| This dissertation examines the paintings of the British artist William Holman Hunt as exponents of evangelical imperialism that fundamentally transformed the practice of religious painting in Britain. Hunt traveled to the Middle East in the nineteenth century, when Europeans gained increased access to foreign lands as a result of Europe's expanding political influence. Armed with the authority of a British national in a period of imperial expansion, he appears to have operated within the framework of Orientalism, in which the West constructed the East through textual accounts and images. Hunt obtained models from the local population, described himself as an adventurer in uncharted terrain, and publicly exhibited his pictures in England, where he was a member of the artistic community called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Yet the rubric of Orientalism in fact occludes those historical circumstances most salient for understanding Hunt's paintings. Through close study of manuscripts, paintings, and drawings, I argue that Hunt's biblical representations were informed by Britain's imperial incursions into the Middle East and the growing influence of the Evangelical Movement, and therefore exposed the instability of Britain's national identity both at home and abroad. |
