Focus on this artwork and discuss the Background.
Obsessed with the idea of revitalising religious art by emphasising ethnographical accuracy combined with detailed Biblical symbolism, Hunt had travelled to the Middle East to create the picture, using local people as models and studying ancient Judaic customs and rituals. Progress on the painting was delayed by difficulties with models, and eventually Hunt postponed it to work on another project, The Scapegoat. He eventually completed it in 1860, back in England. His friend Frederic George Stephens wrote a pamphlet containing a detailed explanation of the content and the characters. It was then shown in a series of popular travelling exhibitions at which visitors could buy the pamphlet and subscribe to an engraved reproduction. These were organised by the dealer Ernest Gambart, and proved a great financial success.
Hunt sold the painting to Charles Dickens for £5,500.
Thomas Carlyle gave his thoughts in a letter:The Christ is an exquisite mixture of a god and a peasant lad. His mother too is very fine; but I thot she shd have been a little angry withal (at having got such a fright from her careless son) instead of merely rapturous over him as she might be over a baby saved from the wolf. There were other criticisms:-but I have not seen such a Picture, for fidelity of execution, for exquisite finish, and limner and other talent, by any modern man.
Middle East Frederic George Stephens Charles Dickens Thomas Carlyle The Scapegoat ethnographic Ernest Gambart England