The Dead Sea from Siloam

Painted in 1857 during one of Hunt's extended stays in the Holy Land, this view of the Dead Sea from the heights near Siloam documents the extraordinary landscape Hunt encountered on his biblical journeys and which he returned to as both subject and setting throughout his career. The Dead Sea — lowest point on earth, hyper-saline, supporting no visible life — carried profound symbolic weight for a painter whose theology centered on sacrifice and redemption, and its bleached, mineral-encrusted shores had already provided the setting for 'The Scapegoat' three years earlier. Hunt's landscape paintings from the Holy Land function as documentary records of places he believed were spiritually as well as visually significant, and the Birmingham Museums Trust's holding of this work preserves an important example of his non-narrative topographic practice.

The panoramic view required Hunt to manage a large expanse of atmospheric distance with his characteristically precise technique. The unique optical qualities of the Dead Sea region — the strange light quality produced by the low elevation and high mineral content of the air — presented specific challenges that Hunt's method of careful observation and white-ground technique was well suited to address. The foreground is rendered with the same precision as Hunt's figure paintings, botanical and geological details alike treated with documentary fidelity.