The Scapegoat (painting)
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| Artist | William Holman Hunt |
| Year | 1854–6 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 86 cm × 140 cm (34 in × 55 in) |
| Location | Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight |
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| Artist | William Holman Hunt |
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| Year | 1854–5 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 33.7 cm × 45.9 cm (13.3 in × 18.1 in) |
| Location | Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester |
The Scapegoat (1854–56) is a painting by William Holman Hunt which depicts the "scapegoat" described in the Book of Leviticus. On the Day of Atonement, a goat would have its horns wrapped with a red cloth – representing the sins of the community – and be driven off.
He started painting on the shore of the Dead Sea, and continued in his studio in London. The work exists in two versions, a small version in brighter colours with a dark-haired goat and a rainbow, in Manchester Art Gallery, and a larger version in more muted tones with a light-haired goat in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight. Both were created over the same period, with the smaller Manchester version being described as "preliminary" to the larger Lady Lever version, which was the one exhibited.
In the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue Hunt wrote that "the scene was painted at Oosdoom, on the margin of the salt-encrusted shallows of the Dead Sea. The mountains beyond are those of Edom." He painted most of the work on location in 1854, but completed the work in London in the following year, adding some touches in 1856 before it was exhibited at the academy in that year."
The painting was the only major work completed by Hunt during his first trip to the Holy Land, to which he had travelled after a crisis of religious faith. Hunt intended to experience the actual locations of the Biblical narratives as a means to confront the relationship between faith and truth. While in Jerusalem, Hunt had met Henry Wentworth Monk, a millenarian prophet who had distinctive theories about the meaning of the scapegoat and the proximity of the Last Judgement. Monk was particularly preoccupied with Christian Zionism.
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