HOLMAN HUNT’S TRAGEDY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1989, 26 January 1907, Page 4

HOLMAN HUNT’S TRAGEDY.

Holman Hunt, the last of the PreRaphaelites, is nearly blind. “All my life I have been wanting and longing lor a time o fpeaceful oportunity; a time which, freed from the worries and anxieties that wait upon the struggling artist, would bo dovoted in the working out of all that is best within me,” he sai drecently to an interviewer. “It seemed to have como. The way was open and yet. . . . . to-day it is true that 1 can never paint again. Two-thirds of my ideals' are unrealised, and I have been waiting so long.” The tragedy is that while the optic liorvc is becoming atrophied, the rest of the body is fit for plenty of work. The great painter told his interviewer that/ ho never felt better than at that moment, and hut for his eyes, he could walk ten miles without resting. The inability to paint drives him almost to despair at times, for painting has been the joy of his life. He thought that perhaps over-application when he was fighting for a career was the cause of his misfortune. “To work all day at one’s easel and, instead of resting, to attend to a heavy correspondence at night, is a severe tax on the nervous system. There was no alternative except one—a new life in the colonies. That would have meant, giving up my art; I couldn’t do that.” When ho started, so ho reminded his visitor, there seemed to he no room for the man with original ideas. The papers criticised Millais and himself. Millais, witli u wife and children to support, was compelled to give way to the dictates of purchasers, Everything, in Holman Hunt’s opinion, is against the young artist in England. The idea of a State grant in aid of moil of proved ability does not meet with his approval. “No, I put 26 as the limit of possibilities. If a man lias done nothing before he reaches that age lie’ll do nothing afterwards, .lust as certainly will be carved a way for himself if early life has revealed originality. Rut the difficulties will bo tremendous,”