William Henry Hunt - Mrs Hunt seated in an interior

signed 'W HUNT' (lower right)
pencil and watercolour heightened with white and with scratching out on paper
9¾ x 7 3/8 in.

Despite his nickname of 'Bird's Nest Hunt', William Henry Hunt was an artist of considerable versatility in style and subject matter. A member of the Old Water-Colour Society from 1825 until his death, he was one of the most respected, successful (on his death he left an estate of £20,000) and influential watercolourists, developing a delicate stippling technique using bodycolour or Chinese white.

He can be seen as a link between the 'Golden Age' of English watercolourists - a pupil of John Varley and a member of Dr Monro's Academy - and the Victorian practitioners of the Nineteenth Century, such as J.F. Lewis, Myles Birket Foster and the detailed observations of the Pre-Raphaelites. Ruskin was a pupil and admirer of Hunt, owning several works by the artist. In The Elements of Drawing he called Hunt 'the best painter of still life that ever existed'.

The present work and the following lot were probably executed during the 1830s, when Hunt executed a series of works depicting interiors. The model in the present work and the next is the artist's wife, Sarah, who was just 18 when they married in 1830.