“THE AWAKENING CONSCIENCE”

4. FROM THE TIMES, May 25, 1854

To the Editor of the “Times”

SIR,-Your kind insertion of my notes on Mr. Hunt’s principal picture encourages me to hope that you may yet allow me room in your columns for a few words respecting his second work in the Royal Academy, the “Awakening Conscience.”¹ Not that this picture is obscure, or its story feebly told. I am at a loss to know how its meaning could be rendered more distinctly, but assuredly it is not understood. People gaze at it in a blank wonder, and leave it hopelessly; so that, thought it is almost an insult to the painter to explain his thoughts in this instance, I cannot persuade myself to leave it thus misunderstood. The poor girl has been sitting singing with her seducer; some chance

¹ [This picture-now usually called “The Awakened Conscience”-is in the collection formed by the late Sir Thomas Fairbairn. For other references to it, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. vii. § 18, where it is cited as an instance of painting taking “its proper position beside literature”; and The Art of England, § 6. In a first note on the picture, in his diary, Ruskin writes: “Hunt’s picture, ‘Awakening Conscience.’ Lear’s setting to music of Tennyson’s ‘Tears, Idle Tears’ on the floor; some tangled worsted; her life Bells ringing all round the frame.” The music of Lear’s setting of “Tears, Idle Tears” is seen, unrolled from the paper, lying on the floor, whilst the music of Moore’s poem is on the music-stand of the piano. A frame for embroidery has the worsted with which she is supposed to while away her time when alone. The pattern of the frame is composed of bells swinging at different angles, as though bursting into joyful chimes. The artist, describing the inception of the picture, says: “I had been led to it by the beautiful verse in Proverbs [xxv. 20], ‘As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart,’ when I was seeking for a material interpretation of the idea in ‘The Light of the World’ ” (Contemporary Review, June 1886, p. 825). In the Academy Catalogue of 1854 Hunt gave the following passages after his title:-

“As of the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall and some grow; so is the generation of flesh and blood.”-Eccles. xiv. 18.

“Strengthen ye the feeble hands, and confirm ye the tottering knees; say ye to the faint-hearted: Be ye strong; fear ye not; behold your God.”-Isaiah (Bishop Lowth’s translation).]

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