A Graduate of Pomona
Fig. 13b William Henry Hunt, Young FIshermen, exhibited 1830
Fisherboys
Private collection
Watercolor and gum arabic with scratching out
10 1/2 X 7 in., 27 X 18.5 cm.
Signed, l.l., W. HUNT
Provenance:
Private collection, Blackburn, England
(S) Sotheby's London, 16 July 1987, Lot 196 (P) £4,000*, $6,522* by the present owner.
Exhibited:
1830, London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 177
Hunt painted a number of watercolors featuring children posing on rocks at Hastings Beach. After he artist married in 1830, he phased out the painting of gamekeepers, gardeners, and the other rustic types which he had encountered in the early to late 1820s in Bushey. His patron at Bushey, Dr. Monro was aging -- he would die in 1833 -- and probably wasn't as welcoming to a couple moving in with him for prolonged stays as he before had been to single artists intent on perfecting their artistic skills. But Hunt continued to make regular visits to Hastings, which he had been frequenting for over 20 years, where he rented a modest house for himself, his new wife, and, after 1832, his young daughter, Emma.
During the early 1830s, Hunt did not paint boys fishing, as stated in the Courtauld catalogue but instead used local fisher boys as frequent models for his many images of a successor type of "country people," paintings set at the seashore rather than the estates at Bushey and Chatsworth. These paintings were painted in the artist's new style, where he abandoned pen outlines and washes for a stippling technique which allowed the artist much greater flexibility in depicting textures and in more subtile variations of color with which to define his subjects. The artist also began to introduce new techniques to set his work apart from that of his contemporaries by producing figurative watercolors with greater solidity, including the increased use of scraping away at the surface of his paper and the increased use of body color, an opaque white pigment.
In 1830, WIlliam Henry Hunt exhibited four of his watercolors showing boys on rocks at Hastings beach. The titles were similar: No. 79, Young FIshermen; No. 177, Fishing Boys; No.273, A Fishing Boy; and No. 302, A Fishing Boy. The similarities might seem to make it difficult to match four known watercolors with those titles, if not for the fact that Hunt's watercolors were, in a very real sense, sold by the square inch. The largest of the series, in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk at Arundale Castle, has three fiigures and would therefore be No. 177 (40 gns.). The picture shown in this photograph would have to be No. 79, Young Fishermen (10 gns.), since it is the only other in the series with more than one fisher boy. No. 302, at 12 gns. would be the slightly larger single Fishing Boy formerly in Sir John Witt's collection, which leaves No. 273, the Fishing Boy in the Blanton Museum in Tallahassee, Florida, shown in another photograph in this set.
Fig. 13b William Henry Hunt, Young FIshermen, exhibited 1830
Fisherboys
Private collection
Watercolor and gum arabic with scratching out
10 1/2 X 7 in., 27 X 18.5 cm.
Signed, l.l., W. HUNT
Provenance:
Private collection, Blackburn, England
(S) Sotheby's London, 16 July 1987, Lot 196 (P) £4,000*, $6,522* by the present owner.
Exhibited:
1830, London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 177
Hunt painted a number of watercolors featuring children posing on rocks at Hastings Beach. After he artist married in 1830, he phased out the painting of gamekeepers, gardeners, and the other rustic types which he had encountered in the early to late 1820s in Bushey. His patron at Bushey, Dr. Monro was aging -- he would die in 1833 -- and probably wasn't as welcoming to a couple moving in with him for prolonged stays as he before had been to single artists intent on perfecting their artistic skills. But Hunt continued to make regular visits to Hastings, which he had been frequenting for over 20 years, where he rented a modest house for himself, his new wife, and, after 1832, his young daughter, Emma.
During the early 1830s, Hunt did not paint boys fishing, as stated in the Courtauld catalogue but instead used local fisher boys as frequent models for his many images of a successor type of "country people," paintings set at the seashore rather than the estates at Bushey and Chatsworth. These paintings were painted in the artist's new style, where he abandoned pen outlines and washes for a stippling technique which allowed the artist much greater flexibility in depicting textures and in more subtile variations of color with which to define his subjects. The artist also began to introduce new techniques to set his work apart from that of his contemporaries by producing figurative watercolors with greater solidity, including the increased use of scraping away at the surface of his paper and the increased use of body color, an opaque white pigment.
In 1830, WIlliam Henry Hunt exhibited four of his watercolors showing boys on rocks at Hastings beach. The titles were similar: No. 79, Young FIshermen; No. 177, Fishing Boys; No.273, A Fishing Boy; and No. 302, A Fishing Boy. The similarities might seem to make it difficult to match four known watercolors with those titles, if not for the fact that Hunt's watercolors were, in a very real sense, sold by the square inch. The largest of the series, in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk at Arundale Castle, has three fiigures and would therefore be No. 177 (40 gns.). The picture shown in this photograph would have to be No. 79, Young Fishermen (10 gns.), since it is the only other in the series with more than one fisher boy. No. 302, at 12 gns. would be the slightly larger single Fishing Boy formerly in Sir John Witt's collection, which leaves No. 273, the Fishing Boy in the Blanton Museum in Tallahassee, Florida, shown in another photograph in this set.