William Morris Hunt
Encyclopedia
William Morris Hunt American
painter
, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont
to Jane Maria (Leavitt) Hunt and Hon. Jonathan Hunt
, who raised one of the preeminent families in American art. William Morris Hunt was the leading painter of mid-19th century Boston
, Massachusetts
.
of wealth and prominence in Connecticut. Hunt attended Harvard
but withdrew in his junior year. Having been denied the opportunity to paint and draw by an overbearing father, Jane Leavitt Hunt resolved that her children would be given the chance to study the arts in the best academies—even if it meant moving to Europe to attend them.
Following the untimely death of his Congressman father from cholera, Hunt's mother Jane took him and his brothers to Switzerland, the South of France and to Rome, where Hunt studied with Couture
in Paris and then came under the influence of Jean-François Millet
, from whom he learned the principles of the Barbizon school. The Hunt family remained in Europe for a dozen years. During part of that time Richard Morris Hunt and his brother William shared an apartment at 1 rue Jacob, close by the École des Beaux-Arts
, where William Morris Hunt studied painting under Thomas Couture
. "From the training and inspiration each of the brothers was to experience in the next several years in France would come great strides for each in his work," writes historian David McCullough
. "'Mr. William Hunt is our most promising artist here,' reported Thomas Appleton
to his father."
Afterwards, leaving Paris, he painted and established art schools at Newport, Rhode Island
, where he had relatives, Brattleboro, Vermont, Faial Island
in the Azores
, where he had family connections and finally at Boston
, where he painted, taught art and became a popular portrait painter.
The companionship of Millet had a lasting influence on Hunt's character and style, and his work grew in strength, in beauty and in seriousness. He was among the biggest proponents of the Barbizon school
in America, and he more than any other turned the rising generation of American painters towards Paris.
On his return in 1855 he painted some of his most handsome canvases, all reminiscent of his life in France and of Millet's influence. Such are The Belated Kid, Girl at the Fountain, Hurdy-Gurdy Boy, and others – but the public called for portraits, and it became the fashion to sit for Hunt; among his best paintings of this genre are those of William M. Evarts
, Mrs Charles Francis Adams
, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke
, Senator
Charles Sumner
, William H. Gardner, Chief Justice Shaw
and Judge Horace Gray
.
Sadly, many of Hunt's paintings and sketches, together with five large Millets and other art treasures collected by him in Europe, were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872
. Hunt owned many canvases by Millet, including Millet's The Sower, for which Millet somewhat unwillingly accepted a payment of $60 from Hunt.
Among his later works American landscapes predominated. In the summer of 1878, the year before his death, Hunt painted a series of sweeping views of Niagara Falls. His later works also include the "Bathers: Twice Painted" and "The Allegories" for the Senate chamber of the State Capitol at Albany, New York
, now lost due to disintegration of the stone panels on which they were painted. (Some scholars trace Hunt's deepening depression that led to his suicide to his despair over the loss of the Albany murals). His book, Talks about Art (London, 1878), was especially well-received.
Nor did Hunt confine himself to oil painting. He was prolific, working as a lithographer and sculptor as well. From 1850 to 1877 the Vermont native was Boston's leading portrait and landscape painter; there was a backlog of Brahmins
clamoring to be painted by him. Hunt is widely credited for having influenced the styles of Winslow Homer
, Childe Hassam
and John Joseph Enneking
. Hunt's signature lively brushwork, partly derived from study of contemporary European painting, marked a new phase in 'oil sketching' that was carried on by Homer and others. Other friends and associates included artist Frank Hill Smith
.
"The greatest of Boston painters", writes art historian G. W. Sheldon in his American Painters, "and one of the few really great American painters, Mr. William Morris Hunt, was born in Brattleboro, Vermont." While a friend and student of Millet, "Hunt is an entirely original artist, and every picture of his is a spontaneous and independent product." In a bit of art history revisionism, some scholars are now re-examining Hunt's powerful pull on other early New England artists, many better-known.
In 1855 Hunt was married in Paris to Louise Dumaresq Perkins, daughter of Thomas Handasyd Perkins
, Jr., a Boston merchant, philanthropist and patron of the arts. William Morris Hunt was an important figure in New England arts and society, helping to turn the attention of the cognoscenti towards development in the European art world. Besides collecting himself, Hunt encouraged other Boston collectors to buy works by European artists such as Millet, Claude Monet
and others.
