1858, and accompanying him with Palgrave, Woolner, and Val Prinsep, on a walking tour in Devonshire and Cornwall in 1860.
Holman Hunt's 'Scapegoat' was sent to the Academy of 1856. It arrested attention but puzzled the critics. Sir Robert Peel [q. v.] offered 250l. for it; he wished to hang it as a pendant to a Landseer ! It was ultimately sold to Mr. Windus of Tottenham, a well-known collector, for 450l. It subsequently passed to Thomas Fairbaim, and in 1887 into the collection of Sir Cuthbert Quilter. At the exhibition of 1856 Holman Hunt also showed three Oriental landscapes.
At the suggestion of Combe, Holman Hunt offered himself as a candidate for the associateship of the Academy in the same year, but he was rejected, receiving only a single vote. His relations with the Academy were thenceforth strained. He sent nothing to the Academy again till 1860, and only eight pictures in the succeeding fourteen years, altogether ceasing to contribute after 1874. He took part in 1858 in the formation of the Hogarth Club, originally formed of artists who had failed to win official recognition (it lasted till 1897). In 1863 he gave evidence before a royal commission on the Academy, in which he adversely criticised its management. Millais and many artist friends soon, however, became influential members of the Academy, and they subsequently assured Hunt that he would be welcomed by that body, would he consent to join it. But he resolved to remain outside, and from that resolution he never swerved.
Late in 1856 Holman Hunt moved from Pimlico to Campden Hill, where he took a house, Tor Villa, which had just been vacated by James Clarke Hook [q. v. Suppl. II]. He occupied it for some ten years. There he busied himself for a time with the designing of furniture, helping to set a fashion which, under the subsequent influence of William Morris and others, developed into a movement scarcely less important than that of the P.R.B. His 'Finding of the Saviour in the Temple,' which he had begun in Jerusalem in 1854, was finished at Campden Hill in 1860. It fetched a price far in excess of any in Holman Hunt's previous experience. It was sold for 5500 guineas to the picture-dealer Gambart, who exhibited it at his gallery in Bond Street with great success. It passed in 1891 from the collection of C. P. Matthews into that of Mr. John T. Middlemore, M.P. for Birmingham, who presented it to the Birmingham Art Gallery in 1896. It was engraved by Lizars and Greatbach. For the nine following years Holman Hunt's position was well maintained. 'A Street Scene in Cairo : the Lantern-maker's Courtship,' exhibited at the Academy in 1861, became the property of William Kenrick of Birmingham. In 1863 two pictures were shown at the Academy, 'The King of Hearts,' portrait of a boy, now the property of the earl of Carnarvon, and a portrait of Stephen Lushington [q. v.], painted for his son Vernon.
In 1866 Holman Hunt exhibited on his own account at a gallery in Hanover Street some new pictures, including 'London Bridge on the Night of the Prince of Wales's Wedding, March 10, 1863,' into which he introduced a portrait of Combe (now in the Combe bequest, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), and 'The After-glow.' Next year he showed at the Academy 'II dolce far niente' and 'The Festival of St. Swithin,' a lifelike study of pigeons (also now at the Ashmolean Museum).
In August 1866 Holman Hunt had resolved on a second visit to the East. But quarantine regulations, owing to an outbreak of cholera, prevented him from going farther than Florence, where he took a studio. He had married (for the first time) before leaving England in 1865, and his wife, who accompanied him to Florence, died there in 1866. Holman Hunt was soon at work in his Florentine studio on his 'Isabella and the Pot of Basil.' This picture, which was rendered popular by Blanchard's engraving, was purchased by Gambart, and in 1867 exhibited by itself. It ultimately became the property of Mrs. Hall of Newcastle. Hunt stayed in Italy, with an occasional visit to England, for some two years. He visited Naples, Salerno, and Ravello, and saw Venice for the first time under Ruskin's guidance. He was elected member of the Athenæum Club under Rule II in 1868.
After fourteen years' absence from Palestine, Holman Hunt landed at Jaffa in the autumn of 1869. He remained in the Holy Land for another two years. In Dec. 1869 he was staying at Bethlehem, but soon took a house at Jerusalem, and slowly painted one of his most characteristic works, 'The Shadow of Death,' also called 'The Shadow of the Cross.' He returned with it to England in 1871. Sir Thomas Fairbaim negotiated its sale to Messrs. Agnew and Son, who exhibited it separately in London and through the country ; 5500l. down was paid for it and the original study, an equal sum being promised later. Sir William Agnew finally presented the painting to the
