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''The Hireling Shepherd'' (1851) is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. It represents a shepherd neglecting his flock in favour of an attractive country girl to whom he shows a death's-head hawkmoth. The meaning of the image has been much debated.〔(The Victorian Web )〕 Hunt painted the picture when he was working in close collaboration with John Everett Millais, who was painting ''Ophelia'' at the same time in the same region of Surrey. Both paintings depict English rural scenes, the innocence of which is disturbed by subtle but profoundly threatening violations of natural harmony. In Hunt's painting, the shepherd ignores his flock of sheep, who wander over a ditch into a wheat field. This violation of boundaries is paralleled by the shepherd's physical intrusions into the personal space of the young woman, who responds in an ambiguous way that might be interpreted as complicity or as a knowing scepticism. As he shows her the moth, he places his arm round her shoulder. ==Origins and exhibition== Hunt used a local country girl Emma Watkins as a model. She was known as "the Coptic" by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood because of her exotic features. Watkins travelled to London to model for Hunt to complete the picture, but returned home after she failed to establish herself independently as a model.〔 The model for the male figure is not known, but was probably a professional.〔Bronkhurst, J., ''William Holman Hunt: a Catalogue Raisonne'', Yale University Press, vol 2, p.39〕 When it was first displayed in the Royal Academy, it was accompanied by a quotation from ''King Lear'': :Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? :Thy sheep be in the corn; :And for one blast of thy minikin mouth, :Thy sheep shall take no harm. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Hireling Shepherd」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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