William Holman Hunt’s Portrait of Henry Wentworth Monk

The thesis examines the connection between Jan van Eyck’s (c. 1390-1441) Portrait of a Man (“Léal Souvenir”) (1432) and William Holman Hunt’s portrait of Henry Wentworth Monk (1858). Holman Hunt and Henry Monk shared a period of personal transformation upon their first meeting in Syria in 1854 and again in London in 1858. The execution of Monk’s portrait coincided with National Gallery’s acquisition of Léal Souvenir in 1857. Hunt’s appropriation of stylistic elements and themes drawn from van Eyck’s pictures is a subject that has been addressed by scholars in Hunt’s major works throughout his artistic career. The little known portrait of Monk has, heretofore, been excluded from the current scholarship on this topic. A careful reading of Hunt’s signs and symbols argues for its inclusion