After one early exhibition of French artists at the Boston Athenaeum including works by Millet and Rousseau, for instance, an art professor at Harvard had written a condemnation in a Boston newspaper. Outraged, painter Hunt fired back a response in The Boston Daily Advertiser. "It is not our fault we inherit ignorance in art," Hunt wrote, "but we are not obliged to advertise it."
In 1867, for instance, Hunt and his wife sailed to Paris to attend the opening of the Exposition Universelle
. In his lectures and art classes, Hunt attracted large numbers of students, many of them from prominent Brahmin families. The Boston philosopher and author William James
studied with Hunt for a time, before turning away from painting to concentrate on his writing.
Certainly Hunt's career owed a debt to Boston's intellectual ferment. A luncheon at his club on February 27, 1870, for instance, found these members of Hunt's circle dining together: Ralph Waldo Emerson
; James Russell Lowell
; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
; Edward Clarke Cabot
; Martin Brimmer
; Thomas Gold Appleton
; William James
; Francis Blackwell Forbes
; and James Thomas Fields
. Joining the group as guest was Erastus Brigham Bigelow
, a founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.
William Morris Hunt died at the Isles of Shoals
, New Hampshire
, in 1879, apparently a suicide. Hunt had gone to the New Hampshire shore to recover from a crippling depression. But he continued to work, executing his last sketch three days before his death. His body was discovered by his friend New Hampshire poet Celia Thaxter
.
His brother Richard Morris Hunt
was a celebrated architect. His brother Leavitt Hunt
was a well-known photographer and attorney. A fourth brother, Jonathan, was a Paris
physician who also committed suicide.
The William Morris Hunt Library of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is named in honor of this painter. (Hunt was a founding member of the Museum of Fine Arts' museum school). Following Hunt's death, his Harvard classmates and other Bostonians contributed to a fund to purchase many of his paintings and donate them to the Museum of Fine Arts.
Aside from the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Athenaeum has a number of the artist's works in its collection, a gift of William Morris Hunt II. Also owning works by Hunt are New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art
, the Louvre
Museum in Paris, the Musée d'Orsay
in Paris, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
, the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, D.C., the Addison Gallery of American Art
at Hunt's alma mater Phillips Academy
in Andover, Mass., the Bowdoin College
Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art
in Pittsburgh, the Currier Museum of Art
in New Hampshire, the Harvard University Art Museums
, Salem's Peabody Essex Museum
, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
and many others.
In accordance with a long expressed desire, William Morris Hunt was buried beside other family members at Weathersfield, Vermont
, where he spent most of the last summer of his life. Two decades after Hunt's death, his former pupil Helen Mary Knowlton published her biography of the Boston painter entitled The Art-Life of William Morris Hunt.
William Morris Hunt and his wife, the former Louisa Dumaresq Perkins, had five children. Morris sat for a full-length portrait by the artist Emanuel Leutze
in Düsseldorf
in 1864. Formerly part of the collection of Col. Leavitt Hunt at Elmshome in Vermont, the location of that portrait is now unknown.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located in the southeast corner of the state, along the state line with New Hampshire. The population was 12,046 at the 2010 census...
to Jane Maria (Leavitt) Hunt and Hon. Jonathan Hunt
Jonathan Hunt (Vermont Representative)
General Jonathan Hunt was a member of the United States House of Representatives and the prominent Hunt family of Vermont. He was born in Vernon, Windham County, Vermont, and graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1807. Afterwards, Hunt studied law and was admitted to the bar...
, who raised one of the preeminent families in American art. William Morris Hunt was the leading painter of mid-19th century Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
.
Life and career
Hunt's father's family, the Hunt family of Vermont, were among Vermont's founders and largest landowners; his mother's a familyThaddeus Leavitt
Thaddeus Leavitt was a Suffield, Connecticut, merchant who invented an early cotton gin, as well as joining with seven other Connecticut men to purchase most of the three-million-plus acres of the Western Reserve lands in Ohio from the government of Connecticut, land on which some of his family...
of wealth and prominence in Connecticut. Hunt attended Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
but withdrew in his junior year. Having been denied the opportunity to paint and draw by an overbearing father, Jane Leavitt Hunt resolved that her children would be given the chance to study the arts in the best academies—even if it meant moving to Europe to attend them.
