The Light of the World ... Holman Hunt

The Light of the World   ... Holman Hunt

Holman Hunt - The Light of the World

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. – Revelation 3:20

Many have been thinking  about art that would transcend the spiritual-secular divide to touch the hearts of those outside of the church. Here, my friends, is a fine example. Holman Hunt’s “The Light of the World” had people flocking from all across the country, and the painting even went on a tour across the world. It now stands today both in Keble College Chapel, Oxford (a few minutes away from me) and St Paul’s Cathedral (a second version made later in Hunt’s life). If you ever get the chance to see it for yourself then do not miss the opportunity.
For those of you who may be wondering why it was quite so popular, have a think about all of the imagery that Hunt has packed into this painting about who Jesus is and how he relates to us. Firstly, notice that the door has no outside handle – it can only be opened from within: Christ knocks on each of our hearts, but only we may open up to him. Notice too that it has become overgrown with weeds: this door has not been opened for some length of time.
The lights in the scene are full of meaning too. Whilst the rising lights in the background provide some illumination, the main illumination is through Jesus’ lamp (“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” – Psalm 119:105). And look at the rich orchard and beauty of the world that awaits they who open to Jesus! Remember too that the crown of the one who knocks is composed of thorns.
This is excellent artistry: beautifully painted, rich in symbolism and simple enough that everyone who sees it can take something away from it.

When Holman Hunt read the text "Behold I stand at the door and knock" it came as a response to his anxious religious questionings, he found that it brought a new symbolism with it. As the painter assured Tupper, even the most basic visual elements of the painting had spiritual meaning for him. He painted the figure of Christ to emphasize solidity and mass because he wanted to avoid the implications of conventional religious art: "In England you know spiritual figures are painted as if in vapour. I had a further reason for making the figure more solid than I should have otherwise done in the fact that it is the Christ that is alive for ever more. He was to be firmly and substantially there waiting for the stirring of the sleeping soul." Hunt also conceived the lighting in terms of its spiritual significance — just as he was later to do in The Triumph of the Innocents . The figure of Christ, he explained, was "to be seen only by the light of the star of distant dawn behind, and of some moonlight in front with most of all the light "to guide us in dark places" coming from the lantern. This mixture of lights is all natural on the understanding that it is treated typically" (20 June 1878; London (Huntington MS.). In the world of religious vision which Hunt created in The Light of the World all things necessarily bear higher meanings, so that the symbolical and the natural combine: both together make up the real. although one cannot be certain about the precise significance of all elements of the picture's lighting , it is clear that Christ's lantern — whether it be the light of truth or of Christian doctrine — provides most of the illumination. The promise of a new day, a new life once the soul awakens to Christ, and the natural light of the moon can shed some, too, but Christ himself must be the chief means by which one can see him.
In Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt explained the other points of symbolism in The Light of the World :

The closed door was the obstinately shut mind, the weeds the cumber of daily neglect, the accumulated hindrances of sloth; the orchard the garden of delectable fruit for the dainty feast of the soul. The music of the still small voice was the summons to the sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the Divine Master; the bat flitting about only in darkness was a natural symbol of ignorance; the kingly and priestly dress of Christ, the sign of His reign over the body and the soul, to them who could give their allegiance to Him and acknowledge God's overrule. In making it a night scene, lit mainly by the lantern carried by Christ, I had followed metaphorical explanation in the Psalms, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,' with also the accordant allusions by St. Paul to the sleeping soul, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." (I.350-51)

For the painter it was a matter of great importance that the iconography of the picture "was not based upon ecclesiastical or archaic symbolism, but derived from obvious reflectiveness." According to Hunt, his symbols "were of natural figures such as language had originally employed to express transcendental ideas" (I.350). In other words, he believed that The Light of the World created its symbolic language in precisely the same way that men had formed language to express abstract and spiritual ideas. The important point is that, since the symbolism derives from what he takes to be essential habits of mind, it would be immediately comprehensible to any audience, because such "natural" symbolism does not require any knowledge of iconographic traditions. Nonetheless, since his method was unusual, he had worked "with no confidence" that his symbols would interest anyone else. The fact that The Light of the World has "in the main been interpreted truly" without any additional assistance from him convinced Hunt that his method had been successful (I.351).
The almost astonishing popularity of this picture in nineteenth-century England and America appears not only in the fact that many took it to be the single most important contemporary portrayal of Christ but also in its influence upon popular poetry and book illustration. Like Tennyson's In Memoriam ,The Light of the World succeeded in reaching a large audience, eventually becoming an element of popular culture. The picture became known beyond the narrow confines of the art world by means of its engraved version, and it was popularized even farther by sermons and devotional poetry (See, for example, Richard Glover, The Light of the World;" or, Holman Hunt's Great Allegorical Picture Translated into Words, which, according to Fredeman, saw editions of 1862, 1863, and 1871.). Because John L. Tupper was a close friend of the painter, one obviously cannot claim that his poem entitled "The Light of the World" exemplifies the picture's popularity; but its appearance in the 1855 Crayon suggests that many became aware of Hunt's subject, and the very fact that Tupper was moved enough by his friend's painting to write a poem about it suggests the effect it had upon many Victorians. The poem, which the editors accompanied by an extract from Ruskin's letter to The Times, astutely takes the form of a dream vision. The speaker relates how when walking in the night he came upon

