William Henry Hunt, Still Life of Green and Purple Grapes and a Basket, c. 1835

Still Life of Green and Purple Grapes and a Basket

Private collection

Watercolor and gum arabic with scratching out

9 X 10 1/4 in., 22.8 X 26 cm.

Signed, l.r., W. HUNT

 

Provenance:

London, Spring 1835, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 321 [Grapes)]; (P) 4 gns, Mr. G. Robertson, 249 Regent Street, London;

(S) Sotheby's London, 4 March 1992, Lot 284 [Still Life of Grapes in Basket]; (P) £1,760, $3,101;

(S) Bonham's London, 8 June 2015, Lot 101 [Still Life of Grapes] (P) £1,500, $2,294.

 

Exhibited:

Spring 1835, London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 321.

 

 

This watercolor is a truncated version of the still life of grapes and a gourd formerly in the Sheepshanks collection [sold Sotheby's London, 16 July 1987, Lot 192]. The left half of that watercolor is virtually identical to the whole of this work, although the Sheepshanks painting is significantly faded, discolored, and generally not in as good condition as this watercolor.

 

While William Henry Hunt painted a handful of replicas of his own watercolors, this is the only example of which I am aware that he either replicated a potion of a larger work or, perhaps, painted a larger, expanded version of his initial, small composition. Actually, the two scenarios are about equally likely. The Sheepshanks work is dated 1835, and Hunt typically dated only those works which were exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-colours. But this smaller watercolor of just grapes, although undated, is the only one of the two paintings which could have been included in the 1835 exhibition, based on the modest price for which that work sold, well below what Hunt would have asked for a watercolor the size of the Sheepshank work.

Done