, and in fact painted the "Girlhood of the Virgin" in Mr. Hunt's studio. Rossetti, who was of an ardent temperament, took up the new ideas with enthusiasm, and soon the "Brotherhood" was formed. But Rossetti was, in truth, never in sympathy with the realistic side of the movement. He was a strange phenomenon, an upheaval of the past, a strayed soul from mediaeval Italy living in nineteenth-century London. Others joined the Brotherhood. Some were beginners in art, some were going to begin but never did, while some were literary members, who by the fury of their attacks on the Academy prejudiced the cause of the real workers. When the first Preraphaelite pictures were painted by the Brotherhood— Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti—it was intended that they should all be sent together to the Academy, so that the new work might make more effect by not being scattered. At the last moment Rossetti sent his picture to the Hyde Park Club, which held an Exhibition opening just before the Academy. Such procedure, according to Mr. Holman Hunt, was characteristic of Rossetti's strange and unreliable nature. The connection of Rossetti with Millais and Holman Hunt was an artificial one. Rossetti was steeped in romance and the Middle Ages, and his painting developed on purely sensuous lines. It was impossible that his' association with the other two could last long. We cannot help thinking that the misunderstandings which have arisen, and which have attributed to Rossetti the leadership of the movement, have resulted from the name "Preraphaelite." In truth, this name is not at all descriptive of the aims of Millais and Holman Hunt, which were naturalistic, while it describes much more nearly the art with which Rossetti was in sympathy. We are told that the name originated when Hunt and Millais were fellow-students at the Academy:—" In our final estimation this picture [Raphael's •
Transfiguration '3 was a signal step in the decadence of Italian art. When we bad advanced this opinion to other •
students, they as a reductio ad absurdum had said, 'Then you are Pre-Raphaelite.' Referring to this as we worked aide by side, Millais and I laughingly agreed that the designation must be accepted."
In the book before us the writer on many occasions reports conversations with friends. He tells us, however, that they are not word-for-word reproductions. The memory of the talk was so distinct that the form of an actual conversation is the best method of reproducing the ideas discussed. The spirit with which these records are made is remarkable, and they are of convincing reality. We cannot resist quoting a conversation with Millais, who, we may remark, is the hero of the book, Mr. Holman Hunt remaining devoted to his early friend and his art till his death. Although this personal
devotion and admiration for his art were so great, they do not prevent Mr. Holman Hunt recording a most characteristic utterance of the successful Academician and popular painter. Those who ever heard Millais talk about himself will recognise the true ring of this self-revelation. Out of this soliloquy Browning would have made a poem, a fit companion to his "Andrea del Sarto" :—
"You argue,' he said, that if I paint for the passing fashion of the day my reputation some centuries hence will not be what my powers would secure for me if I did more ambitious work. I don't agree. A painter must work for the taste of his own day. How does he know what people will like two or three hundred years hence ? I maintain that a man should hold up the mirror to his own times. I want proof, that the people of my day enjoy my work, and how can I get this better than by finding people willing to give me money for my produc- tions, and that I win honours from contemporaries ? What good would recognition of my labours hundreds of years hence do me ? I should be dead, buried, and crumbled into dust. Don't let us bother ourselves about the destinies of our work in the world, but as it brings us fortune and recognition. Let the artists of the future work for the future ; they will see what's wanted. Why, you admit you can't paint more large pictures because people don't take off your hands those which you have done. Of course you can't, but isn't this proof that your system is wrong ? For my part, I paint what there is a demand for. There is a fashion going now for little girls in mob caps. Well, I satisfy this while it continues; but immediately the demand shows signs of flagging, I am ready to take to some other fashion of the last century which people now are quite keen on, or I shall do portraits or landscapes A man is sure to get himself disliked if he is always opposing the powers that be. Now I'm really sorry when I see you attacking prejudices. Why did you make that wild onslaught in the TEmes on the Royal Academy ? If it isn't perfect, nothing is really perfect. You say that the laws after one hundred and twenty years require great modification, and that men shouldn't be elected from within, nor in any way for the whole term of their life. It's only a few people, who are impatient to get in, who want a change. Oh, I don't
mean you. I know you don't want to be elected Why did you make a ferment about artists' materials, saying they were not always reliable ? You only disturb buyers' confidence
in pictures, and of course you will suffer as well as others It is to-day we have to live, and you, for the sake of some far-off good which may never come to anyone, sacrifice your present chances. Why, if I were to go on like you do, I should never be able to go away in the autumn to fish or to shoot, and I should be always out of health and spirits, and one should always try not to be a "distressful person." I should become so if I did not get my holiday. You take my advice, old boy, and just take the world as it is, and don't make it your business to rub up people the wrong way I know your powers better than anybody. Set to work to meet the taste of our own day, and not that of the future, and you will soon get over your difficulties. Why, I've just sold a picture done in two weeks, which will pay the expenses of all my family, my shooting and fishing too, for our whole time in Scotland.' Thus Millais, ever with transparent impulsiveness, revealed his tempered convictions to direct me to a prudent course."
We regret that we are unable to quote at length a long monologue of Carlyle's ; but we must refer our readers to the book itself for this characteristic utterance. The Sage came to the studio to see "The Light of the World," and proceeded to denounce it as "a Papiatical fantasy" and "an inanity," "to do the like of which is the worst of occupations for a man to take to." When the painter tried to justify himself and the truth of his idea, Carlyle "raised his voice well-nigh to a scream, and Mrs. Carlyle, standing behind, put up her emphatic finger and shook her head, signing to me."
In taking leave of Mr. Holman Hunt's volumes we must again repeat how great an impression is produced by the personality of the author. Singleness of aim and de- termination of purpose everywhere characterise the story of
the life recorded.
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