• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

HUNT'S A WAKENING CONSCIENCE Michael Hancher William Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience (Fig. 1) was seen to be a problem painting from the start. "Enigmatic in its title, it is understood by few of the exoteric visitors," commented the Athe111eum in its review of the Royal Academy exhibition of 1854. "Innocent and unenlightened spectators suppose it to represent a quarrel between a brother and sister; it literally represents the momentary remorse of a kept mistress, whose thoughts of lost virtue, guilt, father, mother, and home have been roused by a chance strain of music." 1 The apparent need for explication was met to a large extent by John Ruskin, who wrote a detailed letter on the subject to the Times, part of his continuing campaign on behalf of Pre-Raphaelitism. "Assuredly it is not understood," he observed about the painting on exhibit; "people gaze at it in a blank won,der, and leave it hopelessly." Many later viewers have relied upon the eloquent inventory that Ruskin took of the things and meanings in this overfurnished picture; he showed the moral hidden in almost every object, symbolically selected though realistically rendered. "That furniture so carefully painted, even to the last vein of the rosewood--is there nothing to be learnt from that terrible lustre of it, from its fatal newness; nothing there that has the old thoughts of home upon it, or that is ever to become a part of home?" 2 Though Ruskin explained much, he did not tell all; the painting's more private meanings he left out of account. He saw no need to mention that Hunt's model for "the poor girl" in the painting was Annie Miller, a vulnerable working-class beauty with whom Hunt had become infatuated. Hunt planned to protect Annie's morals and educate her social skills, and then, maybe, marry her: this idealistic and ambitious scheme was a staple of gossip in Pre-Raphaelite circles, which Ruskin must have known (Daly 112). Ruskin tactfully omitted to say that the social reformation that Hunt planned for Annie Miller closely resembled the spiritual reformation that takes place in the painting, as the fallen woman suddenly realizes the folly of her ways. Hunt complicated his educational plan by attempting much of it in absentia. Immediately after he finished painting The Awakening Conscience he left both England and1vl:iller for the Holy Land, where he would learn how to invest his Biblical paintings with a fresh realism (both The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Scapegoat were begun there in 1854). He left instructions with his friends how Miller was to be treated: for which artists it was safe for her to model The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, 4 (Fall 1995) 28 Pre-Raphaelite Studies Hancher 29 (not Dante Gabriel Rossetti, evidently); how her manners should be schooled. The and light, framed in a casement window, at which the woman gazes at her moment education of Annie Miller continued, off and on, after Hunt returned from his of reformation (Fig. 5). Suddenly she "sees the light"; and what she sees is travels in 1856; but within three years their romance had cooled, partly because natural, antithetical to the cluttered interior of false culture in which she has all but Annie found Hunt's moralism tedious. In 1865 they finally married other people. lost her soul. She turns away from the dead and fatally polished rosewood piano-­ A comprehensive account of the Hunt-Miller affair has been constructed by conventionally a site for middle-class intimacy and seduction--to the flourishing Jan Marsh in The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (61, 99, 228).3 She doubts that Hunt green tree outside. 7 We see what she sees because of the mirror. In the mirror we seduced Miller, thanks to his religious scruples. But she suggests that, nonetheless, also see her, from behind, looking out the window, almost in silhouette against the he was almost as guilty as the man in The A wakening Conscience: light. And we also see, at the bottom of the mirror, next to it, her seducer, gazing up not at the light but at her, smiling still with satisfaction even as he sings the song There is a mass of critical comment on the contents, treatment and reception of the that has made her turn away. · picture; my only additional remark is to suggest that just as the artist reproduced the In 1842 the National Gallery purchased a remarkable painting by Jan Van Eyck current notions of morality by showing the fallen woman to be in need of redemption dated 1434 (Fig. 6). Now thought to commemorate the wedding of the merchant rather than her seducer (who is shown as shallow and base but not in the same acute Giovanni Amolfini and Giovanna Cenami--or their