Birdsnest Hunt
Christopher Wood
This book is the very model of a modern art-historical. It is scholarly, thorough, copiously illustrated, and expensive. Its author spent a lifetime studying the subject, and formed an outstanding collection of Hunt's work, buying his first drawings for one shilling each when a schoolboy in the 1920s. Sir John Witt was not, however, a professional art historian, but a prominent London lawyer, and the son of Robert Witt, founder of the celebrated Witt library. A few days after the publication of this book, and the opening of a Hunt ex- hibition to coincide with it, John Witt died, so both the book and the exhibition have become memorials to his hobby of a lifetime.
William Henry Hunt is a neglected figure among English water-colourists, and cer- tainly deserves a full length study of this kind. Up to now he has been chieflY remembered as `Birdsnest Hunt' or eve°, `Hedgerow Hunt' for his many beautiful studies of fruit, flowers and nests with eggs' This book reveals him as an artist of con- siderably wider range, and a remarkable painter of landscapes, interiors, children, rustic figure subjects, and topographical views. His career forms an interesting link between the early romantic period, and the Victorian. He began life as a proteg6 of Dr Munro, and pupil of John Varley, and died a Prosperous and celebrated Victorian, 111, ainly thanks to the enthusiastic support of Ruskin, who wrote a small book about Hunt and Samuel Prout. No Victorian businessman could afford to be without a Hunt birdsnest. Thackeray is recorded as saying that if he was the Duke of Devon- Shire, he would have 'a couple of Hunts in every room in all my houses'. But Hunt's real patrons were the Victorian middle- classes. As Ruskin put it, Hunt's 'bright lit- tle watercolours ... gave an unquestionable tone of liberal-mindedness to a suburban villa, and were the cheerfullest possible decorations for a moderate-sized breakfast burr opening on a nicely-mown lawn.' 1,r1. his bedroom at Brantwood, Ruskin hung nIs favourite Hunt over the fireplace, sur- rounded by Turners. Hunt would have been flattered, for like his pictures, he was both small and modest. ,A °IV man, only five feet tall, he stares out 'torn the wonderful photograph of him like a startled Victorian gnome. His simplicity, modesty, and total devotion to his art endeared him to all his contemporaries. `‘v9 Years before his death, he wrote that it is never too late to try and do better', a touching remark for a man of 72. Although his career spans both the Romantic and ear- ly Victorian periods, there is something quintessentially Victorian about Hunt's still-life pictures. Their smallness, and minuteness of detail, reflect the rational and scientific spirit of the Victorians; their modesty and honesty reflect the almost religious reverence which the Victorians had for nature. Hunt is said to have declared himself 'really frightened' every time he began to paint a flower. Also there is the combination of sentimentality and cruelty implicit in painting a bird's nest full of eggs. It was a genre to be imitated endlessly throughout the 19th century, especially by lady artists. But Hunt was its inventor. Like all artists of originality, he literally invented a new way of looking. The fact that he was widely imitated and copied should not allow us to underestimate the importance of his achievement. He was perhaps the greatest still-life painter that England has produced. Ruskin compared him, inap- propriately, to the great Venetian painters; Witt compares him, more appropriately, to Chardin. Many other Victorian artists recorded their admiration for him, in- cluding Samuel Palmer and Birket Foster. Even Sickert, writing in 1910, wrote admir- ingly of Hunt, praising his 'intense local and national character, and tenderness of general observation.' Sickert also con- sidered that Hunt's technique of building
up the surface by using endless small touches of colour anticipated the Impres- sionists. This may seem a far-fetched claim, but Hunt's technical innovations certainly did influence the whole direction of Vic- torian watercolour painting. His method of working over a prepared white ground enabled him to achieve a far greater brilliancy and clarity of colour than was possible in traditional watercolour, and in this he influenced J. F. Lewis and Birket Foster, and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Although Hunt will be remembered as a still-life painter, it would be unfair and un- balanced to ignore his other work. His in- teriors are some of the most beautiful of the 19th century, particularly the bedrooms with a single figure of a girl. They have a freshness, a clarity and a lack of preten- tiousness that really do one good to behold. His many studies of lamplight are also ex- traordinary, and no-one could fail to delight in his humourous studies of boys at play, especially those of the young negro, who was one of his favourite models.
This is certainly a book which anyone in- terested in English 19th-century art should add to their library. My main criticism is the poor quality of the black and white photographs. As so often with modern books, the plates are fuzzy and flat. Hunt, of all people, needs reproductions of the ut- most clarity to capture all the subtle grada- tions of his style.
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