Study for "The Hireling Shepherd" (1851): Art, History and Details

Study for "The Hireling Shepherd" (1851) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William Holman Hunt (British, 1827–1910).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Together with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt was one of the founding members in 1848 of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young artists who rejected the heavy darkness and idealization of academic history painting, replacing it with meticulously observed, jewel-colored naturalistic detail. This is a study for the figures in the oil painting The Hireling Shepherd, Hunt’s first commercial success. The poses of the couple in the painting are remarkably close to the early study: the shepherd approaches the shepherdess upon his knees, encircling her shoulders with his arm. Devoid of extraneous detail, the study concentrates on the romantic play and erotic tension expressed by the lovers’ intertwined limbs and faces and hands that stop just short of touching.

Object facts

• Title: Study for "The Hireling Shepherd"
• Date: 1851
• Creator attribution: William Holman Hunt (British, 1827–1910)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 11.4 x 18.3 cm (4 1/2 x 7 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1986.18

A detail from the museum

Contemporary viewers would have recognized the painting for which this drawing is a study as bearing a deeper meaning: the couple's risky flirtation will lead to disastrous consequences and the shepherd ignores his flock while distracted by romance.

Collection credit

Delia E. Holden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 2nd rev. ed. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1914.
• Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings of the 1860 Period. Exh. Cat. London: Tate Gallery, 1923.
• The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848-1861). Exh. Cat. Birmingham: Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 1947.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.