The Yale Center for British Art will be the first and only US venue for an exhibition focusing on one of the most original and important landscape painters and watercolorists of the second half of the Nineteenth Century. “The Poetry of Truth: Alfred William Hunt and the Art of Landscape,” on view September 18-December 12, is the first major exhibition devoted to Hunt since the memorial exhibitions following his death in 1896. It highlights 65 works by Hunt, who struggled for recognition during his lifetime and whose achievements as an artist have been undervalued since.
Organized by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Yale Center for British Art, the show includes watercolors, drawings, sketchbooks and oil paintings. The exhibition has been curated by Christopher Newall, an independent art historian and expert on Hunt; Colin Harrison, assistant keeper in the department of Western art at the Ashmolean; and Scott Wilcox, curator of prints and drawings at the Yale Center for British Art.
Born in Liverpool on November 15, 1830, Hunt was the son of a landscape painter and drawing master. In 1848 he was admitted as a classics scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in 1851 he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem “Nineveh.” He was already a painter, exhibiting with the Liverpool Academy from the age of 16 and becoming a member of that institution after his graduation from Oxford.
Inspired by the writings of John Ruskin and adopting his principle of “truth to nature,” Hunt developed an intensely detailed and highly individual form of Pre-Raphaelite observation of nature in the 1850s. By the end of the decade, he had become a figure of note on the periphery of the Pre-Raphaelite circle in London and had begun his long friendship with Ruskin, who praised the subtlety and keenness of observation evident in Hunt’s landscapes, but warned the young artist against excessive detail.
“The best landscape I have ever seen in the exhibition for many a day – uniting most subtle finish and watchfulness of nature, with real and rare power of composition.” – John Ruskin, Academy Notes, 1856
Hunt was elected a Fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1857, but he gave up his academic position in order to marry in 1861 and to pursue a career as an artist. By the late 1860s, fearing that a literalness and narrowness of focus had descended on British landscape painting, he moved away from the brilliant color and meticulous detail associated with Pre-Raphaelitism. He took up a more atmospheric and poetic approach to the representation of nature, inspired by – but never simply imitating – the work of J.M.W. Turner.
An introverted and diffident man, Hunt was never comfortable with the commercialism of the Victorian art world or the self-promotion required of the successful Victorian painter. He was frustrated by his failure to gain recognition from the Royal Academy, yet he became one of the most respected members of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. Critics regularly cited his contributions to the society’s annual exhibitions as among the most original landscapes of the age.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 184-page illustrated catalog, available in the museum shop; call 203 432 2828 to order.
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), 1080 Chapel Street, houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Admission is free and hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday, noon to 5 pm. For information, www.yale.edu/ycba.
