id: 151969 accession number: 1984.41 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1984.41 updated: 2023-03-14 12:01:24.475000 Mrs. George Waugh, 1868. William Holman Hunt (British, 1827–1910). Oil on fabric; framed: 115.5 x 95.5 x 6 cm (45 1/2 x 37 5/8 x 2 3/8 in.); unframed: 86.2 x 66.1 cm (33 15/16 x 26 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1984.41 title: Mrs. George Waugh title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1868 creation date earliest: 1868 creation date latest: 1868 current location: creditline: Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund copyright: --- culture: England, 19th century technique: oil on fabric department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * William Holman Hunt (British, 1827–1910) - artist Holman Hunt exhibited an early aptitude for art, which his father, a warehouse manager, initially opposed but later tolerated. Between 1839 and 1843 he practiced drawing and studied with the portrait painter Henry Rogers while sustaining himself as an office clerk. Hunt met John Everett Millais (1829-1896) the same year that he entered the Royal Academy Schools, 1844. A decisive conversion in his attitude toward art came with the reading of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in 1847, immediately after which he embarked on a new style of conscientious naturalism in The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro During the Drunkenness Attending the Revelry (Guildhall, London), a picture inspired by John Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes. Hunt, Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who were sharing studios, organized the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Rienzi Vowing to Obtain Justice for the Death of His Younger Brother (private collection), Hunt's only picture to be shown publicly with the inscription "P.R.B." was exhibited at the Royal Academy the following summer. With its landscape painted directly from nature, its stylistic allusions to Quattrocento painting, and its medieval subject, Rienzi epitomized the Brotherhood's objectives of reinstating the moral and descriptive honesty of earlier Italian and Flemish painting. The brilliant coloring and crisp light of plein-air painting and an increasing deployment of symbolic details characterize Hunt's other early masterworks, A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Priest from the Persecution of the Druids (1850, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1851, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), and the abstrusely moralizing Hireling Shepherd (1851, Manchester City Art Galleries). In 1854, after having finished what would ultimately be his most popular image, The Light of the World (Kebble College, Oxford), Hunt voyaged to the Holy Land where he spent two years traveling from Cairo to Beirut. His intent was to paint religious subjects with archaeological precision. The typology of The Scapegoat (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), much of which was painted on-site near the Dead Sea, proved too unintelligible for the general public when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1856, but it remains a work of poignant genius. Subsequent trips to the Holy Land in 1869-72 and 1875-78 resulted in two of his finest late works, The Shadow of Death (1870-73, Manchester City Art Gallery) and The Triumph of the Innocents (1876-87, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). Much of Hunt's final years were devoted to writing, especially after his eyesight began to fail in the 1890s, although he managed to finish in 1905, after nearly two decades of labor, his last great picture, The Lady of Shalott (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford). --- measurements: Framed: 115.5 x 95.5 x 6 cm (45 1/2 x 37 5/8 x 2 3/8 in.); Unframed: 86.2 x 66.1 cm (33 15/16 x 26 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Signed and dated lower left: 18whh68 [initials in monogram]; and signed again lower left: whh [monogram] translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review for 1984 opening date: 1985-04-03T05:00:00 Year in Review for 1984. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 3-May 5, 1985). title: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision opening date: 2009-02-14T00:00:00 Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario M5T 1G4, Canada (organizer) (February 14-May 10, 2009); Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (June 13-September 6, 2009). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Portrait of a Lady. Annual Exhibition Royal Academy, London, United Kingdom (1869). * Paintings and Drawings by the Pre-Raphaelites and their Followers. Russell-Coates Gallery. Bournemouth, United Kingdom (1951). * William Holman Hunt. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom (1969) --- PROVENANCE Mrs. Michael Joseph, the artist's daughter, [1876-1951], London, United Kingdom, by inheritance to her daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Burt date: footnotes: citations: Mrs. Elizabeth Burt, London, United Kingdom consigned to Christie's for sale date: 1951-1961 footnotes: citations: (Christie's, London, United Kingdom, March 17, 1961, lot 70, sold to Evelyn Waugh) date: 1961 footnotes: citations: Auberon Evelyn Waugh [1903-1966], London. United Kingdom date: 1961 footnotes: citations: (Christie's, London, United Kingdom, March 18,1983, lot 73, sold to Julian Hartnoll) date: 1983 footnotes: citations: (Julian Hartnoll Gallery, London, United Kingdom, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) date: 1983-1984 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1984- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: Hunt was a prominent member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young British painters who banded together in 1848 in reaction against what they perceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy. digital description: wall description: The sitter, Mary Walker Waugh (1805–1886), was the artist's mother-in-law. The portrait was made shortly after the death of Hunt's wife, Fanny. In August of 1866 Hunt and his pregnant wife embarked for the Near East. Their son was born in Florence, but Fanny became ill and died. Mrs. Waugh blamed Hunt for the death of her daughter. Hunt and his son returned to London and moved into the Waugh household where he made this portrait. The sitter's stern look and the heavy background convey a tense and anger-filled atmosphere. The frame, designed by the artist, is original. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS "Royal Academy 101st Exhibition." The Art-Journal 8 (July 1, 1869): 197-204. page number: Mentioned: P. 202 url: Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Arts; A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904. London, United Kingdom: H. Graves and Co, 1905. page number: Reproduced: p. 200, vol. 4 url: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Christina Georgina Rossetti. Rossetti Papers 1862 to 1870. New York, NY: AMS Press, 1970. page number: Mentioned: P. 304-305 url: The Pre-Raphaelites. London, United Kingdom, Tate Gallery, 1984. page number: url: Turner, Evan H., "The Year in Review for 1984." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXII no. no. 2 (April, 1985):163-207. page number: Reproduced: p. 186, no. 18; Mentioned: p. 200, no. 18 url: Holman-Hunt, Diana. My Grandfather, His Wives and Loves. London, United Kingdom: Columbus, 1987. page number: Reproduced: p. 261 url: Waugh, Auberon. "Evelyn Waugh's Collection." Antique 5 (Summer 1987): 29. page number: Mentioned: P. 10 url: Amor, Anne Clark. William Holman Hunt: The True Pre-Raphaelite. London: Constable, 1989. page number: Reproduced: [plate 22]; mentioned: p. 199 url: Cole, Mark. "A Haunting Portrait of by William Holman Hunt." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXVII, no. 10 (December, 1990): 354-365. page number: Reproduced: on cover url: Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. page number: Reproduced: P. 109 url: Christie, Manson & Woods. Fine Victorian Pictures, Drawings and Watercolours. 1995. page number: Mentioned: P. 108 url: D'Argencourt, Louise and Roger Diederen. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, Part Four: European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999. page number: Reproduced: p. 126 url: Bronkhurst, Judith. William Holman Hunt: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2006. page number: Reproduced: p. 110 url: Christie, Manson & Woods. Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art. London: Christie's, 2015. page number: Reproduced: p. 94, fig. 1 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1984.41/1984.41_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1984.41/1984.41_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1984.41/1984.41_full.tif