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The Shadow of Death
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
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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