Sometime in the nineteenth century, engagement gave way to detachment. The disorientation and sensual overload of an increasingly empirical, urban, and uncertain world produced in some the casual cut-off, the ironic glance, and in others a withdrawal into fantasy. William Holman Hunt was one of the last to resist these strategies. His engagement with modern conditions resulted in a deeply troubled life and decade-long battles with images of intricate intensity. This book is a fundamental reassessment of the work of William Holman Hunt; the first critical text to reproduce his pictures in colour and set him on an international stage. Introducing a new critique of his autobiography and drawing on hundreds of private letters, studies and paintings, the author depicts a radical man of his times, contending with the pivotal concerns of the materialist age - the isolation of the individual, the collapse of faith and the status of art - and seeking solutions through a systematic testing of the extremes of painting. A close examination of the pictures, including neglected later works, combined with recent scientific research relate the physical act of painting, and paint itself, back to the body of the artist. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, this book answers the longstanding lack of any monograph on Hunt and will make compelling reading for undergraduate and graduate students of History of Art, Victorian Studies, English Literature and Religious Studies, as well as curators, conservators and the artist's many admirers.

Book jacket.