# The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt (exhibition 1923 purchase; original painting date not stated in the supplied excerpts) Canonical article: https://www.artifact-archive.com/archive/the-scapegoat-william-holman-hunt-exhibition-1923-purchas - **Painting:** The Scapegoat - **Artist:** William Holman Hunt - **Date:** exhibition 1923 purchase; original painting date not stated in the supplied excerpts - **Medium:** painting; the supplied excerpts do not specify support or technique - **Current location:** Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool; further city and country not stated in the supplied excerpts - **Culture:** British; painted during the artist's stay in the Holy Land A lone goat stands on the shore of the Dead Sea, carrying the sins of a congregation it never met. This gallery visit follows William Holman Hunt's painting of the biblical scapegoat from the ritual that inspired it, through the bleak landscape he chose, to the meanings later interpreters have found in it. ## High-resolution image [The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt (exhibition 1923 purchase; original painting date not stated in the supplied excerpts) | High-resolution image](https://www.artifact-archive.com/print-assets/5ae17e4c6799e6be40cf480470b7adb5baf2556a8a4abcbb5a99644ebe1c53a4.png) Available image: 3,840 × 2,709 pixels. ## Artwork presentation record Artwork accent colour: #605753. Original-image hero position: 50% horizontal, 50% vertical. Decorative crops use the original artwork image; they are not technical examination images. ## Details to notice ### Etched inscription at lower left Detail ID: plate_inscription_lower_left. The faint lettering engraved inside the lower-left corner of the plate, where the artist's name and publication lettering are inscribed, evidencing the printmaking craftsmanship and helping to date and attribute the impression. Original-image crop (%): x 11, y 75, width 19, height 8. ### Dead Sea, mountains and moon Detail ID: dead_sea_mountains_and_moon. The still, lifeless sheet of water, the jagged range of Moab beyond, and the pale moon in a cloud-streaked sky; this barren panoramic setting establishes the desolation and the scriptural geography that give the figure meaning. Original-image crop (%): x 11, y 13, width 80, height 24. ### Dead animals and bones on the shore Detail ID: shore_carcasses_and_bones. Reflected in the shallow water on the right are the ribcages, skulls and carcasses of dead creatures that died at the water's edge, a memento mori that marks the lake as lethal and makes the goat's solitude more poignant. The lower-left edge holds a further heap of bone and drift debris. Original-image crop (%): x 65, y 37, width 26, height 18. ## The story A single goat stands alone on the shore of the Dead Sea, at a place called Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance. That description comes from the museum record for this painting. The goat is the scapegoat of the Old Testament. Hunt understood that animal as a forerunner of Christ, whose suffering and death were believed to take away sins. So this is a religious painting about atonement: the carrying away of guilt by another creature. Evidence: documented. Source references: source-1. Hunt did not paint a temple courtyard. He placed the goat in a landscape of barren shore, salt water and distant mountains. The museum record notes that the site, Osdoom, had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom. That identification shapes how the setting reads. Hunt himself wrote in his diary that the Dead Sea setting was a horrible figure of sin, which no one could say is not accursed by God. The desolation is the point. Evidence: documented. Source references: source-1. Hunt was an Anglican, and the idea for this painting came while he was researching Jewish rituals for a different picture, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. That work is now at Sudley House. During that research he learned about the Day of Atonement, when a goat was sent out from the temple with a piece of scarlet cloth on its head, symbolising the sins of the congregation. It was believed that if the congregation's sins were forgiven, the scarlet cloth would turn white. Evidence: documented. Source references: source-1. Hunt made this the first major painting of his first stay in the Holy Land, and he spent long periods living and working in Egypt and Palestine. The plain meaning he attached to the animal is set out in the museum record: he regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent to the New Testament Christ. The scapegoat carries the community's guilt away; Christ, in Christian belief, does the same for humanity's sins. That parallel is the heart of the picture. Evidence: documented. Source references: source-1. There is a harder reading attached to the choice of Sodom. Historian Dominic Janes has speculated that Hunt wanted to connect the Day of Atonement with homosexuality. The museum record recounts that in the Bible Sodom was destroyed by God in a rain of fire and brimstone for the sins of its inhabitants, and that this sin has traditionally been understood as male homosexual intercourse, which gives us the word sodomy. The same record suggests that Hunt, an Anglican, may have wanted to suggest that homosexuals could be redeemed by atoning for their sins. This is an interpretation, not a settled fact. Evidence: interpretation. Source references: source-1. The picture was bought by Lever in 1923 for four thousand nine hundred and fifty pounds, from the Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. It entered the Lady Lever collection, where it remains. What stays with you is the goat itself: isolated, patient, standing in a place the artist called accursed. Everything around it, the dead water and the empty hills, was chosen to make that solitude