(1824–79). American Romantic painter and teacher William Morris Hunt produced portraits, landscapes, and murals. He created interest in the United States for the luminous, atmospheric painting of the French Barbizon school. The Barbizon painters in general championed naturalism in art and painted landscape in realistic terms and for its own sake.
Hunt was born on March 31, 1824, in Brattleboro, Vermont. He was the brother of architect Richard Morris Hunt. After attending Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, William went to France. There he studied in Paris with Thomas Couture and then in Barbizon with Jean-François Millet, one of the leaders of the Barbizon school of painters. Upon returning to the United States, Hunt introduced the works of Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and the Barbizon school to a new generation of American painters.
Hunt’s best pictures were reminiscent of his life in France and of the influence of Millet. They are characterized by simplicity in drawing and tone. Examples include Hurdy-Gurdy Boy (1851), Girl at the Fountain (1852), and The Belated Kid (1854–57). The public demand at the time, however, was for portraits, and Hunt obtained many commissions for portraits from well-known patrons.
A large fire struck Boston, Massachusetts, in 1872, and many of Hunt’s paintings and sketches, together with his art collection, were destroyed. In 1878 Hunt received a major commission to paint two murals, The Flight of Night and The Discoverer, for the capitol in Albany, New York; they eventually were lost when the stone panels on which they were painted disintegrated. In his later work he focused predominately on the American landscape. Hunt died on September 8, 1879, in Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire.