I was browsing for a good image of hair to attach to the Hair Care topic on Quora.com when I remembered one of my favorite paintings, The Lady of Shalott by a British Pre-Raphaelite artist, William Holman Hunt (1827-1910).  My sister, Izolda Trakhtenberg, had introduced me to the Pre-Raphaelites a long time ago.  It was love at first site.

William Holman Hunt’s paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid colour and elaborate symbolism. His painting “The Lady of Shalott” is based on a Victorian ballad by the same name, written by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).  In the painting, the Lady’s magnificent hair is blown by a stormy wind.  It took William Holman Hunt seven years to complete the hair portion of the painting.

I found additional information about “The Lady” on the Social History of Art website, created by Professor Robert Baldwin of Connecticut College.

The Lady of Shalott (1905) by William Holman Hunt