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Design - Design for a reading desk
  • Design for a reading desk
    Holman Hunt, born 1827 - died 1910
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Design for a reading desk

  • Object:

    Design

  • Place of origin:

    Florence, Italy (made)

  • Date:

    1869 (made)

  • Artist/Maker:

    Holman Hunt, born 1827 - died 1910 (designer)

  • Materials and Techniques:

    Pencil, pen and ink

  • Museum number:

    E.599-1985

  • Gallery location:

    Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E, case W, shelf 120

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Holman Hunt is best known for his remarkable religious paintings. He designed frames for his pictures and may have also designed other three-dimensional objects. This drawing for a reading desk is the only three-dimensional design by Hunt in the V&A collection. The desk is simple and massive, like the Gothic examples he had seen in medieval churches. Hunt designed it for his friend William Beaumont, who was curate at the church of St Michael and All Angels, Cambridge. Beaumont died before the commission was completed and Hunt eventually kept the reading desk himself.

Place of Origin

Florence, Italy (made)

Date

1869 (made)

Artist/maker

Holman Hunt, born 1827 - died 1910 (designer)

Materials and Techniques

Pencil, pen and ink

Marks and inscriptions

W.H.H.
PARKINS & GOTTO LONDON

Dimensions

Height: 23 cm, Width: 18.5 cm

Object history note

Provenance: By descent from the Artist; Mrs Elizabeth Burt.

Note: In 1864 the artist was commissioned to decorate the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Cambridge, where his friend William Beaumont had been curate since 1858. Hunt described in his memoirs how he arranged for the lecturn to be made in walnut wood with ivory and dark wood inlay, but on hearing of the death of Beaumont when he returned from the East, cancelled the order. The artist eventually kept the lecturn himself.

This design is the only known drawing relating to the commission which was executed in Florence in 1868. Inscribed with title on former mount.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1905, II, pp.247, 251, 257. 1913 (2nd ed.), II, p.206 repro.
Anne Clark Amor, William Holman Hunt: The True Pre-Raphaelits, 1989, pp.201.
Colin Cruise Pre-Raphaelite Drawing London: Thames & Hudson, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-7093-0264-3

Exhibition History

The Poetry of Drawing: Pre Raphaelite Studies, Designs and Watercolours (The Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney) 17/06/2011-04/09/2011)
The Poetry of Drawing: Pre Raphaelite Studies, Designs and Watercolours (Gas Hall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 29/01/2011-15/05/2011)

Subjects depicted

Reading desk

Categories

Furniture

Collection code

PDP

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Qr_O74757
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