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Basket with melon, peaches, grapes and plums

Maker

(artist)
1790-1864

Title

Date of Production

(circa) 1840

Medium

graphite, watercolour with some added gum arabic, bodycolour and scratching out on wove paper

Dimensions

Height: 24.2 cm
Width: 33.3 cm

Accession Number

D.1982.JW.20

Mode of Acquisition

John Witt, Art Fund bequest & grant aid, 1982

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

Ruskin argued that the most important quality of a painter was true vision. Hunt's still lifes served him as an ideal expression of direct, sincere and objective sight. Hunt certainly studied the visible world closely but his "keen eye for truth," as Ruskin called it, was inevitably conditioned by the conventions of the time and was subject to different interpretations. The artist Walter Sickert (1860-1942) saw in Hunt's small brushstrokes not just evidence of careful observation but a prefiguration of Impressionist interests in the sensation of sight itself.

Notes

Similar works are held in the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. 1795).

Provenance

Prue Heathcote-Williams; purchased from her by Sir John Witt, London (1907-1982), L.646a, July 1976; John Witt Bequest via the Art Fund 1982

Exhibition History

Second Nature, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14/06/2000-03/09/2000

Water Colour Society, London, 1931

Literature

John Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864): Life and Work, with a catalogue (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1982)
no. 765

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermark: Recto, lower centre: "J WHATMAN / TURKEY MILL".

Inscription: Recto: lower right, red-brown watercolour, signed: "W HUNT". Verso: lower left corner, graphite, written twice: "1987"; lower left corner, graphite: "48"; lower right, graphite: "William Henry Hunt.". Support (removed, now in object file): graphite: "1987 [this crossed out] / William Henry Hunt / perhaps Melon & Grapes Exhibited Water Colour Society / 1931 No 331".

Collector's mark: Verso: lower left, stamped black: Sir John Witt (L.646a) [stamped again on the former support, now removed and in the object file].

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