Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Art Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-holman-hunt-287" aria-label="More by William Holman Hunt" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Holman Hunt</a>
Our English Coasts 1852 Strayed Sheep
Presented by the Art Fund 1946
animals: insects & lower animals
animals: mammals
bramble
butterfly
cliff
coast
Covehurst Bay
England
England, South East
England, Southern
Fairlight
flower
military defencelessness - sheep
places
plants and flowers
religious
satire
sea
seascapes and coasts
sheep
sinner - sheep
social comment
society
society
Sussex - non-specific
Sussex, East
symbols and personifications
UK cities, towns and villages
UK counties
UK countries and regions
UK natural features
<p>The location shown in this painting is the Lovers’ Seat, an idyllic spot at Fairlight Glen near Hastings in Sussex. Hunt laboured here from mid-August to December 1852, enduring rain, wind and bitter cold to master his view. Despite the changes in weather, the painting seems a credible replication of particular illuminated moment. The colours used to convey light are daringly juxtaposed in order to intensify the clarity of every surface, a method that astounded audiences on both sides of the Channel.</p><p><em>Gallery label, November 2016</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
12 February 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
12 February 2004 – 3 May 2004
2004-05-03
2004-02-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
11 June 2004 – 5 September 2004
2004-09-05
2004-06-11
Alte Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany)
28 September 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
2004-09-28
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
2004-02-12
Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature
Exhibition
15 June 2005 – 4 September 2005
2005-09-04
15 June 2005 – 4 September 2005
2005-09-04
2005-06-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-06-15
A Picture of Britain
Exhibition
1 August 2005 – 30 July 2007
2007-07-30
1 August 2005
2005-08-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-08-01
The Pre-Raphaelites
Collection based display
10 August 2007 – 4 October 2010
2010-10-04
10 August 2007 – 4 October 2010
2010-10-04
2007-08-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-08-10
Pre-Raphaelites and Painters of the Ideal
Collection based display
11 October 2008 – 6 September 2009
2009-09-06
11 October 2008 – 11 January 2009
2009-01-11
2008-10-11
Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, UK)
http://www.manchestergalleries.org
14 February 2009 – 10 May 2009
2009-05-10
2009-02-14
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada)
http://www.ago.net
13 June 2009 – 6 September 2009
2009-09-06
2009-06-13
Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, USA)
2008-10-11
Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision
Loan-out
12 September 2012 – 31 January 2014
2014-01-31
12 September 2012 – 13 January 2013
2013-01-13
2012-09-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-09-12
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Exhibition
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
5 November 2012 – 20 July 2014
2014-07-20
2012-11-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-05
Gallery 9
Collection based display
7 August 2014 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
7 August 2014
2014-08-07
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-08-07
Gallery 9
Collection based display
Our English Coasts, 1852 (‘Strayed Sheep’)
support: 432 × 584 mm
frame: 785 × 940 × 85 mm
Presented by the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 1946
<p>In <i>Modern Painters</i> (1847) the writer and critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) exhorted young English artists to 'go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instructions; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth.' Following Ruskin's dictum that art in its truthfulness can teach a moral lesson, William Holman Hunt created his greatest and most <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pre-raphaelite" title="Glossary definition for 'Pre-Raphaelite'"><span>Pre-Raphaelite</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a>.  

</p><p>The picture was first commissioned as a replica of the sheep in the background of <i>The Hireling Shepherd </i>(1851-2, City of Manchester Art Galleries), which was bought by the eminent naturalist W.J. Broderip. The copy was destined for Broderip's cousin, Charles T. Maud, but Hunt apparently persuaded him that an original picture would be more desirable. 

</p><p>The location for the picture was the Lover's seat, a well-known beauty spot perched on the cliffs overlooking Covehurst Bay, near Hastings.  Hunt has paid scrupulous attention to natural detail, but the cliffs, sheep and parts of the foreground were all painted from different viewpoints, and the butterflies in the left foreground were painted indoors from a live specimen.

</p><p>Hunt exhibited the picture at the Royal Academy in 1853 with the title <i>Our English Coasts</i>. The critic F.G. Stephens, a former member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, later suggested that the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> 'might be taken as a satire on the reported defenseless state of the country against foreign invasion' (<i>William Holman Hunt and His Works</i>, 1860, p.23). During this period fears of an invasion had been generated by the press, reacting to Napoleon III's autocratic régime in France. The original frame bore the inscription 'The Lost Sheep', and when Hunt sent the painting to the <i>Exposition Universelle</i> in Paris in 1855 he changed the title to <i>Strayed Sheep</i>, thus underlining the picture's religious symbolism. However, critics of the time were struck less by the picture's symbolism than by the treatment of light.  Ruskin wrote in 1883 that 'It showed to us, for the first time in the history of art, the absolutely faithful balances of colour and shade by which actual sunshine might be transposed into a key in which the harmonies possible with material pigments should yet produce the same impressions upon the mind which were caused by the light itself' (quoted in Parris, p.108).

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Leslie Parris (ed), <i>The Pre-Raphaelites</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994, pp.106-8, reproduced p.107, in colour.<br/>Elizabeth Prettejohn, <i>The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites</i>, London 2000, pp.177-8, reproduced p.177, in colour.<br/>Christopher Wood, <i>Victorian Painting</i>, London 1999, pp.129-30, reproduced p.127, in colour.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>December 2000</p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>William Holman Hunt updates the long-standing religious motif of the flock in peril to express anxieties at the time about the leadership and security of Britain. This work was one of the first Pre-Raphaelite pictures to be created outside in the open air, rather than in the studio. Hunt took nearly five months to paint it. Painting outside revealed new effects of colour and light, such as the bluish shadows. These excited French modern artists in 1855 when Hunt exhibited the picture in Paris.</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
animals: insects & lower animals animals: mammals bramble butterfly cliff coast Covehurst Bay England England, South East England, Southern Fairlight flower military defencelessness - sheep places plants and flowers religious satire sea seascapes and coasts sheep sinner - sheep social comment society society Sussex, East Sussex - non-specific symbols and personifications UK cities, towns and villages UK counties UK countries and regions UK natural features