Art Institute of ChicagoPublic domain

The Shadow of Death

William Holman Hunt · 1873-74

Provenance

Ownership history

Commissioned by Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, March 1873; sold to John Heugh, London, December 8, 1873; sold, Christie’s, London, March 17, 1877, lot 56, to Thomas Agnew & Sons London [annotated sale catalogue; Agnew Stock Book, no. 295, National Gallery, London; in curatorial object file]; sold to John Throgmorton, Middlemore, Birmingham, England, December 23, 1896; bequeathed to the trustees of the Middlemore Estate, 1925; consigned to Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, June 5, 1973; sold to private collector, August 13, 1975; sold Sotheby’s, November 2, 1994, lot 172, to Lord Lloyd-Webber [sale catalogue in curatorial object file]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2021.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions

Melbourne, The Centennial International Exhibition, Aug. 1, 1888-Mar. 9, 1889, cat. 51.
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, long term loan, 1905-1906.
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, long term loan, 1935-1973.
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, William Holman Hunt, Mar.-April 1969; London, Victoria and Albert Museum, May-June 1969, cat. 46.
London, Thomas Agnew and Sons, Painting in England, 1630-1870, June 5-Jul.13, 1973, cat. 63.
Baden-Baden, Germany, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Praraffaeliten, Nov. 23, 1973-Feb. 24, 1974, cat. 48.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, Sept. 20 – Dec. 12, 2003, cat. 64.

Literature

Argus, August 9, 1888, 11.
Argus, August 15, 1888, 5.
Leader, September 1, 1888, 11.
Argus, November 19, 1888, 8.
Official Record of the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne 1888-1889 (Melbourne: Sands and McDougall Limited, 1890), 640.
William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan & Co., 1905), 310, 382.
Evelyn Waugh, “The Only Pre-Raphaelite,” Spectator, Oct. 14, 1960, 567.
Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl, eds., Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 1152, no. 1319.
Walker Art Gallery, William Holman Hunt: An Exhibition Arranged by the Walker Art Gallery, exh. cat., (Liverpool: Elliott Bros & Yeoman, 1969), cat. 46, 49-51.
Theodore Crombie, “Round the Galleries: All the Changing Scenes,” Apollo 98 (July 1973): 49, fig. 2.
Günter Metken, Praraffaeliten, exh. cat. (Baden-Baden: Staatliche Kunsthalle, 1973), cat. 48, 96-97.
Thomas Agnew and Sons, Painting in England, 1630-1870, exh. cat. (London: Agnew and Sons Galleries, 1973), cat. 63, n.p.

Comparables