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    Museum collections / Art Institute of Chicago
    The Shadow of Death
    William Holman Hunt. The Shadow of Death, 1873-74. The Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain (CC0).
    AT-00001756

    Public data from the Art Institute of Chicago. Learn more

    The Shadow of Death

    by William Holman Hunt

    Inscriptions

    Initialed, dated and inscribed: 18Whh70.3 / JERUSALEM (lower right); copy mady by Whh 1873 (lower right, under frame)

    Provenance

    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.

    Exhibition history

    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.

    Publications

    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. M. Davie, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, (1976), 738. James H. Coombs, Anne M. Scott, et al., eds., A Pre-Raphaelite Friendship: The Correspondence of William Holman Hunt and John Lucas Tupper (Anne Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 182–83, 185–86, 190–91, 222, 236–37, 239, 244. John Shaw, “£1.5m Price Expected for Hunt’s Masterpiece,” The Times, September 1, 1994, n.p. Tom Sharratt, “Seeing Double: Shadow of Death,” Guardian, September 1, 1994, 5. Geraldine Norman, “Hunt Replica Sells for Record £1.8m,” Independent, November 3, 1994, 6. Royal Academy of Arts, Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2003), 21, 99, 101 (ill.), 302, cat. 64. Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, Paintings (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), no. 121, 232-34. Alexandre Lafore, "Un chef-d’œuvre d’Holman Hunt pour Chicago," La Tribune de l'Art, Mar. 14, 2022. James Rondeau, ed., Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2025), 66 (ill.).

    Quick Overview

    Artist
    William Holman Hunt (English, 1827-1910)
    Date
    1873-74
    Medium
    Oil on panel
    Dimensions
    104.5 × 82 cm (41 × 32 1/4 in.); Framed: 137.2 × 115.9 × 9.6 cm (54 × 45 5/8 × 3 3/4 in.)
    Type
    Painting
    Classification
    oil on panel
    Style
    19th century
    Place
    England
    Department
    Painting and Sculpture of Europe
    Credit line
    Joseph Winterbotham Collection
    Accession no.
    2021.54

    More by William Holman Hunt in museum collections

    • Study of the Crescent Moon in "The Ship"

      William Holman Hunt

      c. 1875 · Drawing

      Public collection via the Art Institute of ChicagoAT-00006224
    • Mary Walker Waugh

      William Holman Hunt

      1868 · Painting

      Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of ArtAT-00009258
    • Study for "The Hireling Shepherd"

      William Holman Hunt

      1851 · Drawing

      Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of ArtAT-00011033

    Open-access museum data

    This record comes from the open-access collection data that the Art Institute of Chicago publishes for unrestricted use (Creative Commons Zero). Art Trackers shows a selection of the museum's published fields. The Art Institute of Chicago is not an Art Trackers client and has not reviewed or endorsed this page; the museum's own website is the authoritative record.

    • View this work at the Art Institute of Chicago
    • The Art Institute of Chicago: open-access terms

    Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.

    Open-access museum record · AT-00001756

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