Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"

Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"

William Holman Hunt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a founding Pre-Raphaelite, Hunt produced religious subjects with an intense realism that infused everyday objects with symbolic resonance. This, his only contribution to Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, depicts the meeting of Eliezar and Rebekah. Genesis records how Abraham sent his servant from to his home village in Mesopotamia to find a bride for Isaac. When Rebekah offers Eliezer water, the traveler recognizes her exceptional character and presents jewelry to confirm the seriousness of his errand. The strong outlines and sparse shading recall prints by Mortiz Retzsch, a German artist admired by the Pre-Raphaelites.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.