betrothal (see Edwin Hall)--it state of sin as the woman), so he effectively presented his own unconscious role in was at first identified simply as "A Flemish Gentleman and a Lady" (Maurice W. respect of Annie Miller. He was the agent of her temptation who was not himself to be Brockwell 60). In 1847 Charles Eastlake, Keeper of the National Gallery, blamed ... ; he failed to perceive that the implications of his offer to educate Annie conjectured that the painting might represent "John Van Eyck and his wife" (185); were identical to those of an immoralist who bought and paid for women in order that they should do as he desired. (61) the next year Ruskin agreed that the work was "probably" Van Eyck's self-portrait (12: 257; see also Hall 7). In 1854 Gustav Friedrich Waagen completed the Marsh is right that the larger meaning of The Awakening Conscience places the conversion of conjecture to fact, describing the painting as "full-length portraits of painter in virtually the same position as the seducer. Apparently, however, Hunt Jan Van Eyck and his wife, standing in a room with rich accessories" (1:' 348).8 himself did not miss the point: for he painted himself into the picture. The painting assumed an important role in the young Hunt's artistic education. The best evidence of the identity between painter and painting is a drawing that In his autobiography Hunt would later recall its effect on his studies: such John Everett Millais made of Hunt shortly before his departure for the East--at just "unaffected work" encouraged a "taste for clear forms and tints, and for clean about the time that Hunt was completing his picture (Fig. 3 and Fig. 2, a detail from handling." 9 As a young man he valued the work of Jan Van Eyck and his brother the painting). The resemblance of this young man to the seducer in Hunt's painting Hubert as "the first achievements of perfect realization of natural form and colour" is strong if not complete (the chin is a bit more rounded, and the nose more finely (1:40). On a European tour with Rossetti he "studied attentively the works of John drawn, in the painting). The resemblance is marked enough to indicate that Hunt and Hubert Van Eyck; the exquisite delicacy of the workmanship and the projected a version of his own appearance onto the canvas of The Awakening unpretending character of the invention made us feel we could not overestimate the Conscience, even should it be shown that he used another man as a model. In fact, perfection of the painting, at least that of John van Eyck" (193). it is not documented that he did so, which makes this case unusual in the record of Arguably the Van Eyck painting in the National Gallery contributed to leading Pre-Raphaelite painting. 4 features of style--compressed space, vivid colour, and patient detail--that came to A second drawing that Millais did of Hunt at about the same time only slightly characterize Pre-Raphaelitism.10 Linda Nochlin has noted its importance for The weakens the resemblance between the painter and the "swell" in the painting (Fig. Awakening Conscience in general terms.11 Certain details seem especially relevant 4). Such contemporary evidence suggests that William Holman Hunt's painting to the present discussion. is a portrait of the artist as a young man.5 Like The A wakening Conscience the Van Eyck painting appeared to represent The work of self-representation in this painting explains a striking aspect that an erotic couple--perhaps the artist and his bride--at the center of a close, window­ early attracted comment and caused perplexity. "The complicated compound illuminated chamber, monitored by a mirror placed on the rear wall.12 Reflecting shadow in the mirror is ...a mere piece of intricacy without any good or valuable most of the interior space of his painting within the small convex mirror effect," complained the critic for the Morning Chronicle.6 It is an intricate and strategically placed in the middle of that wall, Van Eyck contrived to include tiny complicated business, though it includes a strong and simple effect: the large representations of two persons standing in an open doorway on the viewer's side mirror that occupies the upper-left-hand corner of the painting, itself heavily of the picture plane, witnesses to the scene. framed in gilt like the painting itself, reflects to the viewer the natural scene of trees Hunt puts his mirror to a different use. Large and flat, not compact and convex, it is positioned sufficiently far off to the side so that no central witness of 30 Pre-Raphaelite Studies Hancher 31 the depicted scene would be reflected in it; furthermore, the re!lection ?f the In her valuable essay on The Awakening Conscience, Caroline Arscott, too, woman would block any central point of view.

Load more

  12

Copy Link