William Henry Hunt 1790-1864

During the later 1830's Hunt executed a series of watercolours depicting children in barn interiors. Both this watercolour and the Young Farm Hand (lot 261), date from this period. Ruskin praised such drawings as being 'illustrative of rural life in its vivacity and purity without the slightest endeavour of idealisation.... All drawings belonging to this class are virtually faultless, and most of them very beautiful,' (see: E.T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin, 1904, Vol. XIV, p. 440).  A watercolour entitled The Interior of a Barn, was sold in these rooms on 10th April 1997, lot 113 (£51,000).