William Holman Hunt - 'The Scapegoat'

Technique

When this picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856 it met with a cool critical response. Even Ruskin, who devoted a lengthy entry in his 'Academy Notes' to the picture, thought the choice of a goat as subject was rather misplaced. He also thought it poorly painted. The critic of 'The Athenaeum' dismissed the work and on a curiously prophetic note added,

'We shudder, however, in anticipation of the dreamy fantasies and the deep allegories that will be deduced from this figure of a goat in difficulty.'

Hunt's lurid colouring is far from natural. Allen Staley writing on Hunt's landscape painting perceptively comments that

'Hunt may have painted what he saw, but by choice he saw strange things, and he saw them at their most vivid pitch.'

The strident high-keyed purple which here bathes the mountains of Edom subsequently became the hallmark of much of his landscape painting.

In this section

• The picture
• Symbolism
• Chronology
• Literary links
• Back to Pre-Raphaelites home page

Back to top