1. William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) The Afterglow in Egypt
Gallery 56, second floor

Pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt left England in 1854, hoping to rediscover the biblical lands in Egypt and Palestine, and to paint them and their inhabitants from nature. He wrote to Thomas Combe that he had begun a life-sized study of an Egyptian girl, but that the trials of heat and dust, and the difficulty of persuading the model to pose, caused him to abandon the painting. It was on his return in 1861 that he painted this smaller version (the first painting is in Southampton Art Gallery). He later explained that the composition was intended ‘to express nothing but that the light is not that of the sun, and that although the meridian glory of ancient Egypt has passed away, there is still a poetic reflection of this in the aspect of life there’.

2. Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A. (1830-1896) Acme and Septimius
Gallery 56, second floor

Leighton was one of the most influential artists in Victorian England. In this painting, the graceful composition is indebted to Raphael’s Madonnas, while the garden is Italianate, with orange trees and roses. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868, the catalogue gave Theodore Martin’s translation of Catullus as his source:

Then bending gently back her head
With that sweet mouth, so rosy red,
Upon his eyes she dropped a kiss,
Intoxicating him with bliss.

3. Charles Alston Collins (1828-1873) Convent Thoughts
Gallery 56, second floor

Collins was a close friend of John Everett Millais. Under Millais’s influence, Collins began his first Pre-Raphaelite painting of a novice in a garden. She holds the passion flower, symbol of the crucifixion, having read in the open missal the story of Christ’s crucifixion. Her finger marks the place in the missal where the angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she has been set aside for special grace. The novice is surrounded by lilies, traditionally the attribute of the Virgin Mary, while the frame, designed by Millais, has carved and gilded lilies and is inscribed Sicut Lilium. The background was painstakingly painted from life, in the garden of Thomas Combe, in Walton Street, Oxford.