The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-06 00:00:00

HOLMAN HUNT.

At the German Gallery, 168, New Bond•street,
there are now on view, for a very few weeks, a
cluster of extraordinary productions from the hand
of this great artist. _ _ _

Foremost amongst them, of course, his admitted
masterpiece—the chef d'ceuvre of that remarkable
school of Art-Revivalists, which has assumed to
itself the antique de,.ignation of the Prt.-Rapl.ael-
ites.

" The Finding of our Saviour in the Temple" is
the title (as all the connoisseurs of London know
full well by this time) of Mr. Hunt's chief glory as
a Painter.

Whatever exception may be taken to the achool
of the Pre-Raphaelites, however numerous and
grotesque may be their eccentricities—who that
has but once looked upon that astonishing picture can
ever, ever lose the recollection of its inimitable grace,
of its delicious splendour in mere colouri og, of its
abounding and bewitching loveliness? It is the
world's latest and not its least illustration of the
exquisite truth latent in that first line of poetry
John Keats ever published, the opening verse of his
maiden poem of " Endymion"—

" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever!"
And bearing in mind Holman Hunt's Great Work
here referred to, we may, in the mere remembrance
of it, continue the impassioned quotation—

" Its loveliness increases ; it will never
Pass into nothingness ."
And now, in addition to the allurement thus
enshrined in the German Gallery in the form of this
capo d'opera of Holman Hunt's genius as a Pre-Ra-
phaelite, there are displayed upon the walls
of the ante-room, or vestibule to the inner apart-
ment in which "The Finding of our Savour in the
Temple" assembles day by day a moving throng
of admiring and awe-stricken spectators—we had
almost said of worshippers—several very remark-
able minor works from the same master hand.

" Claudio and Isabella" we again greet with
pleasure—as they are pourtrayed in the famous
dungeon scene from Measure for Measure:—

" Claud. Death is a fearful thing !
Isab. And shamed life a hateful 1 "

Hundreds will recognise this singular cabinet pic-
ture of the captive brother and the nun sister
conferring together upon the awful theme of life
and death in the dungeon-window. Its colouring
is as fresh and radiant as when it hung first of all
upon the walls of the Royal Academy during—it
seems to us—a long past Exhibition.
Hard by—clustered together in a group upon the
same wall of the vestibule to the German Gallery
—are five sparkling and luminous water-colour
drawings of historic scenes recently brought back
by Mr. Hunt from the Holy Land. Cairo is revealed
to us in one, with " Sunset on the Gebel Mokattum."
Yonder is the distant sheen of the " Dead Sea," as

viewed from Siloam. Yonder " Nazareth ! "
Yonder the " Plain of Rephaim," beheld from the
height of Ziou. And there—twinkling with arti-
ff.ial lights under the purple darkness—" Jerusalem
"during Ramazan." These five pictures—with a
bloom upon them like so many plums dropped into
the art-lap of England—are of themselves worthy
of a pilgrimage to the German Gallery. Whoever
journeys thither to see them, however—will
not fail to advance a step further in his
pilgrimage, immediately afterwards : to cast another
wondering glance at Mr. Hunt's opus prcecipuurn—
, "The Finding" of the Redeemer of the World by
His Mother and His Foster Father in the Porch
of the Temple ef.„God in Jerusalem.