Hunt, William Henry

The following data is extracted from Hunt Family Records.

WILLIAM HENRY (1790-1864), water-color painter: b. at 8 Old Belton Street (now Endell Street), Long Acre, London; s. of John H-; was apprenticed to John Varley at age of fourteen; John Linnell was a fellow pupil; they soon became friends and sketched together in Kensington Gravel pits; one of his earliest commissions was for "interiors" at Cassiobury for the Earl of Sussex, and in 1822 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of the "Dining Room at Cassiobury"; the Duke of Devonshire was an early patron; he exhibited in all fourteen works at the Royal Academy, all of which were painted in oil colors, and were landscapes and interiors, with the exception of "Selling Fish"; elected member in 1826 of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colors; he had a strong vein of humor and many of his best known drawings were from a boy-model whom he found at Hastings and brought to. London; this boy was the original of nearly all the drawings of the type of "Too Hot", "The Card Players", "The Young Shaver", "The Flyfisher" and the pair of drawings of a boy with a huge pie, exhibited under the titles of "The Commencement" and "The Conclusion," but better known as "The Attack" and "The Defeat"; in his latter years he undertook a series of studies of small objects for Mr. Ruskin, to be presented to country schools of art as models; in 1855 eleven of his water-colors attracted much attention at the Paris universal exhibition; elected member of Royal Academy at Amsterdam.

Source: Hunt Family Records

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