Focus on this artwork and analyze the Interpretations.
After it was exhibited, Hunt's enemies condemned the painting for its vulgarity, objecting to its portrayal of red-faced and sexually uninhibited country people. The Illustrated London News objected to the "fiery red skin" and "wiry hair" of Hunt’s peasants (22 May 1852, p. 407). The Athenaeum was particularly offended by these "rustics of the coarsest breed...flushed and rubicund" from too much cider. It insisted that "romp and rubicundity of this pair contrast with the pallor and pathos of Mr Millais’s picture [Ophelia]." (22 May 1852, pp. 581–583) 
His supporters insisted that the painting was an unvarnished image of social fact. Hunt himself, however, hinted that he had a hidden meaning in mind, a claim he elaborated upon in a letter when the painting was acquired by Manchester Art Gallery. Hunt asserted that he intended the couple to symbolise the pointless theological debates which occupied Christian churchmen while their "flock" went astray due to a lack of proper moral guidance.  This would make the title a Biblical allusion; in the story of the Good Shepherd (in the King James Version), the Good Shepherd is explicitly contrasted with a hireling shepherd, who has no care for the sheep [John 10:11–15].
Manchester Art Gallery Millais The Illustrated London News Manchester Ophelia Illustrated London News the Good Shepherd King James Version