William Holman Hunt’s contribution to the Royal Academy exhibition of 1848 was the key painting for the establishment of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He took his subject from Keats’ poem The Eve of St Agnes. In danger of missing the deadline for the Academy exhibition, his friend, John Everett Millais, lent Hunt the use of his studio. At the Royal Academy exhibition, the painting was hung somewhat high up in the Architectural Room, but in a good light. Here it attracted the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; leading to his friendship with Hunt and Millais and the subsequent formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood that same year. John Blount Price of Islington lent Hunt the bloodhounds. Quoting from Keats’ poem in the catalogue for the exhibition, Hunt revealed the central importance of the dogs to his conception of the subject: The wakeful blood hound rose, and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns.
William Michael Rossetti, given to him by the artist c. 1853; by descent to: Gabriel Arthur Rossetti, 1919; Bequeathed to his wife Dora Brandreth Rossetti, 1932; Given to private collector, 1950; Sotheby's Belgravia, 23 March 1981 (bought in); Sotheby's 16 June 1982 (bought in); Peter Nahum, 1982; Purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Manchester City Art Gallery, Autumn 1911, Loan Exhibition of Works by Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites, number 293
William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 2 volumes, Macmillan & Co., London 1905, volume 1, page 98: the bloodhounds I painted from a couple possessed by my friend, Mr. J. B. Price Apollo, CXXVII, May 1988, illustrated page 9 Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt, A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, number 43, illustrated page 114, Yale University Press New Haven and London, 2006