19g. William Henry Hunt, Boy in an Outhouse, exhibited 1837

Boy in an Outhouse

San Marino, California, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Watercolor and bodycolor with scratching out

15 7/8 X 22 1/8 in., 40.3 X 56.2 cm.

 

Provenance:

Gilbert Davis, from whom purchased by the Huntington, 1959.

 

Exhibited:

Spring 1837, London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 126 (Interior of a Wood-house).

 

 

This watercolor by Hunt shows yet another, horizontal and wider view of a shed on the farm of his in-laws, the Holloways, in Bramley, Hampshire, England. If we compare it with another one of his shed paintings, Girl in a Wood-house, we can see that by careful cropping of the field of vision, Hunt had made the shed appear narrower in the picture with the girl than it really was, as shown here. Even though the point of view has shifted slightly, many of the same objects can be seen in both paintings: The red-ware pitcher on the floor, the objects on the shelf above the chest, and the old door (?) jutting out from the right wall of the shed.

 

This painting is probably the one exhibited by Hunt in the 1837 watercolor exhibition under the title, Interior of a Wood House. It is the same size as Girl in a Wood House and both were priced the same in the 1837 exhibition of the SPWC. Regardless of the titles later used for the watercolors painted by Hunt on the Holloway farm, the artist seems to have consistently referred to the structure shown here as a wood house and to the the barn shown in The Eavesdropper as a stable.

Done