Tags: Artwork.
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.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.
