William Hobman Hunt was born in
Cheapside,
City of London, to warehouse manager William Hunt (1800–1856) and Sarah (–1884), daughter of William Hobman, of
Rotherhithe. Hunt adopted the name "Holman" instead of "Hobman" when he discovered that a clerk had misspelled the name that way after his baptism at the
Anglican church of
Saint Mary the Virgin, Ewell. The Hobman family was wealthy, and it was thought that Sarah had made an unequal marriage. After eventually entering the
Royal Academy art schools, having initially been rejected, Hunt rebelled against the influence of its founder
Sir Joshua Reynolds. He formed the
Pre-Raphaelite movement in 1848, after meeting the poet and artist
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Along with
John Everett Millais they sought to revitalise art by emphasising the detailed observation of the natural world in a spirit of quasi-religious devotion to truth. This religious approach was influenced by the spiritual qualities of
medieval art, in opposition to the alleged rationalism of the
Renaissance embodied by
Raphael. He had many pupils, including
Robert Braithwaite Martineau. Hunt married twice. After a failed engagement to his model
Annie Miller, in 1861, he married Fanny Waugh, who later modelled for the figure of
Isabella. When, at the end of 1866, she died in childbirth in Italy, he sculpted her tomb at
Fiesole, having it brought down to the
English Cemetery in
Florence, beside the tomb of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He had a close connection with
St. Mark's Church in Florence, and paid for the
communion chalice inscribed in memory of his wife. His second wife, Edith, was Fanny's youngest sister. At the time it was illegal in Great Britain
to marry one's deceased wife's sister, so the two of them travelled abroad and married at
Neuchâtel (in
francophone Switzerland) in November 1875. This led to a grave conflict with other family members, notably his former Pre-Raphaelite colleague
Thomas Woolner, who had once been in love with Fanny and had married the middle sister, Alice Waugh. Hunt's works were not initially successful, and were widely attacked in the art press for their alleged clumsiness and ugliness. He achieved some early note for his intensely naturalistic scenes of modern rural and urban life, such as
The Hireling Shepherd and
The Awakening Conscience. However, it was for his religious paintings that he became famous, initially
The Light of the World (1851–1853), now in the chapel at
Keble College, Oxford, England; a later version (1900) toured the world and now has its home in
St Paul's Cathedral, London. Hunt worked at his home in Prospect Place (now
Cheyne Walk),
Chelsea, London. In the mid-1850s Hunt travelled to the
Holy Land in search of accurate topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works, and to employ his "powers to make more tangible
Jesus Christ's history and teaching"; there he painted
The Scapegoat,
The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, and
The Shadow of Death, along with many landscapes of the region. Hunt also painted many works based on poems, such as
Isabella and
The Lady of Shalott. He eventually built his own house in
Jerusalem. He eventually had to abandon painting because failing eyesight meant that he could not achieve the quality that he wanted. His last major works, including a large version of
The Light of the World hanging in
St Paul's Cathedral,
London, were completed with the help of his assistant,
Edward Robert Hughes. Hunt lived and had a studio at
18 Melbury Road in
Holland Park, West London, from 1903 until his death. He died on 7 September 1910 and was buried at
St Paul's Cathedral in London. ==Awards and commemoration==