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Hunt, William Henry, 1790-1864 A young boy Pencil

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William Henry Hunt
1790-1864

Because he had deformed legs, Hunt was thought by his family to be incapable of “anything better than art.” He was apprenticed to the famous watercolorist and teacher John Varley (1778-1842) in about 1804. ...

Hunt’s work was championed by the critic John Ruskin and was enormously popular in his lifetime. It fell from favor after WWI, a victim of the general detestation for anything “Victorian.” His work has again risen in critical estimation--he is by any account among the greatest manipulators of watercolor in the nineteenth century--however, its influence on the Pre-Raphaelites and its foreshadowing of pot-Impressionistic techniques has yet to be fully explored.