The Scapegoat

Painted during and after Hunt's first journey to the Holy Land in 1854–55, 'The Scapegoat' is one of the most psychologically intense and theologically charged works of Victorian painting. Hunt traveled to the shores of the Dead Sea — then a difficult and dangerous journey — to paint the actual landscape, positioning a white goat on the salt-encrusted shore at Ein Gedi. The image derives from the Levitical ritual in which a goat bearing the sins of Israel was driven into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement, which Hunt interpreted as a prefiguration of Christ's sacrifice. The harsh, desolate setting — painted in searing light and saturated with bleached salt and reddened mud — transforms the suffering animal into a figure of sacrificial desolation. Hunt surrounded the painting's frame with Hebrew inscriptions from Leviticus, insisting viewers engage with the theological program directly. The work provoked divided responses, some critics finding the animal subject inadequate to the spiritual burden placed upon it, while others recognized its originality as a work that achieved the sublime through literal rather than symbolic means.

Hunt worked on the painting partly on-site at the Dead Sea shore, capturing the extraordinary optical effects of that harsh environment. The salt flats reflect a cold, diffuse light that bleaches the ground and creates an eerie luminosity unusual in Victorian painting. The goat's white coat is rendered with precise attention to the matted, exhausted texture of an animal near death, and the blood-red sky — achieved through layered crimson glazes — creates a powerful contrast with the pale ground.