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Isabella and the Pot of Basil

William Holman Hunt, 1867

William Holman Hunt's Isabella and the Pot of Basil, dated 1867, is held in the collection of the Laing Art Gallery. The tall canvas shows a single grieving woman bent over a plant pot, a scene drawn from a tragic love story retold by the poet John Keats.

Where to see it

Isabella and the Pot of Basil is in the collection of the Laing Art Gallery, which is also its recorded location. Works in public collections can be moved, lent or taken off display for conservation, so check the Laing Art Gallery's official website for current display status and visiting information before you travel.

What to look for in person

A tall, commanding format

The canvas measures 187 cm high by 116.5 cm wide, a tall upright shape that frames one standing figure. Before moving close, take a few steps back and notice how the vertical format pushes everything toward the centre: the woman, the pot and the furnishings around her form one compact group. At this scale the figure has a strong physical presence in the room, so the painting works both as a single striking image from across the gallery and as a surface full of detail up close.

The pot at the centre of the story

The emotional focus is the pot of basil itself. In the story Hunt followed, Isabella secretly buries the head of her murdered lover, Lorenzo, in a pot and grows basil over it, tending it with her tears. Look at how her body curves around the pot, with her arms and long hair drawn toward it, so that pose alone conveys devotion and grief. Then look closely at the pot and the plant: Hunt gave the object as much care as the figure, making it a character in its own right.

Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail

Hunt was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose artists valued close observation, clear colour and careful rendering of every surface. Spend time on the textures: the fall and transparency of fabric, the patterned and decorative objects in the room, and the way light picks out edges and folds. Rather than softening the background, Hunt kept much of the setting sharply described. Moving slowly from the face to the hands, the drapery and the surrounding objects shows how much of the meaning is carried by carefully chosen detail.

About the painting

Isabella and the Pot of Basil is a painting by William Holman Hunt, dated 1867, measuring 187 by 116.5 cm and held by the Laing Art Gallery. Hunt was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed in 1848 with John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The group rejected what they saw as stale academic conventions and aimed for truthful observation, bright colour and serious subjects drawn from the Bible, history and literature. The subject comes from John Keats's narrative poem Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, which Keats based on a tale in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. In the story, Isabella falls in love with Lorenzo, who works for her wealthy brothers. Disapproving of the match, the brothers murder him. Isabella finds his body, takes his head and buries it in a pot of basil, which she tends obsessively and waters with her tears. Keats's poem was a favourite source for the Pre-Raphaelites; Millais had painted an earlier scene from it in 1849. Hunt chose not to show the murder or the discovery, but a quiet moment of private mourning, with Isabella alone beside the pot. This lets the viewer read the story through gesture and objects rather than through action. When you stand in front of the work, it helps to know the narrative in advance: the ordinary-looking plant pot is the key to the whole image, and the woman's absorbed, almost trance-like attention to it is what gives the painting its unsettling, tender mood. Considering the picture alongside Keats's poem is a rewarding way to approach it.

Key facts

More by William Holman Hunt

• The Hireling Shepherd

Sources

• Wikidata Q4198276