Following the untimely death of his Congressman father from cholera, Hunt's mother Jane took him and his brothers to Switzerland, the South of France and to Rome, where Hunt studied with Couture
Thomas Couture
Thomas Couture was an influential French history painter and teacher. Couture taught such later luminaries of the art world as Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, John La Farge, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Karel Javůrek, and J-N Sylvestre.-Life:He was born at Senlis, Oise, France...
in Paris and then came under the influence of Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France...
, from whom he learned the principles of the Barbizon school. The Hunt family remained in Europe for a dozen years. During part of that time Richard Morris Hunt and his brother William shared an apartment at 1 rue Jacob, close by the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
, where William Morris Hunt studied painting under Thomas Couture
Thomas Couture
Thomas Couture was an influential French history painter and teacher. Couture taught such later luminaries of the art world as Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, John La Farge, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Karel Javůrek, and J-N Sylvestre.-Life:He was born at Senlis, Oise, France...
. "From the training and inspiration each of the brothers was to experience in the next several years in France would come great strides for each in his work," writes historian David McCullough
David McCullough
David Gaub McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award....
. "'Mr. William Hunt is our most promising artist here,' reported Thomas Appleton
Thomas Gold Appleton
Thomas Gold Appleton , son of merchant Nathan Appleton, was an American writer, an artist, and a patron of the fine arts...
to his father."
Afterwards, leaving Paris, he painted and established art schools at Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...
, where he had relatives, Brattleboro, Vermont, Faial Island
Faial Island
Faial Island , also known in English as Fayal, is a Portuguese island of the Central Group of the Azores....
in the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
, where he had family connections and finally at Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, where he painted, taught art and became a popular portrait painter.
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
in America, and he more than any other turned the rising generation of American painters towards Paris.
On his return in 1855 he painted some of his most handsome canvases, all reminiscent of his life in France and of Millet's influence. Such are The Belated Kid, Girl at the Fountain, Hurdy-Gurdy Boy, and others – but the public called for portraits, and it became the fashion to sit for Hunt; among his best paintings of this genre are those of William M. Evarts
William M. Evarts
William Maxwell Evarts was an American lawyer and statesman who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York...
, Mrs Charles Francis Adams
Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
Charles Francis Adams, Sr. was an American lawyer, politician, diplomat and writer. He was the grandson of President John Adams and Abigail Adams and the son of President John Quincy Adams and Louisa Adams....
, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke
James Freeman Clarke
James Freeman Clarke , an American theologian and author.-Biography:Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, James Freeman Clarke attended the Boston Latin School, graduated from Harvard College in 1829, and Harvard Divinity School in 1833...
, Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction,...
, William H. Gardner, Chief Justice Shaw
Lemuel Shaw
Lemuel Shaw was an American jurist who served as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court...
and Judge Horace Gray
Horace Gray
Horace Gray was an American jurist who ultimately served on the United States Supreme Court. He was active in public service and a great philanthropist to the City of Boston.-Early life:...
.
Sadly, many of Hunt's paintings and sketches, together with five large Millets and other art treasures collected by him in Europe, were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872
Great Boston Fire of 1872
The Great Boston Fire of 1872 was Boston's largest urban fire, and still ranks as one of the most costly fire-related property losses in American history. The conflagration began at 7:20 p.m. on November 9, 1872, in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83—87 Summer Street in Boston,...
. Hunt owned many canvases by Millet, including Millet's The Sower, for which Millet somewhat unwillingly accepted a payment of $60 from Hunt.
Among his later works American landscapes predominated. In the summer of 1878, the year before his death, Hunt painted a series of sweeping views of Niagara Falls. His later works also include the "Bathers: Twice Painted" and "The Allegories" for the Senate chamber of the State Capitol at Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, now lost due to disintegration of the stone panels on which they were painted. (Some scholars trace Hunt's deepening depression that led to his suicide to his despair over the loss of the Albany murals). His book, Talks about Art (London, 1878), was especially well-received.
Nor did Hunt confine himself to oil painting. He was prolific, working as a lithographer and sculptor as well. From 1850 to 1877 the Vermont native was Boston's leading portrait and landscape painter; there was a backlog of Brahmins
Boston Brahmin
Boston Brahmins are wealthy Yankee families characterized by a highly discreet and inconspicuous life style. Based in and around Boston, they form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment...
clamoring to be painted by him. Hunt is widely credited for having influenced the styles of Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
, Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam
Frederick Childe Hassam was a prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums...
and John Joseph Enneking
John Joseph Enneking
John Joseph Enneking was an American Impressionist born of German ancestry in Minster, Ohio on 4 October 1841.He was educated at Mount St...
