The English painter William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the only one to remain faithful to its precepts throughout his life.

William Holman Hunt was born in London. His father, a warehouse manager, reluctantly allowed him to enter the Royal Academy schools in 1844, where he met John Everett Millais. Profoundly influenced by his discovery of John Keats and his reading of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in 1847, Hunt developed a new approach to painting which involved the expression of significant moral ideas in a completely natural manner. To this end he evolved an intensely realistic technique, using brilliant, clear colors on a white ground instead of the traditional dark underpainting. These new ideas are embodied in his illustration inspired by Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Hunt, and Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Despite Ruskin's defense of...