a house whose door no hands disturb:
The ivy root had bit into the grain;
There had not been, or knife or hand to curb,
Where grew the rankest thing, that would attain
Its natural will. [87]

At this point the speaker has a vision of Christ knocking at the door, and he awakens with a start. Later that night when sleep returns, he again encounters the figure of Christ "walking round/The darkness with that most miraculous light,' and he concludes that anyone who has not been blessed with the same vision "hath slept too sound" (87). although Tupper is not a first-rate poet, he felt the power of the painting enough to attempt a transformation of the image into an imaginative vision.
Most of the poems which demonstrate the influence of Hunt's painting do not even rise this far from the ordinary, and they are of more interest as examples of popular culture than powerful influences of painting upon her sister art. Robert H. Baynes'sThe Illustrated Book of Sacred Poems (1867), an Anglo-American venture, exemplifies the way The Light of the World had an influence upon popular doctrinal works and hymnals, and through them became known to members of the lower and middle classes. W. Chatterton Dix's "Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock!" acknowledges in its subtitle that it was "Suggested by Holman Hunt's "Light of the World'" (164), but several other references to the lines depicted by Hunt do not. Harriet McEwen Kimball's "The Guest" (336-37) simply narrates the sinner's encounter with Christ who comes to the door and knocks, and Alan Brodrick's "Pity Me, Lord" seems to draw upon both Hunt's painting and Tennyson's "Palace of Art":

But ah! wert Thou all night outside my door,
And I so noisy with love's selfish fears?
Why heard I not Thy patient knock before,

As the dull lamplight flickered through my tears?
Pity me, Lord, I am a little child.
Come in, my Lord, I dread to be alone,
My fairy palaces are lost in dust. [80]

In the decades following the first exhibition and engraving of The Light of the World poets continued to draw upon it for imagery. In The Song of the New Creation (New York, 1872), Horatio Bonar, a Scottish writer of popular devotional poetry, made use of Christ standing outside the sinner's door in "The Drops of the Night," while an anonymous poet published "Behold, I stand at the Door" in the 1875 Good Words, a periodical with which Hunt was associated" (25 [1875], 557). Both Joseph Grigg's hymn "Behold! a Stranger's at the door!" (1765) and Longfellow's translation of Lope da Vega's sonnet using the same image anticipated Hunt's painting, but The Light of the World was responsible for its Victorian popularity.

A Sermon on Canvas

The Light of the World

 

"I regard "The Light of the World" as the finest picture ever painted by an Englishman. It is really a painted text, a sermon on canvas.

Such a picture explains the true uses which art had in the middle ages. With many people, nowadays, paintings are only the last touch of ornament given to their houses; but in the middle ages the painter occupied the place preachers would occupy now.

When people read little, and were preached to little, the great artists were the great preachers of the world. Anybody could understand a painting but few could read books. In those times, art was held in high honour. Painters were then great servants of the Church.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock ...

The whole is emblematic ...

In "The Light of the World" the allegory chosen for illustration is that beautiful one in the Revelation, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me". The picture is not, in the strict sense of the word, a pre-Raphaelite picture, though painted by a chief teacher of the school. The whole is emblematic, and upon the understanding of the emblems used, depends one's appreciation of the success with which the painter has fulfilled his task.

On the head of Christ are two crowns: the earthly crown of his shame as well as his heavenly crown of glory. And the artist has made the thorny crown begin to bud and blossom, thereby symbolising that the crown which was thorny to Christ, put upon his head and spiritually used by him, did begin to blossom; and showing, also, that there is no thorn but God can make blossom."