The new show Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision – the inaugural exhibition at the newly reopened Art Gallery of Ontario – may seem like a eccentric opening volley. How could this peculiar figure from the world of British art – one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's lesser known habitués – hold relevance for us now, here in this place?
But, of course, the more you think about it, the more perfect it is.
In his time, Holman Hunt was a leading figure in mid-19th-century British art right at the moment when modern Canada, a colonial nation edging toward Confederation, was taking shape. His painting The Light of the World (first painted in 1851), which figures Christ with his crown of thorns pausing at the threshold of the human heart (symbolized by a cottage doorway overgrown with thorns), was reputedly the most famous painting of its time, replicated in dozens of Canadian stained glass windows, and in the frontispieces of many a Church of England Bible and Book of Common Prayer.
In fact, two of the three existing versions of this work painted by Hunt have visited Toronto before – in 1905 and 1935 – occasions that could be considered the first blockbuster shows ever mounted on this soil. (How's that for auspicious?) Like it or not, the work of Holman Hunt and his circle can be seen, for many of us, as the primordial cultural slime from which we crawled. This show is worth examining closely for this reason alone.
As well, Hunt has a historic connection to our country. As the exhibition demonstrates, he fraternized with many leading Canadians anglophiles of his day: radical pro-Zionist activist Henry Wentworth Monk (a visionary advocate for world peace), Charles Trick Currelly, the founding director of archeology at the new Royal Ontario Museum, and the AGO's own Sir Edmund Walker, who founded the Art Museum of Toronto in 1900. All of these leading figures shared a desire to intervene in world events (particularly in their concern for the rising tide of anti-Semitism), a desire to delve into biblical archeology in search of historical truth (Darwin was rocking their world) and to examine the world's leading spiritual traditions, searching for accord between them. This was the climate of thought at the point in which our major institutions of learning and inquiry were taking shape. The imprint is British, and it remains with us to this day.
For all their value as portals to the past, though, Hunt's paintings strain contemporary tastes, in part because of their overt and often treacly didacticism. Hunt's painting The Awakening Conscience (1853-54) depicts a round-eyed maiden answering the call of her Christian Saviour, rising from the lap of her roguish gentleman caller to pursue the path of virtue. Long gone is the fashion in art for moralizing, which emerged in Western art with Italian fresco painting of the 14th century, but narrative is central to Hunt's work, as it was to all the pre-Raphaelites.
He draws on stories from British myth and literature – from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure to Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes and onward to Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott – in a way that may be hard for contemporary viewers to decode. Time and again, it is the moment of ethical dilemma that he holds up for examination.
Fashions in art have changed, but other traditions embedded in the work remain relevant to us today. There is much to admire, for example in Hunt's cultural open-mindedness and curiosity. The exhibition includes many paintings that reveal his fascination with the cultures of the Middle East; he made seven trips to Palestine during his lifetime. Paintings such as The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (1854) make clear his passion for reconciliation between the faiths. (Call it wishful thinking, but the young blond Christ is pictured in the temple surrounded by bearded rabbis in an architectural setting that looks like an Islamic mosque.)
