The Awakening Conscience is a painting created in 1853 by the English artist William Holman HuntEnglish painter (1827–1910), one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood., one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite BrotherhoodGroup of English artists formed in 1848 to counter what they saw as the corrupting influence of the late-Renaissance painter Raphael.. The model is Hunt’s girlfriend Annie Miller, an uneducated barmaid whom he met in 1850 when she was fifteen.^[1]

The painting depicts a gentleman who has installed his mistress in a house for their meetings, a maison de convenance. As they play and sing to Thomas Moore’s Oft in the Stilly Night, she rises from her lover’s lap and gazes into the sunlit garden beyond, reflected in the mirror behind her. The cat toying with the broken-winged bird under the table symbolises the woman’s plight, which she suddenly seems to have become aware of. A man’s discarded glove warns that the likely fate of a cast-off mistress is prostitution. A tangled length of yarn on the floor symbolises the web in which the girl is entrapped.^[1]

The Victorian art theorist John Ruskin praised The Awakening Conscience as an example of a new direction in British art, in which the narrative was created from the artist’s imagination rather than chronicling an event.^[2] The painting appeared in many exhibitions from 1854 onwards, and for a time was one of the most talked about paintings of the century.^[3]

The painting was commissioned by the Manchester businessman Thomas Fairbairn, who paid Hunt 350 guineas, equivalent to about £50,000 as at 2024.^[a]Calculated using the retail price index.^[4] At Fairbairn’s request, Hunt repainted the woman’s face in 1856 and 1857, as Fairbairn considered it to be “too pained”.^[5]

The Awakening Conscience was presented to the Tate gallery by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson in 1976.^[6]