visible. The painting asks you to see guilt being carried away, and to decide who or what is doing the carrying. Evidence: documented. Source references: source-1. ## About the artist ### William Holman Hunt 1827 to 1910 William Holman Hunt was a Pre-Raphaelite artist (1827-1910). Their work is associated with Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Symbolism. Their recorded places of work include Cairo; Jerusalem; Nazareth; Tel Aviv; Beirut; Damascus; Istanbul; London. - **Born:** 1827 - **Died:** 1910 - **Nationality:** United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; United Kingdom - **Birthplace:** London - **Died in:** London ![Artist portrait of William Holman Hunt]() Artist portrait. Image credit: William Holman Hunt. [Image source](). [Licence: Public domain](). - [Wikidata: William Holman Hunt]() ## Research and reference record ### Structured catalogue record #### Title Field ID: title. The Scapegoat Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Artist or attribution Field ID: artist. William Holman Hunt Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Object date Field ID: date. exhibition 1923 purchase; original painting date not stated in the supplied excerpts Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Medium and support Field ID: medium. painting; the supplied excerpts do not specify support or technique Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Dimensions Field ID: dimensions. not stated in the supplied excerpts Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Current collection or location Field ID: location. Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool; further city and country not stated in the supplied excerpts Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Movement or period Field ID: period. not stated in the supplied excerpts; the artist is associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, though this excerpt does not name a movement Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Country or culture Field ID: culture. British; painted during the artist's stay in the Holy Land Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Depicted subject Field ID: subject-summary. A goat stands alone on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance. The animal embodies the Old Testament scapegoat, the goat sent out from the temple on the Day of Atonement carrying the congregation's sins, understood by Hunt as an equivalent to the suffering and death of Christ. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Title variants Field ID: title-variants. The Scapegoat Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Attribution qualification Field ID: attribution-qualification. Attributed to William Holman Hunt by the Lady Lever Art Gallery record. Source IDs: none linked in the published record. #### Accession number Field ID: accession-number. LL 3623 Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ### Identity and catalogue Research section ID: catalogue. Claim ID: F1. Evidence: documented. The Scapegoat holds a foundational position in William Holman Hunt's career as the first major painting he made during his first stay in the Holy Land. That fact establishes the work's place at the opening of his extended engagement with the region, and it is the starting point for any catalogue identity: the picture belongs to the moment when Hunt moved from researching sacred history in England to painting it on the ground where, in his understanding, it had taken place. The museum record that preserves this information is also the source for the painting's later documentation and collecting history, so the object's identity and its nineteenth- and twentieth-century institutional life are recorded together. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-identity-1. Evidence: identity. The Scapegoat was the first major painting William Holman Hunt made during his first stay in the Holy Land. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ### Subject and iconography Research section ID: subject. #### Composition and the construction of a setting Claim ID: archive-d5ae58d9cc240f7f17aa. Evidence: observation. The recorded composition of The Scapegoat is exact and spare: Hunt chose to set his goat on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance. Because the single animal occupies the foreground against a barren shore, salt water and far hills, the landscape is not incidental scenery but the argument of the picture. Hunt wrote in his diary that this Dead Sea setting was a "horrible figure of sin" that no one could say "is not accursed by God", which establishes that the desolation was deliberate rather than merely descriptive. The identification of the place carries its own history: the site had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom, so a nineteenth-century scholarly identification, not the biblical text alone, supplies the geographical meaning viewers are asked to read into the shore and mountains. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### What the evidence will and will not carry Claim ID: archive-d650c00ec91bde67aa81. Evidence: interpretation. Taken together, the evidence shows how much of this image's meaning is carried by what can be seen and how much by what must be supplied. The goat, the shore, the water and the mountains of Edom are recorded features of the design; the identification of the place with Sodom rests on Louis de Saulcy's identification as reported in the museum record; the reading of the animal as an equivalent to Christ is attributed to Hunt himself; and the connection between the Day of Atonement and homosexuality is explicitly attributed to Dominic Janes's speculation and to the museum record's suggestion. The painting matters within a larger history of religious art because it refuses the temple courtyard in favour of an accursed landscape, making atonement visible as isolation and desolation rather than as ritual action. It matters also to the history of Victorian religious painting in the Holy Land, since the artist's long residence in Egypt and Palestine and his habit of building a picture out of study of Jewish practice place it among works shaped by travel and research rather than by inherited iconographic convention alone. