Hunt's Religious Conversion: A Note to "Shadows Cast by the Light of the World"

George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Victorian Painters —> William Holman Hunt/a> —> Shadows Cast by the "Light of the World"]

The painter's statement that The Light of the World recorded an actual experience of religious conversion appears in a letter of August 19, 1883 quoted in William Bell Scott, Autobiographical Notes ... and Notices of His Artistic and Poetic Circle of Friends, 1830-1882, ed. W. Minto, 2 vols., London, 1892, I, 312-13. I have discussed Hunt's conversion experience in relation to his art in "William Holman Hunt's 'The Shadow of Death,'" Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of Manchester, LV, 1972, 213-16. [Return to The Importunate Neighbour] /p>

Last modified December 2001