Talk:Isabella and the Pot of Basil

I have decided to reinstate the undo made previously. Here is my rationale. The painting "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" is a famous theme and there are several versions. A reader might mistakenly assume that Hunt was the only person who painted a painting of this theme.

The wikipedia article is called "Isabella and the Pot of Basil," not "Hunt's Isabella and the Pot of Basil." It seems absurd to single Hunt out there to the exclusion of the rest. In order to justify doing this, the article would need to demonstrate that Hunt's painting is the definitive rendition of this theme and explain why other renditions are inferior or less notable.

Actually, I feel this is not the case at all. One of my motivations for making this correction in fact was because I find John White Alexander's version to be more interesting and notable than Hunt's version (yes, this is a personal bias--so kill me!). Also, you will note that Alexander's wiki page (which I had no part in constructing) lists the painting on his artist page. Excluding references to other readers would cause confusion in people's minds. Robert J Nagle 06:05, 17 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Isabella and the Pot of Basil is the title of Hunt's painting. The poem is entitled Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. Both Alexander's and Waterhouse's paintings and titles are essentially variant copies of Hunt's. Others, notably Millais's painting, are almost completely unrelated in content and composition (it has its own page). Alexander almost exactly copies Hunt's composition in a Whistlerian-inspired style. Waterhouse reverses the composition, keeping the water-jug and even the decorative skull, but placing it out of doors. So saying that the subject was used by other painters "of the time" is misleading - as though they all independently adopted it, like variants of "Death of Julius Caesar" or some other popular topic. They didn't. You are entitled to like Alexander's painting better, but Hunt is a far more notable artist. His painting is much more discussed in art historical literature. De facto it is the more notable work, and clearly the other two paintings are responses specifically to Hunt's painting. Paul B 07:00, 17 July 2007 (UTC)