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''The Awakening Conscience'' (1853) is an
oil-on-canvas Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...
painting by the English artist
William Holman Hunt William Holman Hunt (2 April 1827 – 7 September 1910) was an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid colour, and elaborate symbolism ...
, one of the founders of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossett ...
, which depicts a woman rising from her position in a man's lap and gazing transfixed out the room's window. The painting is in the collection of the
Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...
, in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
.


Subject matter

Initially, the painting appears to depict a momentary disagreement between husband and wife, but the title and a host of symbols within the painting make it clear that this is a mistress and her lover. The woman's clasped hands provide a focal point and the position of her left hand emphasizes the absence of a wedding ring, although rings are worn on every other finger. Around the room are dotted reminders of her "kept" status and her wasted life: the cat beneath the table toying with a bird; the clock concealed under glass; a tapestry that hangs unfinished on the piano; the threads which lie unravelled on the floor; the print of Frank Stone's ''Cross Purposes'' on the wall;
Edward Lear Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limerick (poetry), limericks, a form he popularised. ...
's musical arrangement of
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...
's 1847 poem "
Tears, Idle Tears "Tears, Idle Tears" is a lyric poem written in 1847 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), the Victorian-era English poet. Published as one of the "songs" in his '' The Princess'' (1847), it is regarded for the quality of its lyrics. A Tennys ...
" which lies discarded on the floor, and the music on the piano,
Thomas Moore Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852), was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist who was widely regarded as Ireland's "National poet, national bard" during the late Georgian era. The acclaim rested primarily on the popularity of his ''I ...
's "Oft in the Stilly Night", the words of which speak of missed opportunities and sad memories of a happier past. The discarded glove and top hat thrown on the tabletop suggest a hurried assignation. The room is too cluttered and gaudy to be in a Victorian family home; the bright colours, unscuffed carpet, and pristine, highly polished furniture speak of a room recently furnished for a mistress. Art historian
Elizabeth Prettejohn Elizabeth Francesca Prettejohn (born 15 May 1961) is an art historian and author of several books about art history. Her books have included '' Rossetti and his Circle'' (1997), ''The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites'' (2000) and ''Art for Art's Sa ...
notes that although the interior is now viewed as "Victorian" it still exudes the "'nouveau-riche' vulgarity" that would have made the setting distasteful to contemporary viewers. The painting's frame is decorated with further symbols: bells (for warning), marigolds (for sorrow), and a star above the girl's head (a sign of spiritual revelation). Its frame bears a verse from the
Book of Proverbs The Book of Proverbs (, ; , ; , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)/the Christian Old Testament. It is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon and his students. When translated into ...
(25:20): "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart". The mirror on the rear wall provides a tantalizing glimpse out of the scene. The window — opening out onto a spring garden, in direct contrast to the images of entrapment within the room — is flooded with sunlight. The woman's face does not display a look of shock that she has been surprised with her lover; whatever attracts her is outside of both the room and her relationship. The '' Athenæum'' commented in 1854: In some ways this painting is a companion to Hunt's Christian painting '' The Light of the World'', a picture of Christ holding a lantern as he knocks on an overgrown handleless door which Hunt said represented "the obstinately shut mind". The young woman here could be responding to that image, her conscience pricked by something outside of herself. Hunt intended this image to be ''The Light of the Worlds "material counterpart in a picture representing in actual life the manner in which the appeal of the spirit of heavenly love calls a soul to abandon a lower life."Hunt p.429 In ''Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood'' Hunt wrote that Peggotty's search for Emily in ''
David Copperfield ''David Copperfield''Dickens invented over 14 variations of the title for this work; see is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to matur ...
'' had given him the idea for the composition and he began to visit "different haunts of fallen girls" looking for a suitable setting. He did not plan to recreate any particular scene from ''David Copperfield'', and initially wanted to capture something more general: "the loving seeker of the fallen girl coming upon the object of his search". But he reconsidered, deciding that such a meeting would engender different emotions in the girl than the repentance he wanted to show. He eventually settled on the idea that the girl's companion could be singing a song that suddenly reminded her of her former life and thereby act as the unknowing catalyst for her epiphany. The model for the woman was
Annie Miller Annie Miller (1835–1925) was an English artists' model who, among others, sat for the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Her on-off relationship with Holman Hunt ...
, who sat for many of the Pre-Raphaelites and to whom Hunt was engaged until 1859. The male figure may be based on
Thomas Seddon : ''For the New Zealand politician see'' Tom Seddon Thomas Seddon (28 August 1821 in London – 23 November 1856 in Cairo) was an English landscape painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who painted colourful and highly detailed s ...
or
Augustus Egg Augustus Leopold Egg RA (2 May 1816 – 26 March 1863) was a British Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych '' Past and Present'' (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family. Biog ...
, both painter friends of Hunt.