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-visual-evidence-1. Evidence: visual_observation. Hunt chose to set his goat on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ### Historical context Research section ID: context. #### Commission and creation circumstances Claim ID: archive-561c456c0036c24ebe33. Evidence: documented. The foundational circumstances of The Scapegoat belong to William Holman Hunt's research practice rather than to a commission in the ordinary sense. The museum record states that Hunt had the idea for the painting while researching Jewish rituals for another painting, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, which is now in Sudley House. The two works are therefore linked at the level of inquiry: the ritual material Hunt gathered for one picture generated the subject of another. The painting is also described as the first major painting Hunt made during his first stay in the Holy Land, and he spent long periods of time living and working in Egypt and Palestine. That sustained residence matters for how the picture's setting should be understood, since it places Hunt in the region for an extended period rather than on a brief tour, and it explains the access to landscape and local observation that the Dead Sea subject required. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### The ritual that generated the subject Claim ID: archive-4689fac44fb1e5626c36. Evidence: interpretation. The underlying subject is the Day of Atonement ritual. The museum record states that during his research Hunt learned that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement a goat was sent out from the temple with a piece of scarlet cloth on its head, symbolising the sins of the congregation, and that it was believed that if the congregation's sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. From this ritual, the record continues, stems the broader concept of the scapegoat as a person, or animal, who takes on the sins of others, or is unfairly blamed for problems. The museum record attributes to Hunt the interpretation that he regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent to the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged men's sins. That is an attributed reading of typology rather than a neutral description of the biblical text, and it is the interpretive hinge on which the painting's religious meaning rests. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### The setting: Osdoom, Sodom and the accursed shore Claim ID: archive-bee5b9a86baf4a489498. Evidence: documented. The choice of site is inseparable from the picture's argument. The museum record notes that Hunt chose to set his goat on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance, and that the site had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom. In his diary, as reported in the museum record, Hunt described the Dead Sea setting as a 'horrible figure of sin' that no one could say 'is not accursed by God'. The historical identification by de Saulcy supplies the topography with a specific scriptural association, while Hunt's own diary language shows him treating the physical desolation as evidence of divine judgement. The desolation is therefore not merely picturesque backdrop but the visual carrier of the painting's subject: barren shore, salt water and distant mountains were selected to make the accursed condition visible around a single animal. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Hunt's religious position and the limits of inference about motive Claim ID: archive-7e99b96f5e465c8cb915. Evidence: interpretation. Hunt's own confession bears on how his symbolism is described. The museum record states that Hunt was an Anglican. The same record contains a further suggestion attributed to it: that Hunt, an Anglican, may have wanted to suggest with his goat that homosexuals could be redeemed by 'atoning for their sins'. This suggestion is presented by the museum as a possibility rather than a documented intention, and it must be weighed as such. It concerns motive, which is not directly recoverable from the painting or from Hunt's recorded words about the ritual, and the wording of the record itself holds it at the level of what Hunt may have wanted to suggest. The Anglican identity is documented; the redemption reading for homosexuals is an interpretation attached to that identity, not a fact established by it. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Homosexuality, Sodom and the problem of a later interpretive account Claim ID: archive-0ba96154ef562d6263dd. Evidence: interpretation. A distinct and later interpretive layer has been built on the Sodom identification. Historian Dominic Janes has speculated that Sodom was chosen as the location for the image because Hunt wanted to make a connection between the Day of Atonement and homosexuality. The museum record supplies the background for why such a reading is available: in the Bible Sodom is described as a city destroyed by God in a rain of fire and brimstone for the 'sins' of its inhabitants, and this sin has traditionally been thought to have been male homosexual intercourse, hence the word 'sodomy'. Janes's proposal is explicitly a speculation in the museum record and is reported there through a scholarly book rather than being a claim from a contemporary document. It sits beside, and does not displace, the documented ritual subject and the typological reading of the scapegoat as a forerunner of Christ. