THE PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTISTS 331

difference between true Pre-Raphaelite work and its imitations.¹ The true work represents all objects exactly as they would appear in nature in the position and at the distances which the arrangement of the picture supposes. The false work represents them with all their details, as if seen through a microscope. Examine closely the ivy on the door in Mr. Hunt’s picture, and there will not be found in it a single clear outline. All is the most exquisite mystery of colour; becoming reality at its due distance. In like manner examine the small gems on the robe of the figure. Not one will be made out in form, and yet there is not one of all those minute points of green colour, but it has two or three distinctly varied shades of green in it, giving it mysterious value and lustre.²

The spurious imitations of Pre-Raphaelite work represent the most minute leaves and other objects with sharp

¹ [Compare Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. iv. § 8 and n., where Ruskin quotes this passage in the course of some further remarks on the distinction between true Pre-Raphaelite work, which, in spite of all its detail, yet “suggests more than you can see,” and the false imitations by mere definers and delineators.]

² [The picture was begun at Worcester Park Farm, near Kingston (Surrey), on the Ewell, where Hunt, Millais, and Collins spent the summer of 1851. It was there that Millais found the scene for his “Ophelia,” and the background for his “Huguenot,” and Hunt the backgrounds for his “Hireling Shepherd” and “Light of the World.” “I had dwelt over and matured my design,” writes Hunt, “enough to be able to paint the orchard background at the proper season in the grounds attached to the house. To paint it life-size, as I should have liked, would then have forbidden any hope of sale. It was one of the misfortunes of my position, which I have ever since regretted, but perhaps I should have had greater difficulty in the first work of the painting, which I did from 9 P.M. till 5 A.M. every night, about the time of the full moon, for two or three months. I sat in an open shed made of hurdles, and painted by the light of a candle, a stronger illumination being too blending. On going to bed I slept till ten, and then devoted myself for an hour or two to rectifying any error of colour, and to drawing out the work for the next night.” Afterwards the work went on in his studio at Chelsea. “The window which had before served me for sunlight now monthly allowed me to receive moonlight upon the little groups of objects that were placed to help me paint the effect of the lantern-light mixing with that of the silvery night. The ivy I had already painted, and the long grass and weeds were completed; but I had made up an imitation door with adjuncts, and had placed a lay-figure for the drapery, with the lantern to shine upon it duly; in the day I could screen out the sun, and at night I removed the blinds to let in the moon. I would sit at my work from 8 or 9 P.M. till 4 A.M. This went on for some months” (Contemporary Review, May 1886, p. 749; June, p. 824). In later years Holman Hunt made an enlarged, life-size, version of his picture; this has been purchased by Mr. Charles Booth, who proposes to send it for exhibition in the Colonies and the United States, and to bequeath it to the National Gallery of British Art; it was exhibited in London in the spring of 1904.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]