William Henry Hunt was apprenticed to the landscape painter John Varley and was one of a circle of young artists, including J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Girtin, who attended Dr Thomas Monro’s ‘Academy’ at Adelphi Terrace, London. At Monro’s country house near Bushey in Hertfordshire he made landscape drawings of the area. Through Monro’s patronage he was employed during the 1820s by George Capel (1757–1839), the 5th Earl of Essex, to paint views of his estate at nearby Cassiobury. Hunt produced various watercolours of the interior of Cassiobury including two highly detailed works of the dining room (1821) and drawing room (1823). This particularly fine example of Hunt’s early watercolour style depicts Thomas Hainge, the Earl’s head gardener, displaying exotic produce in a potting shed in the garden. In addition to the present watercolour, Hunt also made a watercolour of a similar composition, which appears to have been presented to Thomas Hainge, depicting the shed filled with pineapples (Private collection, UK). Another work entitled ‘The Vegetable Man’ is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. A watercolour of the same figure with a pair of baskets yoked across his shoulders, filled with vegetables, is in The Courtauld collection (D.1967.WS.55). During the 1820s and 1830s Hunt produced a number of single figure studies of country people such as millers, gamekeepers, farmers and gardeners, engaged in everyday pursuits, such as the present watercolour.

Lowell Libson Ltd; acquired in memory of William Clarke (1943-2010) with the generous support of Elizabeth Clarke, the V and A Purchase Grant Fund, the Worshipful Company of Mercers and the Samuel Courtauld Trust, 2011.

Earth: Digging Deep in British Art 1715 – 2022, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 09/07/2022-11/09/2022

William Henry Hunt: Country People, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 24/06/2017-17/09/2017

Christiana Payne, Earth: Digging Deep in British Art 1781-2022, Sansom and Company, Redcliffe Press Ltd., Bristol 2022 - 128
42-43
ill. on p. 43

William Henry Hunt: Country People, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 2017
no. 10
ill. on p. 41 and on cover

Inscription: inscription : brush and ink : lower right & recto : : W.HUNT