William Morris Hunt
William Morris Hunt
1824 - 1879
Painter, sculptor and teacher. While a student at Harvard College, he exhibited precocious talents in the arts and studied with John Crookshanks King (1806–82), a sculptor working in Boston. In 1843 Hunt went to Europe with his mother and siblings, his father having died of cholera in 1832. They visited Paris and Rome, where he studied briefly under the American Neo-classical sculptor Henry Kirke Brown (1814–86). In 1845 he toured the Near East with his family and Thomas Gold Appleton, a patron and essayist from Boston, visiting Corfu and Athens en route. Later that year, he took the advice of Emanuel Leutze and enrolled in the Düsseldorf Academy, but he remained there only nine months. In 1846 Hunt went to Paris with the intention of joining the workshop of the sculptor James Pradier, but he was inspired to become a painter after seeing Thomas Couture’s The Falconer (1845; Toledo, OH, Mus. A.). Hunt never abandoned his sculptural training, however, and continued to produce work such as the plaster relief of the Horses of Anahita (c. 1848; New York, Met.). From 1847 to 1852 he worked in Couture’s studio, where he rapidly became a favourite pupil. An example of his early figure painting is La Marguerite (c. 1852; Paris, Louvre), which reflects Couture’s influence in its centralized composition, its definition of form through broad masses of light and dark and its rich and elegant textures. Using the same techniques as Couture, Hunt created shaded areas with smooth sepia turpentine washes and contrasted these with dramatic highlights of thick impasto. Couture was a consummate technician, and his pupil assimilated and quickly mastered his doctrine of the primacy of style.
At the Paris Salon Hunt became acquainted with Millet’s monumental peasant genre paintings, such as The Sower (1850; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). He became a close friend of Millet’s and in 1853 moved to Barbizon, where he lived and worked until his return to the USA in the summer of 1855. His subject-matter was deeply influenced by Millet, and his Belated Kid shows his Romantic perception of peasant labour. Under the influence of Millet, Hunt abandoned the painterly flourishes he had learnt from Couture and replaced them with firm brushstrokes and thorough colour blending.
Hunt married the heiress Louisa Dumaresq Perkins on his return to the USA and thus secured his position in Boston society. He lived first at his family home in Brattleboro and then in Newport, RI, where he established an informal studio-school that attracted literati and artists, including Henry James and his brother William, as well as John La Farge. In 1864 Hunt established a studio in Boston, and during the ensuing decades he became a major cultural leader in New England. He was a vigorous spokesman for French modern art, inspiring the American patronage of Millet, Corot and others. Boston’s conservative attitude to art prompted Hunt to found the Allston Club in 1866; it existed only two years, but made important purchases, most notably Courbet’s La Curée (1858; Boston, Mus. F.A.). During the 1860s Hunt was a highly successful portrait painter. In his portraits he used a variety of techniques ranging from a quasi-academic method based on Couture’s work to broader, more expressive treatment with looser brushwork. Mrs Richard Morris Hunt and Child (1865–6; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.) exemplifies the artist’s desire to capture the sitter’s spirit by the most direct means possible.
In 1866 Hunt made a second trip to France and travelled to Dinan with Elihu Vedder and Charles Coleman (1840–1928). After witnessing Millet’s triumph at the Exposition Universelle, Paris (1867), and a brief reunion with the artist at Barbizon, he returned to Boston in 1868 and began teaching a class of women art students. During the 1870s he suffered a number of personal tragedies, beginning with a disastrous studio fire in 1872, followed by separation from his wife in 1873 and the suicide of his brother Jonathan in 1874. Partly as emotional solace, he turned his energies increasingly towards landscape painting (e.g. Sandbank with Willows, Magnolia, 1877; New York, Met.), and he spent the summer of 1876 touring rural Massachusetts in a horse-drawn cart that functioned as a mobile studio.
Hunt received his most important commission in June 1878, for the decoration of two lunettes in the assembly chamber of the Albany State Capitol. He chose the poetic theme of Anahita, the Persian nature goddess, a subject that had attracted him for many years. One panel, the Flight of Night, depicted Anahita in a chariot of clouds and the other, The Discoverer, portrayed Christopher Columbus accompanied by Fortune, Faith, Hope and Science. Hunt worked in experimental pigments and painted directly on to the wall; this technique, coupled with the excessive damp in the chamber, led to a rapid deterioration of the decoration. The murals were regarded by his contemporaries as the culmination of Hunt’s career, yet the demands of the commission left him physically and emotionally debilitated and led to his nervous collapse and subsequent suicide in 1879. [Laura L. Meixner and Paul R. Baker. "Hunt." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T039525pg1.]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
French, 1864 - 1901
