William Holman Hunt, O.M., R.W.S., A.R.S.A.

Gifted by the artist's daughter Gladys to Charles Stanley Pollitt (1888–1965), by 1947

Thence by descent to the present owner

Mary Bennett, 'Footnotes to the Holman Hunt Exhibition', Liverpool Bulletin, XIII, 1968-70, pp. 27 and 26 (illustrated)

Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt, A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 2006, 2 volumes, Vol. II, p. 43, no. D69 (illustrated)

The Awakening Conscience (Tate) may be regarded as one of the most famous Pre-Raphaelite pictures. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854 it depicts a woman rising from the embrace of a young man with an expression of enlightenment – all the symbolism of the painting alludes to her being a ‘kept woman’ in a boudoir paid for by a rich paramour and that her realization is the immorality of her situation. The model for the painting was a working-class model named Annie Miller who Hunt hoped to marry. It is tempting to speculate that the obliteration of the face of the woman in the present drawing with black ink may relate to Hunt’s separation with Miller – made in a moment of rage.