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1]. Locator: Janes, 'Picturing the Closet', Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 87-94. #### Fear of attention in the region Claim ID: F16. Evidence: documented. One further documented detail of Hunt's time in the region complicates any simple account of his attitude. The museum record states that Hunt was apparently unusually frightened of attracting the attention of gay men, and advised John Everett Millais, who was travelling to the region, to grow a beard to make himself less desirable to local men. The record presents this as apparent rather than certain, and the advice to Millais is the concrete form the report takes. This evidence is part of the same documentary picture as the questions raised around Sodom, and it belongs to the historical context in which the painting was conceived. It does not by itself establish what Hunt intended in the painting, and it should not be used to convert Janes's speculation into a documented motive. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Why the object matters Claim ID: archive-e43ab88108a0fbed34e1. Evidence: interpretation. Taken together, the evidence shows an object whose importance lies in the collision of a documented ritual programme with a contested interpretive history. Hunt came to the scapegoat through research into Jewish ritual for another painting, learned the Day of Atonement detail of the goat sent out with scarlet cloth, and carried that subject to a specific site identified by Louis de Saulcy as Sodom. He then described that site in his diary as a 'horrible figure of sin' accursed by God, and, on the museum's account, treated the Old Testament scapegoat as a type of Christ. The later readings about homosexuality, whether Janes's speculation about the choice of Sodom or the museum's suggestion about redemption, attach to the Sodom identification and to Hunt's Anglican position rather than to the documented ritual. The goat standing alone on that shore is therefore a case study in how a religious image can accumulate meanings its maker did not document, and how the evidence distinguishes what was made, what was meant and what has since been argued. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-1. Evidence: historical_context. Hunt had the idea for the painting while researching Jewish rituals for another painting, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-2. Evidence: historical_context. The concept of the scapegoat as a person, or animal, who takes on the sins of others, or is unfairly blamed for problems, stems from this ritual. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-3. Evidence: historical_context. The site had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-4. Evidence: historical_context. In his diary Hunt described the Dead Sea setting as a 'horrible figure of sin' that no one could say 'is not accursed by God'. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-5. Evidence: historical_context. Hunt was an Anglican. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-6. Evidence: historical_context. Hunt spent long periods of time living and working in Egypt and Palestine. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-context-7. Evidence: historical_context. Hunt was apparently unusually frightened of attracting the attention of gay men, and advised John Everett Millais, who was travelling to the region, to grow a beard to make himself less desirable to local men. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ### Materials and technique Research section ID: materials. #### The 1861 Print: Support, Medium and Dimensions Claim ID: F19. Evidence: documented. The materials evidence in this study centers on an 1861 reproductive print: Charles Henry Mottram made an engraving after William Holman Hunt titled The Scapegoat, dated 1861, in which the artist used various engraving techniques on chine collé. The recorded dimensions distinguish three distinct supports or states of the sheet as measured: the chine measures 23 1/4 by 35 1/2 inches (59 by 90.1 cm); the plate measures 24 7/16 by 36 1/2 inches (62.1 by 92.7 cm); the sheet measures 23 1/4 by 35 1/2 inches (59 by 90.1 cm). The fact that the chine and sheet dimensions coincide while the plate is larger is worth noting as a physical property of this impression rather than an interpretive claim, and it indicates that the printed image and its plate mark relate to the paper in ways the record preserves numerically. The reference to chine collé is a material and technical specification: it names a paper type and a mounting method, but the evidence supplied does not establish a step-by-step account of the printing process beyond the phrase 'various engraving techniques.' No pigments, preparatory drawings, canvas or panel supports for the original painting are documented in these units, and the examination record does not extend to layer structure or tool marks. What can be said with confidence is the print's maker, date, title relationship to Hunt, medium category, dimensions and the existence of three measured components. Source IDs: source-2. - [Wikimedia Commons, n.d.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg) [source-2] Claim ID: legacy-reference-materials-technique-1. Evidence: materials_technique. Charles Henry Mottram made a print after William Holman Hunt titled The Scapegoat, dated 1861, using various engraving techniques on chine collé; the image records dimensions Chine: 23 1/4 × 35 1/2 in. (59 × 90.1 cm), Plate: 24 7/16 × 36 1/2 in. (62.1 × 92.7 cm), Sheet: 23 1/4 × 35 1/2 in. (59 × 90.1 cm). Source IDs: source-2. - [Wikimedia Commons, n.d.