13. William Henry Hunt, Gardner at Cassiobury Park in Shed, c. 1829

Gardner at Cassiobury Park in Shed

Currently untraced

Ink, watercolor, and gum arabic heightened with white

13 1/2 X 11 5/8 in.; 34.3 X 29.5 cm.

 

Provenance:

(S) Bonhams London, 7 July 1993, Lot 48 (P) £9,200, $13,739;

With Agnew's (London dealer), February 1994.

 

Exhibited:

1830, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 112, A Gardener's Store Room;

8 Feb - 25 March 1994, London, Agnew's 121st Annual Exhibition, English Drawings and Watercolours, No. 63

 

 

This watercolor probably shows a gardener at the great estate of the Earl of Essex, Cassiobury Park. Although the manor house was torn down in the 1920s, in Hunt's lietime it was located near Bushey, where Hunt would often stay as a guest of his early patron, Dr. Thomas Monro, often for prolonged periods of time.

 

The subject is similar to another watercolor of a gardener in a potting shed, right down to the depiction of many pineapples. Some have said that the model is the same in both pictures, but this gardener appears to be much younger than the man shown in the other work. This watercolor is also painted in a somewhat later style, with more use of stippling and less reliance on ink outlines filled in with color washes. It therefore must be from Hunt's transitional period, c. 1825 to 1829, when the artist abandoned traditional watercolor techniques in order to more accurately depict the objects he saw with all their nuances of texture and color. If Hunt painted the watercolor in 1829 after the close of that year's SPWC exhibition, the artist would have to wait until the 1830 Spring Exhibition to show the painting. This might explain why this, a very late example of Hunt's early figure paintings, appeared on the wall of the watercolor society among many watercolors painted in Hunt's newly favored stippling technique. See figs. 13a-d for other works Exhibited by Hunt in 1830.

 

 

Done