Hunt, William Morris

Hunt, William Morris, 1824–79, American painter, b. Brattleboro, Vt., studied in Düsseldorf and Paris. He was greatly influenced by the Barbizon school and by J. F. Millet. During the Civil War he established himself in Boston, where he introduced the ideals and methods of the Barbizon school. As teacher and painter, Hunt exerted a widespread influence upon American art. He is thought to be the first American master to admit female students into his classes. His earliest works were usually figure pieces; he then turned to portraits and in his later years devoted himself chiefly to landscapes. Among his best-known paintings are Girl at a Fountain, The Bathers, and a landscape (Metropolitan Mus.); a portrait of Chief Justice Shaw (courthouse, Salem, Mass.); and The Flight of Night (Pennsylvania Acad. of the Fine Arts).

Bibliography

See biography by his granddaughter, Diana Holman-Hunt (1969).

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Hunt, William Morris (1824–79) painter; born in Brattleboro, Vt. (brother of Richard Morris Hunt). He studied in Germany (1845–46) and Paris (1846–56) before settling in Boston in 1862. His work was influenced by French artists of the time, and his genre paintings are romantic and somewhat sentimental, as seen in The Bathers (1877).