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The Hid Treasure

Maker

(artist)
1827-1910

Title

The Hid Treasure

Date of Production

1892

Medium

graphite, pen and black and grey inks, grey wash, gold bodycolour on wove paper, the lower left corner cut

Dimensions

Height: 25.8 cm
Width: 35.9 cm

Accession Number

D.1974.XX.20

Mode of Acquisition

Tom Boase, bequest, 1974 (August)

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords







Related Works

The Hid Treasure

Label Text

This is one of nine illustrations that Hunt made for Sir Edwin Arnold’s epic poem, ‘The Light of the World’ (new edition, 1893). It refers to the biblical text: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field’. Significantly the gold painted coins, representing spiritual riches as opposed to earthly wealth, are the only coloured objects in the drawing. The highly precise and linear character of this work is more typical of Pre-Raphaelite approaches to drawing in the 1860s.

Notes

A design for Edwin Arnold's epic poem on Christ, 'The Light of the World', ed. publ. 1893. This design is for the verses of 'The Parables' in Book IV, for the lines 'Did some man find / Hid shekels in a field, - old buried gold / Forgot of mouldering owner in a tomb-'. See the print after it, G.1990.WL.4507.

Provenance

Hubert Maitland Budgett, Kirtlington Park, Oxfordshire; his sale, Sotheby's (London), 29 January 1947, lot 168; purchased there by Ernest Brown & Phillips (Leicester Galleries, London); purchased there by Thomas Boase (1898-1974), June 1949, for £5; Boase Bequest 1974

Exhibition History

Liverpool, 1893 (Summer)

Life, Legend, Landscape - Victorian Drawings and Watercolours, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 17/02/2011-15/05/2011

Leicester Galleries, 1949 ...More

Royal Watercolour Society, London, 1892-93 ...Less

Literature

Pre-Raphaelite Drawing, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2011
p. 159
fig. 221 on p. 159

Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian Drawings & Watercolours, The Courtauld Gallery, 2011
no. 33
ill. on p. 125

Life, Legend, Landscape - Victorian Drawings and Watercolours, The Courtauld Gallery, 2011
cat. no. 33
ill. on p. 125 ...More

Bronkhurst, Judith, William Holman Hunt. A catalogue raisonne, Yale University Press, for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven and London, 2006
D408
vol. II, 202

Landow, George P., 'Shadows Cast by The Light of the World: William Holman Hunt's Religious Paintings, 1893-1905' in 'The Art Bulletin', 1983 - 471-84; 65, no. 3
p. 477 n. 19

Monkhouse, C., 'The Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours' in 'Academy', 3 December 1892; XLII
pp. 512-13

Stephens, F.G., 'The Society of Painters in Watercolours' in 'Athenaeum', 3 December 1892
p. 786 ...Less

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermark: none.

Inscription: Recto: lower left corner, black ink, signed with monogram and dated: "WHH / 1892".

Collector's mark: none.

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