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by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 19, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
The Woman Taken in Adultery (after Rembrandt van Rijn)
A woman in white kneels in a pool of light while men stand around her in a vast, dim interior. One figure faces her from the left, and a red-cloaked man stands to the right. William Holman Hunt painted this Woman Taken in Adultery after Rembrandt, whose original had entered London's National Gallery. The Art UK record for Hunt's work[1] identifies a c.1845 oil on canvas in the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, accession VA.1955.0346. The phrase “after Rembrandt” is central: Hunt made the canvas, but he learned from an earlier composition by another artist.
A student copying a master
Art UK's object account[1] says that a friend commissioned Hunt, then a student, to copy Rembrandt's painting at the National Gallery. It does not name the friend in the record, so the commission should remain anonymous here. Copying an admired work required close decisions about scale, colour, figure placement and the handling of shadow. This was active training, not the same thing as claiming an original biblical design.
At a Glance
- ArtistWilliam Holman Hunt (1827–1910)
- TraditionBritish Pre-Raphaelite art
- Work or subjectThe Woman Taken in Adultery (after Rembrandt van Rijn)
- ContextIllustrated paintings guide
- Further readingArtist biography
The National Gallery's Rembrandt object record[2] identifies the model as The Woman taken in Adultery, painted in 1644 on oak panel, accession NG45. Hunt's version is a nineteenth-century canvas. Those different artists, supports and dates distinguish two physical works even though they share a subject and nearly the same arrangement. The National Gallery acquired its Rembrandt in 1824, making it available for a young London artist to study in the 1840s.
Hunt preserved the broad structure: a small group of people set low within a much larger architectural darkness. The woman's light dress holds the foreground while the men around her have darker, heavier forms. A warmer light and decorated space appear deeper in the building. In the site's inherited reproduction, the contrast between the white figure and the surrounding gloom is the clearest feature; fine differences in paint surface cannot be judged confidently from a 400-pixel image.
The subject and its drama
The story comes from the Gospel of John. A woman accused of adultery is brought before Jesus, and his question to the accusers turns judgment back upon them. The National Gallery's explanation of Rembrandt's painting[2] places the scene at a moment of decision rather than after an outcome has been announced. The woman kneels; attention converges on Jesus; the surrounding figures wait. Hunt's copy carries that suspended drama into his own early practice.
The great vertical space above the figures is striking. It makes the people seem small within the temple and delays the eye's arrival at the group. The architecture is shadowed, but a distant zone of light and ornament shows that the space continues well behind them. The contrast between the crowded human exchange and the cavernous upper half contributes to the tension. It is also a lesson in composition: the most important action does not need to sit in the middle of the canvas to command attention.
The woman in white is visually exposed while those who brought her remain among the darker figures. That difference can guide a viewer's reading of vulnerability and authority. Yet the painting asks for more than a simple division between guilty and innocent figures. The National Gallery notes how the men watch for Jesus's response, and how a possible answer might itself be used against him. Hunt's copy allows an audience to study how Rembrandt staged uncertainty through posture, scale and lighting.
Watch: William Holman Hunt
Begin with Hunt’s paintings, then place his work alongside two fellow Pre-Raphaelite founders.
William Holman Hunt Paintings
An overview of Hunt’s paintings from TheHistoryOfArt video archive.
Watch on YouTubeHunt before the Brotherhood
The c.1845 date places the Coventry picture before Hunt and his colleagues founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. It is evidence of the painter's early education and of his engagement with an Old Master rather than an example of a mature Brotherhood manifesto. Elsewhere in this cluster, Little Nell and Her Grandfather shows him taking a contemporary literary subject in 1845. These works demonstrate different directions available to the young artist: copying a recognised masterpiece and building a new picture from a novel.
Later, Hunt developed religious images whose settings and meanings he planned himself. The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple gives a biblical gathering a very different visual structure, crowded with observed models and objects. Comparing it with the Rembrandt copy can reveal growth in ambition and method, but the two should not be collapsed into one continuous project. The early copy belongs to Hunt's training and to the circulation of paintings through London's public collections.
There is a tempting connection with The Awakening Conscience. An image of a woman taken in adultery appears in that later interior, as recorded in George P. Landow's source-based discussion of Ruskin's 1854 response[3]. The shared subject matters for how the later painting addresses judgment and repentance. It does not prove that the particular Coventry canvas is the very object depicted on the wall. A painted image within one work and a surviving independent oil copy require separate object evidence.
The Coventry canvas
Art UK records Hunt's copy at 84.5 × 68.5 cm and names its owners as the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum. Its catalogue lists a gift from Mrs A. Hitchon and Mr J. W. G. Hitchon, while the accession is VA.1955.0346. Those are useful identifiers, but neither should be turned into an invented account of every transfer between Hunt's studio and Coventry. Art UK notes that the venue is open to visitors while warning that not every artwork is on display at a given time.
Look at Hunt's canvas as a record of close study. First follow the kneeling woman's white figure; then move outward to the figures waiting for Jesus's reply; finally let the eye rise into the dim space above. The copy preserves Rembrandt's way of making a moral decision feel both intimate and monumental. It also shows the young Hunt learning from a painting he could see in London before he became one of the best-known Pre-Raphaelite artists.
The two objects are close in physical scale. The National Gallery measures Rembrandt's oak panel at 83.8 × 65.4 cm, while Art UK lists Hunt's canvas at 84.5 × 68.5 cm. Hunt changed support, but he did not turn the composition into a miniature or a mural. This makes the relation between the works more concrete than their shared title alone: a student could study Rembrandt's allocation of light and architectural space at roughly the size of the London original. Their small difference in measurements does not prove an exact tracing method, which the available records do not describe. [4] [1]
Discussion
Look closely at The Woman Taken in Adultery (after Rembrandt van Rijn), then compare your reading with the documented history.
Reader Insights
Which detail in The Woman Taken in Adultery (after Rembrandt van Rijn) most affects your reading?
How do the date, medium and collection records shape that interpretation?
What remains uncertain about this work or its history?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about The Woman Taken in Adultery (after Rembrandt van Rijn). The prompts above are starting points for discussion.
References
- Art UK record for Hunt's work. View source.
- National Gallery's Rembrandt object record. View source.
- George P. Landow's source-based discussion of Ruskin's 1854 response. View source.
- National Gallery, Rembrandt NG45. View source.
