May Morning on Magdalen Tower, Oxford

William Holman Hunt

Date: 1888 - 93

Materials: Oil on canvas

May Morning

A label on the back of the frame, in the artist's hand, explains the subject: "It is an ancient custom, observed annually at Magdalen College, for the Fellows and President, with the Choristers, to ascend the Tower, and sing a hymn as the sun emerges above the horizon".

This practice, still observed today, certainly had traditional roots but was essentially a nineteenth-century revival.

Hunt climbed the tower on 1 May 1888, and had completed a large canvas by 1890, when he invited Millais to see it. It was subsequently exhibited in London and Oxford.

Birmingham version

This is the preliminary study, begun on the spot and taken to an equal degree of finish. It is not an accurate portrayal of a single event; Hunt used choirboy models other than the college's (including his own son Hilary), and added the figure of a Parsee scholar on the extreme right - as a sun worshipper, representing the supposedly ancient tradition.

Both oils were given elaborate copper repoussé frames made, to Hunt's design, by the Guild of Handicraft; the Birmingham frame is the more dramatic, bearing the symbol of a rising lark at the top and an appropriate quotation from Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale'.