William Holman Hunt was born in 1827, son of a warehouse manager in Cheapside, London, who also ran an evangelical home. The young Hunt spent considerable time reading the Bible. He left school at the age of twelve to work as an clerk but his office career was short-lived as he dreamed of being an artist. He overcame parental opposition to his choice of career in 1843, and this same determined attitude, fueled Hunt's dedication to art. He attending drawing classes at a mechanics’ institute in the evenings and took weekly lessons from a portrait painter.

Eventually he persuaded his reluctant parents to allow him to attend the Royal Academy School where he could pursue his ambition to be a painter. After three attempts, he finally entered the school. Soon after, he was became disillusioned by contemporary British art, as he could find nothing to emulate or admire. However, he read John Ruskin's second volume of Modern Painters and was greatly impressed by the argument that artists should return to the style of the early Renaissance painters. This appealed to him since he had very spiritual leanings, especially the idea of bringing symbolic realism into modern art so that the viewer could see with the help of metaphors more than the story tells. Evidence of this can be seen throughout his working life.

He befriended John Everett Millais and together they fostered desires to get their paintings into the 1848 Royal Academy Exhibition. Hunt, more so, than Millais, needed to have his work accepted because he badly needed to earn a living.

In 1850, Hunt painted a Christian piece called "The Missionary" which was met with harsh criticism from the Academy but the painting's most important consequence was that Holman Hunt met Thomas Combe, the Superintendent of the Oxford University Press. He and his wife became very fond of Holman Hunt over time they became surrogate parents to him as well as important patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites. He also met John Ruskin - the very man whose literary criticizm had opened Holman Hunt's eyes in the first place. In time he too became great friends with Holman Hunt and did a considerable amount to bolster the often discouraged and despairing Hunt.

Holman Hunt had a limited degree of success during his lifetime but never became an influential artist as he so desperately desired. He never had any followers despite having a long working life. He became best known as a religious painter and made a very comfortable living from his religious works, which still contained the Pre-Raphaelite's elaborate symbolism. He was arrogant and unlikeable and took a lot of criticism but he was tough and strongminded enough to continue working in the style he wanted.