John Keats - Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil

Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil
(completed in 1818)

A Story from Boccaccio

LIII.
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.


LIV.
And so she ever fed it with thin tears,
Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,
So that it smelt more balmy than its peers
Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew
Nurture besides, and life, from human fears,
From the fast mouldering head there shut from view:
So that the jewel, safely casketed,
Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.


LV.
O Melancholy, linger here awhile!
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh!
Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;
Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,
And make a pale light in your cypress glooms,
Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.

Lines 417- 440

1. William Holman Hunt
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1867
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

An interesting posting -
http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/?p=41

2. John William Waterhouse
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1907
Private collection

3. Henrietta Rae
Isabella
"Reproduced in colour in 'Henrietta Rae (Mrs. Ernest Normand)' by Arthur Fish, Cassell and Company, 1905." - Courtesy ArtMagick

4. Arthur Trevethin Nowell
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1904
Museo de Arte de Ponce
The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.
Ponce, Puerto Rico
(Thank you to ArtMagick for sharing information about this work.)
http://www.arthurnowell.com/

-----------------

Keats-Shelley House, Rome - Link
http://www.keats-shelley-house.org/en/romanticism

Four Keats Poems and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision of the Middle Ages
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/bottai1.html

Introduction to Keats
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html

The complete poem - Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil

The Lady of Shalott - William Holman Hunt

(second photo courtesy Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

Glimpses of the Holman Hunt exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2009)

Video Tour of the exhibit, Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision (April 2009) - Art Gallery of Ontario.
(Link to video on YouTube)



You can see a few of Holman Hunt's studio costumes in the display cases.

Photographs and video courtesy "Listen Up TV".

Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision (2008-2009 exhibition)

(Information about the exhibition catalogue.)
~~
The exhibit was presented at three venues.
Each website still has information about the exhibition.

Manchester Art Gallery (11 October 2008 - 11 January 2009)

The three versions of Hunt's The Light of the World were shown.
Glimpses of them can be seen in this 2008 BBC report about the exhibit. Thoughts about the exhibition are also shared by
Muslim, Jewish and Christian families.

~~

Art Gallery of Ontario (Feb 14 - May 10, 2009)

Holman Hunt: Pre-Raphaelite Passion (Audio)
"This talk by Holman Hunt scholar Carol Jacobi presents the artist’s life and inspirations as well as the development of his approach to art."

Holman Hunt: “Branding” a Vision (Audio)
Presented by Brenda Rix, assistant curator of Prints and Drawings at the AGO.

~~

Minneapolis Institute of Arts (June 14 to Sept. 6, 2009)
The link above leads to these short preview sections:
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Love and Pain: Hunt’s Private Life
William Holman Hunt, 1827–1910
Textiles
Hunt in the Middle East
Hunt and the Holy Land
Light of the World: Spreading the Word
The Lady of Shalott

Link to the Institute's webpage featuring a
slideshow presentation about the exhibit.

Information from the Exhibition Listings section at ArtMagick.

William Holman Hunt

1. The School-Girl's Hymn, 1859
2. Study of Firelight, circa 1861-62
("...The girl portrayed is probably the artist's sister Emily ..." - ArtMagick
3. Tuscan Girl, 1868-69
'About the artwork' - Lady Lever Art Gallery
4. Amaryllis, 1884

ArtMagick

William Holman Hunt and his son Cyril

William Holman Hunt and His Son Cyril
courtesy The Victorian Web

courtesy the Rossetti Archive

Cyril Benoni Holman Hunt, 1880
courtesy The Fitzwilliam Museum

Photograph of Cyril (1887) - National Portrait Gallery

William Holman Hunt - Master Hilary - The Tracer, 1886

"Hilary had first appeared in his father's work as the Christ Child in 'The Triumph of the Innocents' (1876-87; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), and other early studies of him are reproduced in Hunt's autobiography. In our picture he is seen through the glass of a French window, we ourselves standing outside with the painter, looking into a shadowed room, the child inside looking out. He has stuck a design on the glass with sealing wax, and is about to trace it against the light with the stick of coloured chalk which he holds in his right hand. At his feet are a box of paints, his paint brushes in a glass of water, and an upturned white china plate which he presumably uses as a palette." - Christie's catalogue notes (extensive)

The painting "remained in Hilary's possession until his death in 1949. It was then inherited by his daughter, Diana, who died" in 1993.

William Holman Hunt - Fanny and Edith Waugh

Fanny Holman Hunt, 1866-1868

From the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio (link).

"We ... know from letters that Hunt wrote to W. J. Bunney, his studio assistant in Florence, that he reconstructed this memorial image of his wife with the same care and precision that he devoted to his major religious paintings. He took great care, for instance, to secure Fanny's own peacock shawl, the painting of which one contemporary reviewer took to be the "greatest tour de force of the exhibition" when it was shown at the 1869 Royal Academy." - The Victorian Web

Photograph of Fanny shared at the Pre-Raphaelite Art blog.

From Stephanie Pina at her website, The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood -
Isabella and the Pot of Basil

"... in 1865 at the age of thirty-eight, [William Holman Hunt married] Fanny Waugh, the daughter of a prosperous London chemist. In August the following year, when Fanny was seven months pregnant, they set out for what would have been Hunt's second visit to the East, and on 20 December 1866 she died at Florence after giving birth to a son. He was named Cyril Benoni (Hebrew for 'child of sorrow'). Nine years later Hunt married Fanny's younger sister Edith, flouting the Table of Affinities, outraging her family, and causing a permanent rift with his fellow PRB Thomas Woolner, who had married another Waugh daughter. Of this second marriage there were two children, Gladys, born in 1878, and Hilary Lushington, born on 6 May 1879." - from Christie's lot notes

The Birthday

"The Birthday (1868) is a striking portrait of the artist's sister-in-law, Edith Waugh, on her twenty-first birthday, surrounded by gifts. They include a cameo, which Holman Hunt had originally given to his first wife, Fanny Waugh, Edith's sister. ..."

"Edith had become a surrogate mother to Fanny and William’s son, and seven years after this painting, Edith and Hunt (age 48) were married in Switzerland – because English law (the Table of Affinities) forbade their marriage. Incidentally, Edith and Hunt, who by then was quite prominent, campaigned against this ridiculous prohibition, and in 1907 Parliament passed the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act, which sanctioned their union."

Information about Fanny and Edith from the Dictionary of artists' models

by Jill Berk Jiminez and Joanna Banham.

William Holman Hunt (British, 1827-1910)

Miss Gladys M. Holman Hunt
(The School of Nature)

A photograph of Gladys as a child - National Portrait Gallery

Works by William Holman Hunt at ArtMagick

A question from a reader of the Telegraph - UK