Repainting

The look on the girl's face in the modern painting is not the look of pain and horror that viewers saw when the painting was first exhibited, and which shocked and repulsed many of the contemporary critics. The painting was commissioned by
Thomas Fairbairn Sir Thomas Fairbairn, 2nd Baronet Deputy Lieutenant, DL (18 January 1823 – 12 August 1891) was an English industrialist and art collector. Early life Fairbairn was born in the Polygon in Ardwick, near the centre of Manchester. He was the thir ...
, a Manchester industrialist and patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, after Egg discussed Hunt's ideas and possibly showed him some of the initial sketches.Tate
Illustrated Companion.
Fairbairn paid Hunt 350 guineas. The painting was exhibited at the
Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...
in 1854, along with ''The Light of the World''. Fairbairn found himself unable to bear looking at the woman's expression day-to-day, so persuaded Hunt to soften it. Hunt started work but fell ill and allowed the painting to be returned to Fairbairn for display at the Birmingham Society of Artists exhibition in 1856 before he was completely happy with the result. Later he was able to work on it again and confided to
Edward Lear Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limerick (poetry), limericks, a form he popularised. ...
that he thought he had "materially bettered it". As noted in the
spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...
s, Hunt retouched the painting in 1864 and again in 1886 when he repaired some work that had been carried out by a restorer in the interim.


Views of John Ruskin

The Victorian art theorist
John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...
praised ''The Awakening Conscience'' as an example of a new direction in British art in which the narrative was created from the artist's imagination rather than chronicling an event. Ruskin's reading of the painting was also to a moral end. In an 1854 letter to ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' defending the work, he claimed that there is "not a single object in all that room...but it becomes tragical if read rightly".Ruskin in Barringer, p.96 He was struck by both the stark realism of the room — Hunt had hired a room in a "maison de convenance" (where lovers would take their mistresses) in order to capture the feeling — and the symbolic overtones and compared the revelation of the subjects' characters through the interiors favourably with that of
William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraving, engraver, pictorial social satire, satirist, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from Realism (visual arts), realistic p ...
's '' Marriage à-la-mode''. The "common, modern, vulgar" interior is overwhelmed by lustrous, unworn objects that will never be part of a home. To Ruskin, the exquisite detail of the painting only called attention to the inevitable ruin of the couple: "The very hem of the poor girl's dress, at which the painter has laboured so closely, thread by thread, has story in it, if we think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her outcast feet failing in the street".Ruskin in Prettejohn 2005, p.111–113 The idea of a visual
morality tale The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
, based on a single moment, influenced
Augustus Egg Augustus Leopold Egg RA (2 May 1816 – 26 March 1863) was a British Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych '' Past and Present'' (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family. Biog ...
's 1858 series of three paintings, '' Past and Present''.


In literature

In
Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...
's 1945 novel ''
Brideshead Revisited ''Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'' is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of Charles Ryder, esp ...
'' an allusion to the painting reflects the unraveling of the affair between Julia Flyte and artist Charles Ryder.


Provenance

The painting was inherited by Fairbairn's son, Sir Arthur Henderson Fairbairn, 3rd Baronet. It was sold anonymously at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...
in January 1946 and had been bought by Colin Anderson by 1947. It was donated to the
Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...
by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson in 1976.


Notes


Citations


References

* * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Awakening Conscience, The 1853 paintings Cats in art Paintings in the Tate galleries Musical instruments in art Paintings by William Holman Hunt Birds in art Paintings of women