The Afterglow in Egypt

Painted by William Holman Hunt (1827 - 1910); oil on canvas 82 x 37 cm

In this painting an Egyptian woman dressed in beautiful clothes and jewellery carries a crate of pigeons on her head and a beautiful green vessel in her right hand. She gazes out at us and stands barefoot in a fertile landscape close to the water’s edge. The figure was read by Hunt’s contemporaries as a kind of Egyptian goddess of plenty. Hunt believed that agriculture was the only aspect of the once-great civilization that had survived in Egypt.

Link to Downloadable version of this image.