. Hunt's signature lively brushwork, partly derived from study of contemporary European painting, marked a new phase in 'oil sketching' that was carried on by Homer and others. Other friends and associates included artist Frank Hill Smith
Frank Hill Smith
Frank Hill Smith was an artist and interior designer in Boston, Massachusetts, United States in the 19th-century. He painted landscapes and figures; and designed wall frescos, stage curtains, stained glass windows, and other decor...
.
"The greatest of Boston painters", writes art historian G. W. Sheldon in his American Painters, "and one of the few really great American painters, Mr. William Morris Hunt, was born in Brattleboro, Vermont." While a friend and student of Millet, "Hunt is an entirely original artist, and every picture of his is a spontaneous and independent product." In a bit of art history revisionism, some scholars are now re-examining Hunt's powerful pull on other early New England artists, many better-known.
In 1855 Hunt was married in Paris to Louise Dumaresq Perkins, daughter of Thomas Handasyd Perkins
Thomas Handasyd Perkins
Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, or T. H. Perkins was a wealthy Boston merchant and an archetypical Boston Brahmin. Starting with bequests from his grandfather and father-in-law, he amassed a huge fortune...
, Jr., a Boston merchant, philanthropist and patron of the arts. William Morris Hunt was an important figure in New England arts and society, helping to turn the attention of the cognoscenti towards development in the European art world. Besides collecting himself, Hunt encouraged other Boston collectors to buy works by European artists such as Millet, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
and others.
After one early exhibition of French artists at the Boston Athenaeum including works by Millet and Rousseau, for instance, an art professor at Harvard had written a condemnation in a Boston newspaper. Outraged, painter Hunt fired back a response in The Boston Daily Advertiser. "It is not our fault we inherit ignorance in art," Hunt wrote, "but we are not obliged to advertise it."
Exposition Universelle (1867)
The Exposition Universelle of 1867 was a World Exposition held in Paris, France, in 1867.-Conception:In 1864, Emperor Napoleon III decreed that an international exposition should be held in Paris in 1867. A commission was appointed with Prince Jerome Napoleon as president, under whose direction...
. In his lectures and art classes, Hunt attracted large numbers of students, many of them from prominent Brahmin families. The Boston philosopher and author William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
studied with Hunt for a time, before turning away from painting to concentrate on his writing.
Certainly Hunt's career owed a debt to Boston's intellectual ferment. A luncheon at his club on February 27, 1870, for instance, found these members of Hunt's circle dining together: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
; James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets...
; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
; Edward Clarke Cabot
Edward Clarke Cabot
Edward Clarke Cabot was an American architect and artist.-Early life:Cabot's father was Samuel Cabot Jr., a shipping businessman. His mother was Eliza Perkins Cabot. He had two siblings: Dr. Samuel Cabot III , an eminent surgeon, and Walter Channing Cabot Edward Clarke Cabot (August 17, 1818...
; Martin Brimmer
Martin Brimmer
Martin Brimmer was an American businessman and politician, who served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in the Boston Board of Alderman, and as the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts.-Early life:...
; Thomas Gold Appleton
Thomas Gold Appleton
Thomas Gold Appleton , son of merchant Nathan Appleton, was an American writer, an artist, and a patron of the fine arts...
; William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
; Francis Blackwell Forbes
Francis Blackwell Forbes
Francis Blackwell Forbes was a China merchant, opium trader and botanist, son of Rev. John Murray Forbes, Rector of St. Luke's, New York and his wife Francis Blackwell Forbes (New York, August 11, 1839 - Boston, Massachusetts, May 2, 1908) was a China merchant, opium trader and botanist, son of...
; and James Thomas Fields
James Thomas Fields
James Thomas Fields was an American publisher, editor, and poet.-Early life and family:He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on December 31, 1817 and named James Field; the family later added the "s". His father was a sea captain and died before Fields was three...
. Joining the group as guest was Erastus Brigham Bigelow
Erastus Brigham Bigelow
Erastus Brigham Bigelow was an American inventor of weaving machines.-Beginnings:Erastus Bigelow was born in West Boylston, Massachusetts...
, a founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
.
William Morris Hunt died at the Isles of Shoals
Isles of Shoals
The Isles of Shoals are a group of small islands and tidal ledges situated approximately off the east coast of the United States, straddling the border of the states of New Hampshire and Maine.- History :...
, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, in 1879, apparently a suicide. Hunt had gone to the New Hampshire shore to recover from a crippling depression. But he continued to work, executing his last sketch three days before his death. His body was discovered by his friend New Hampshire poet Celia Thaxter
Celia Thaxter
Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories. She was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.-Life and work:...
.
His brother Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...
was a celebrated architect. His brother Leavitt Hunt
Leavitt Hunt
Col. Leavitt Hunt was a Harvard-educated attorney and photography pioneer who was one of the first people to photograph the Middle East...
was a well-known photographer and attorney. A fourth brother, Jonathan, was a Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
physician who also committed suicide.
The William Morris Hunt Library of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is named in honor of this painter. (Hunt was a founding member of the Museum of Fine Arts' museum school). Following Hunt's death, his Harvard classmates and other Bostonians contributed to a fund to purchase many of his paintings and donate them to the Museum of Fine Arts.
Aside from the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Athenaeum has a number of the artist's works in its collection, a gift of William Morris Hunt II. Also owning works by Hunt are New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
Museum in Paris, the Musée d'Orsay
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture,...
in Paris, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco and one of the largest art museums in California.-External...
, the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in Washington, D.C., the Addison Gallery of American Art
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art...
at Hunt's alma mater Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...
in Andover, Mass., the Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...
Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art
Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art, located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an art museum founded in 1895 by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie...
in Pittsburgh, the Currier Museum of Art
Currier Museum of Art
The Currier Museum of Art is an art museum in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, featuring European and American paintings, decorative arts, photographs and sculpture. The permanent collection includes works by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, O'Keeffe, Calder, Scheier and Goldsmith, John Singer Sargent,...
in New Hampshire, the Harvard University Art Museums
Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums, part of Harvard University, comprise three museums and four research centers .The Harvard Art Museums...
, Salem's Peabody Essex Museum
Peabody Essex Museum
The Peabody Essex Museum , originally the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute, in Salem, Massachusetts is the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States, and holds one of the major collections of Asian art in the US; its total holdings include about 1.3 million pieces, as...
, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...
and many others.
In accordance with a long expressed desire, William Morris Hunt was buried beside other family members at Weathersfield, Vermont
Weathersfield, Vermont
Weathersfield is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 2,788 at the 2000 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 44.2 square miles , of which 43.8 square miles is land and 0.4 square mile is...
, where he spent most of the last summer of his life. Two decades after Hunt's death, his former pupil Helen Mary Knowlton published her biography of the Boston painter entitled The Art-Life of William Morris Hunt.
William Morris Hunt and his wife, the former Louisa Dumaresq Perkins, had five children. Morris sat for a full-length portrait by the artist Emanuel Leutze
Emanuel Leutze
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze was a German American history painter best known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware.-Philadelphia:...
in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
in 1864. Formerly part of the collection of Col. Leavitt Hunt at Elmshome in Vermont, the location of that portrait is now unknown.
See also
- Richard Morris HuntRichard Morris HuntRichard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...
- Leavitt HuntLeavitt HuntCol. Leavitt Hunt was a Harvard-educated attorney and photography pioneer who was one of the first people to photograph the Middle East...
- Thaddeus LeavittThaddeus LeavittThaddeus Leavitt was a Suffield, Connecticut, merchant who invented an early cotton gin, as well as joining with seven other Connecticut men to purchase most of the three-million-plus acres of the Western Reserve lands in Ohio from the government of Connecticut, land on which some of his family...
- Jonathan Hunt (Vermont Representative)Jonathan Hunt (Vermont Representative)General Jonathan Hunt was a member of the United States House of Representatives and the prominent Hunt family of Vermont. He was born in Vernon, Windham County, Vermont, and graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1807. Afterwards, Hunt studied law and was admitted to the bar...
- Jonathan Hunt (Vermont Lieutenant Governor)Jonathan Hunt (Vermont lieutenant Governor)Jonathan Hunt was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, the son of Capt. Samuel Strong Hunt of Northampton and Ann Ellsworth of Windsor, Ct., and the great-great-grandson of Jonathan Hunt and his wife Mary Webster, daughter of Governor John Webster of the Connecticut Colony...
- Jarvis HuntJarvis HuntJarvis Hunt was a "renowned Chicago architect" who designed a wide array of buildings, including train stations, suburban estates, industrial buildings, clubhouses and other structures....
External links
- http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx?id=5241