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William Morris Hunt (March 31, 1824 – September 8, 1879), 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.〔(Olivia Buckminster Lothrop, painted by William Morris Hunt, mid-1860s, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston )〕 ==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 family of wealth and prominence in Connecticut.〔(''The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass.'', Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight, New York, 1874 )〕 Hunt attended Harvard College but withdrew in his junior year.〔(''The Class of 1844, Harvard College, Fifty Years After Graduation'', Prepared by the Class Secretary Edward Wheelwright, John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, 1896 )〕 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.〔(''Art-Life of William Morris Hunt'', Helen Mary Knowlton, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Mass., 1899 )〕 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 William Morris Hunt and his brother Richard Morris Hunt shared an apartment at 1 rue Jacob, close by the École des Beaux-Arts, where William 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〔Hunt, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, banker J. P. Morgan and writer Samuel Clemens were all houseguests at ''Bagatelle'', the home in Horta in the Azores belonging to the Dabney family, () descendants of Bostonian John Bass Dabney, a friend of American Consul at Lisbon William Jarvis appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as American Consul on Faial Island in the Azores.() Hunt apparently elected to stay on to teach art classes.〕 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. About his influence, S.G.W. Benjamin wrote in a posthumous assessment of Hunt: 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.〔(Vermont: A Profile of the Green Mountain State, Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1937 )〕 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.〔(Frank T. Pomeroy, Rudyard Kipling, Picturesque Publishing Company, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1894 )〕 His later works also include the "Bathers: Twice Painted" and "The Allegories" for the Assembly 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).〔(William Morris Hunt, ''Portrait of Katherine Dean Hubbard'', ca. 1865, Pierce Galleries, Inc., piercegalleries.com )〕 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.〔Frank Torrey Robinson. Living New England artists: biographical sketches, reproductions of original drawings and paintings by each artist. Boston: S. E. Cassino, 1888 (Google books )〕 "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."〔(American Painters, G. W. Sheldon, Ayer Publishing, 1981 )〕 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.〔(''William Morris Hunt, 1824–1879'', Sally Webster, Cambridge Monographs on American Artists, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991 )〕 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.〔(Some Merchants and Sea Captains of Old Boston, State Street Trust Company (Boston, Mass.), State Street Trust Company, Boston, Mass State Street Trust Company, 1918 )〕〔Thomas H. Perkins Jr.'s Beacon Hill home at 1 Joy Street was the venue for salons of Boston's intellectuals and society figures. Perkins, who had a country home in Brookline, also built one of the last private residences on Louisburg Square at 2 Louisburg Square.()〕 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."〔(Masters in Art:A Series of Illustrated Monographs, Bates & Guild Company, Boston, Mass., 1908 )〕 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. In 1871 Hunt was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. 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.〔(Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson Forbes, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1914 )〕 William Morris Hunt died at the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire, in 1879, apparently a suicide.〔(Death of William Morris Hunt, The New York Times, September 9, 1879 )〕 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.〔Hunt was plagued throughout his life by periods of depression. Observers often noted that his mood would swing from exhilaration to abject sadness. Today he would probably be diagnosed as Bipolar disorderbi-polar.〕 His brother Richard Morris Hunt was a celebrated architect. His brother Leavitt Hunt was a well-known photographer and attorney.〔William Morris Hunt painted his brother Leavitt Hunt in an oil entitled ''The Prodigal Son'' in 1840.〕 A fourth brother, Jonathan, was a Paris physician who also committed suicide.〔(Annals of Brattleboro, 1681–1895, Mary Rogers Cabot, Vol. I, E.L. Hildreth & Co., Brattleboro, 1921 )〕 The William Morris Hunt Library of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is named in honor of this painter.〔(William Morris Hunt Library, Museum of Fine Arts, fenwaylibraries.org )〕 (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.〔(The Harvard Register: A Monthly Periodical, Vols. I & II, Published by Moses King, Cambridge, Mass., 1880 )〕 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.〔(Images of Children from the Collection of the Boston Athenaeum, www.tfaoi.com )〕 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 Bennington Museum, Vermont, 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 Brattleboro, Vermont's Prospect Hill cemetery.〔(Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont, Early History with Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Citizens, Henry Burnham, Published by D. Leonard, Brattleboro, Vt., 1880 )〕 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''.〔(''The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans'', Vol. VI, Rossiter Johnson, The Biographical Society, Boston, 1904 )〕 William Morris Hunt and his wife, the former Louisa Dumaresq Perkins, had five children.〔(The Gardiners of Narragansett, Caroline E. Robinson, Daniel Goodwin, Printed for the Editor, Providence, R. I., 1919 )〕 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Morris Hunt」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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