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg) [source-2] ### Provenance and ownership Research section ID: provenance. #### Documented Acquisition Claim ID: F17. Evidence: documented. The documented ownership record for this painting begins with its purchase by Lever in 1923, for £4,950, from the 1923 Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. The same transaction is recorded twice in the supplied museum record, once as the acquisition by Lever and once again as a purchase price and source, so the figure of £4,950 and the Walker Art Gallery exhibition of 1923 are the firm anchors for this transfer. The picture then entered the Lady Lever collection, where it remains, and carries the Lady Lever Art Gallery accession number LL 3623. That accession number is the institutional identifier under which the work is now held and catalogued. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: F17-2. Evidence: interpretation. The evidence supplied here records only the 1923 purchase and the subsequent accession into the Lady Lever collection; it does not document any owner, agent, dealer or transfer between the painting's making and Lever's purchase, and it does not record a sale price, exhibition history or provenance interval for that earlier period. The absence of such records in this evidence should be distinguished from a proven change of ownership: an unrecorded interval is not the same as a documented transfer, and no earlier owner should be assumed from silence. What the record does establish is the physical and institutional outcome of the 1923 purchase, namely that the work is now identified by the accession number LL 3623 within the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a collection whose formation is tied to Lever's buying of contemporary and historical British art. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Ownership and movement timeline **1923:** Lever bought the picture for £4,950 from the 1923 Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. Timeline event ID: timeline-d909d2130153b8a58860. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ### Interpretations and debates Research section ID: interpretation. #### The Scapegoat: ritual, setting and attributed readings Claim ID: archive-cc6efb3d9c15073020a0. Evidence: reported_tradition. The reported traditions attached to this painting belong to William Holman Hunt's research process rather than to the canvas alone. While researching Jewish rituals for another picture, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, now at Sudley House, Hunt learned that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement a goat was sent out from the temple with a piece of scarlet cloth on its head, symbolising the sins of the congregation. The associated belief held that if the congregation's sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. Both details are recorded as tradition in the museum record, not as ritual practice documented from other sources, and they supply the picture's central motif: a single animal bearing away communal guilt. The theme recurs in the source's account of the broader idea of the scapegoat, a person or animal who takes on the sins of others or is unfairly blamed for problems, which the record derives from this ritual. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: F11. Evidence: reported_tradition. A second, distinct tradition attaches to the location Hunt chose rather than to the rite. In the Bible, Sodom is described as a city destroyed by God in a rain of fire and brimstone for the sins of its inhabitants, and that sin has traditionally been thought to have been male homosexual intercourse, hence the word sodomy. Hunt set his goat on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance, and the source records that the site had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom. The identification is presented as a reported attribution to de Saulcy, not as an established fact about the landscape, and it is this attribution that allows the setting to carry the Sodom tradition into the image. Hunt's own diary description of the Dead Sea setting as a horrible figure of sin that no one could say is not accursed by God belongs to the same evidentiary layer: the artist's recorded words about the place, not a statement about the rite. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: F11-2. Evidence: interpretation. The hardest reading of the image is explicitly attributed and explicitly speculative, and it should be weighed as such. Historian Dominic Janes has speculated that Sodom was chosen as the location for the image because Hunt wanted to make a connection between the Day of Atonement and homosexuality. The museum record goes further and suggests that Hunt, an Anglican, may have wanted to suggest with his goat that homosexuals could be redeemed by atoning for their sins. Both statements are framed in the source as speculation and suggestion rather than as documented intention, and Janes's reading is reported through the museum record rather than consulted directly there. Because the record also notes that Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent to the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged men's sins, Janes's proposal runs alongside a well-attested Christian typological meaning rather than replacing it. The two readings can be held together without treating the interpretive one as settled: the typological equivalences are what the source presents as Hunt's own understanding, while the connection to homosexuality is an argument about why he chose that particular shore. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Theological reading and scholarly speculation Claim ID: archive-a6fa19af158aef47ce25. Evidence: interpretation. The Scapegoat carries two related but separable readings that the museum record and its cited scholarship do not treat as equally established. The first is theological and is attributed to Hunt himself: he regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent to the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged men's sins. On that account the animal is a type or forerunner, and the painting is a work of atonement in the straightforward Christian sense. The second reading is Dominic Janes's speculation, reported through the same museum record, that Sodom was chosen as the location because Hunt wanted to make a connection between the Day of Atonement and homosexuality. Janes's proposal is an attributed scholarly hypothesis, not a statement of the artist's intent, and it is reported here at second hand through the museum record rather than consulted directly. Keeping these two readings distinct matters: the typological reading rests on a position the evidence assigns to Hunt, while the Sodom reading rests on a scholar's inference about why a particular site was selected. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1]. Locator: Janes, 'Picturing the Closet', Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 87-94. Claim ID: archive-989213d54a068cbc984d. Evidence: interpretation. The setting is what allows the two readings to be held together at all, and it is also where the account becomes most contested. Hunt chose to set his goat on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance, and the museum record notes that the site had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom. That identification is a nineteenth-century antiquarian attribution, not an uncontested geographical fact, and the interpretation of the place depends on accepting it. The connection to Sodom is therefore layered: de Saulcy's identification supplies the location as a historical claim, Janes's speculation supplies a reason for choosing it, and the museum record's own suggestion that Hunt, an Anglican, may have wanted to suggest that homosexuals could be redeemed by 'atoning for their sins' supplies a third, more tentative reading. Each of these is an inference built on the same choice of site, and none of them is documented as Hunt's stated intention. In the biblical account recounted in the record, Sodom was destroyed by God in a rain of fire and brimstone for the 'sins' of its inhabitants, a sin traditionally thought to have been male homosexual intercourse, which is where the word 'sodomy' comes from; that background is what makes the site legible as a moral landscape as well as a geographical one. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-interpretation-1. Evidence: interpretation. Historian Dominic Janes has speculated that Sodom was chosen as the location for the image because Hunt wanted to make a connection between the Day of Atonement and homosexuality. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-interpretation-2. Evidence: interpretation. Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent to the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged men's sins. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-interpretation-3. Evidence: interpretation. The museum record suggests that Hunt, an Anglican, may have wanted to suggest with his goat that homosexuals could be redeemed by 'atoning for their sins'. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-reported-accounts-1. Evidence: reported_tradition. During his research, Hunt learned that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement a goat was sent out from the temple with a piece of scarlet cloth on its head, symbolising the sins of the congregation. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-reported-accounts-2. Evidence: reported_tradition. It was believed that if the congregation's sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-reported-accounts-3. Evidence: reported_tradition. In the Bible, Sodom is described as a city destroyed by God in a rain of fire and brimstone for the 'sins' of its inhabitants; this sin has traditionally been thought to have been male homosexual intercourse, hence the word 'sodomy'. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ### Collection and display Research section ID: collection. #### Two paintings, one line of research Claim ID: F3. Evidence: documented. The museum record for The Scapegoat states that the idea for the painting arose while William Holman Hunt was researching Jewish rituals for a different picture, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, and that the earlier work is now in Sudley House. That single sentence in the record links the two paintings by more than chronology: it makes the scapegoat subject a by-product of research Hunt had already undertaken for a Jerusalem temple scene, so the later Dead Sea canvas inherits the liturgical enquiry that the first painting required. The record does not say when Hunt transferred his attention from one to the other, and no interval between the two projects is supplied, only the direction of the dependence. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: archive-ee9608914686f75e50c7. Evidence: documented. The later history of the two works diverges in the documentation supplied. The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple is recorded in the museum record as being at Sudley House, while The Scapegoat is described in the same museum source as entering the Lady Lever collection after Lever bought it in 1923, and the Lady Lever Art Gallery accession number for the painting is LL 3623. The two Liverpool institutions hold the two pictures whose subjects are connected in Hunt's research, although the evidence units supplied here do not themselves state that relationship between the collections. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### Purchase and accession Claim ID: F18. Evidence: documented. Purchase details for The Scapegoat are given twice in the museum record in nearly identical terms: Lever bought the picture in 1923 for £4,950, from the 1923 Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. The repetition confirms the transaction rather than adding information, and it fixes the painting's movement from a Liverpool exhibition into a private collection that became the Lady Lever Art Gallery. The record gives no intermediate owner, no earlier sale, and no reason why the picture was available in 1923, so the acquisition cannot be reconstructed beyond the exhibition it left and the price paid. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: F18-2. Evidence: documented. The painting's presence in the Lady Lever Art Gallery is inseparable from its gallery accession number, LL 3623, the identifier by which the institution tracks the object. Alongside the 1923 purchase, the accession number is the clearest piece of institutional documentation supplied for the work's current whereabouts, and it anchors the painting to the same collection through which the museum record communicates its account of Hunt's Dead Sea setting and his reading of the scapegoat as an equivalent to Christ. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] #### The print after the painting Claim ID: F20. Evidence: documented. A separate print after the painting survives in a different national collection. Charles Henry Mottram made a print after William Holman Hunt titled The Scapegoat, dated 1861, using various engraving techniques on chine collé. Its recorded dimensions are Chine 23 1/4 × 35 1/2 in. (59 × 90.1 cm), Plate 24 7/16 × 36 1/2 in. (62.1 × 92.7 cm), and Sheet 23 1/4 × 35 1/2 in. (59 × 90.1 cm), a format that shows the reproductive print circulated the composition on its own scale. The record for this print, structured by Wikimedia Commons, is not an owner-published catalogue entry, and no edition size, publisher, or printing sequence is supplied with it. Source IDs: source-2. - [Wikimedia Commons, n.d.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg) [source-2] Claim ID: archive-889ccedfd0c84f079783. Evidence: documented. The Mottram print is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Drawings and Prints, accession number 2021.15.19, with the credit line Bequest of James David Draper and the Robert Isaacson Collection, 2020. That credit line documents the print's arrival in New York through a bequest rather than a purchase, and it places the reproductive image of Hunt's scapegoat in a department and collection built around works on paper. Together with the painting's 1923 purchase and the Sudley House location of the related Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, this gives the subject three separate institutional homes in the record supplied here. Source IDs: source-1, source-2. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] - [Wikimedia Commons, n.d.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg) [source-2] Claim ID: legacy-reference-collection-1. Evidence: collection. The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple is now in Sudley House, as stated in the supplied museum record. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-collection-2. Evidence: collection. The Lady Lever Art Gallery accession number for the painting is LL 3623. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-collection-3. Evidence: collection. The Mottram print after Hunt is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Drawings and Prints, accession number 2021.15.19, credit line Bequest of James David Draper and the Robert Isaacson Collection, 2020. Source IDs: source-2. - [Wikimedia Commons, n.d.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg) [source-2] ### Documented values and qualified estimates Research section ID: values. #### Recorded values Claim ID: valuation-documented-acquisition. Evidence: documented. The documented acquisition record for The Scapegoat anchors the work in a specific commercial and institutional moment. Lever purchased the painting in 1923 for £4,950 from the 1923 Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. That figure is recorded in the Lady Lever Art Gallery object record for the painting, and the source that supplies it is careful to qualify its status: it is a documented 1923 purchase price, not a current market value, insurance figure or market estimate. The acquisition brought the work into the Lady Lever collection, where it carries the accession number LL 3623. This is the only directly monetised value the supplied evidence establishes for the object, and its precision is bounded by its date. The price tells us what one buyer paid at one exhibition in one year, and nothing about what the picture would fetch, or has been insured for, at any later point. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: valuation-documented-acquisition-2. Evidence: documented. A second order of value recorded for the painting is symbolic, and the evidence states it as the plain meaning Hunt himself attached to the animal rather than as a modern reading. Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent to the New Testament Christ, whose suffering and death similarly expunged men's sins. The idea for the picture arose while he researched Jewish rituals for a different painting, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, which the supplied museum record places at Sudley House. In the course of that research he learned that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement a goat was sent out from the temple with a piece of scarlet cloth on its head, symbolising the sins of the congregation; it was believed that if the congregation's sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. The museum record also notes that the modern sense of a scapegoat as a person or animal who takes on the sins of others, or is unfairly blamed for problems, stems from this ritual. The ritual detail, the colour change and the modern idiom all belong to the same redemptive logic that Hunt transposed onto canvas. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: valuation-documented-acquisition-3. Evidence: interpretation. The setting carries an additional, contested layer of meaning. Hunt chose to set his goat on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom, with the mountains of Edom in the distance, and the site had been identified by Louis de Saulcy as the original site of the city of Sodom. In his diary Hunt described the Dead Sea setting as a horrible figure of sin that no one could say is not accursed by God. Historian Dominic Janes has speculated that Sodom was chosen as the location because Hunt wanted to make a connection between the Day of Atonement and homosexuality. In the Bible Sodom is described as a city destroyed by God in a rain of fire and brimstone for the sins of its inhabitants, and this sin has traditionally been thought to have been male homosexual intercourse, which gives us the word sodomy. The museum record further suggests that Hunt, an Anglican, may have wanted to suggest with his goat that homosexuals could be redeemed by atoning for their sins. These propositions are attributed to Janes and to the museum record respectively, and the record itself frames the reading as an interpretation rather than a settled fact; the diary entry, by contrast, is Hunt's own words and supports the desolation as deliberate without settling the erotic reading. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: valuation-documented-acquisition-4. Evidence: interpretation. Biographical and contextual qualifications sharpen the picture of Hunt as the maker of this image. He was an Anglican, and the museum record notes that he spent long periods of time living and working in Egypt and Palestine; the painting was the first major work he made during his first stay in the Holy Land. The same record reports that Hunt was apparently unusually frightened of attracting the attention of gay men, and that he advised John Everett Millais, who was travelling to the region, to grow a beard to make himself less desirable to local men. Evidence of this kind is reported through the museum record and concerns Hunt's disposition rather than the painting's content. It bears on the Janes reading only circumstantially, because it documents a period anxiety in Hunt's circle and not a private intention for The Scapegoat. The documented creation history the evidence does support is narrower: an Anglican painter, working in the Holy Land on his first major canvas there, translating a ritual of atonement into a landscape. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-values-1. Evidence: sale. Lever bought the picture in 1923 for £4,950 from the 1923 Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] Claim ID: legacy-reference-values-2. Evidence: documented_acquisition. Historical acquisition value: Purchased by Lever in 1923 for £4,950 from the 1923 Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. Recorded date: 1923. Methodology: Historical acquisition price recorded in the Lady Lever Art Gallery object record for the painting. This is a documented 1923 purchase price, not a current market value. Qualification: This is a historical acquisition price from 1923 and does not represent a current valuation, insurance figure or market estimate. Source IDs: source-1. - [Dominic Janes, 2015](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat) [source-1] ## Sources and literature ### [source-1] The Scapegoat Dominic Janes (2015). The Scapegoat. Picturing the Closet: Male Secrecy and Homosexual Visibility in Britain, pp. 87-94. National Museums Liverpool / Lady Lever Art Gallery. Available at: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat Publisher: National Museums Liverpool / Lady Lever Art Gallery. Type: museum. URL: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/scapegoat Authors / editors: Dominic Janes. Publication year: 2015. Publication / journal: Picturing the Closet: Male Secrecy and Homosexual Visibility in Britain Pages / plates: 87-94 Language: English Consultation status: partially_consulted. Access status: library_access. Relevance: background. Archive annotation: Scholarly book by historian Dominic Janes, cited within the Lady Lever record for the reading that Sodom was chosen to connect the Day of Atonement with homosexuality. Reported through the museum record; not directly consulted. ### [source-2] Institutional record for The Scapegoat Wikimedia Commons (n.d.). Institutional record for The Scapegoat. File:The Scapegoat MET DP-21323-001.jpg. commons.wikimedia.org. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg Publisher: commons.wikimedia.org. Type: official. URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scapegoat_MET_DP-21323-001.jpg Authors / editors: Wikimedia Commons. Publication year: Not recorded. Publication / journal: File:The Scapegoat MET DP-21323-001.jpg Language: English Consultation status: partially_consulted. Access status: open_access. Relevance: artwork. Archive annotation: Discovery and structured-data record for the Charles Henry Mottram 1861 print after Hunt, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Used for the print's identity, medium, dimensions, accession number and credit line. Not an owner-published catalogue record. ## Editorial note Published automatically by Artifact Archive. No human editorial review. ## Coverage and revisions Recorded scope: This record brings together the supplied object-specific evidence and literature. Its citations identify the sources supporting each account. Scope updated on: 2026-10-17 Bibliography entries held: 2. Literature coverage is accumulating. Finding or cataloguing a publication does not mean it has been consulted. A missing consultation status is not recorded. The record does not claim that all literature has been found. 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