Alfred William Hunt Biography

Alfred William Hunt RWS (1830-1896) was a British painter. He was the son of the landscapist Andrew Hunt.

Hunt was born in Liverpool in 1830. He began to paint while at the Liverpool Collegiate School. However, at his father's suggestion, he went in 1848 to Corpus Christi College, Oxford to study classics. His career there was distinguished; he won the Newdigate Prize in 1851 for his poem Nineveh, and became a Fellow of Corpus in 1853.

Throughout his career, Hunt provided sketches to the Illustrated London News; the first came about through being a witness to the Dee Bridge train disaster on 24 May 1847. Hunt, aged 16 at the time, was on the following train; his sketch of the incident was printed by the newspaper on 29 May 1847.

He did not, however, abandon his artistic practice for, encouraged by Ruskin, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854, and afterwards contributed landscapes in oil and watercolour to London and other regional exhibitions. In 1861, he married, gave up his Fellowship, and in 1862 was elected as an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society, receiving full membership in 1864. His work is distinguished mainly by its exquisite quality and a poetic rendering of atmosphere. He was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the extraordinary detail apparent in his landscapes and the careful rendering of grass, leaves and trees is a consequence of this.

His wife, Margaret Raine Hunt, wrote several works of fiction, and one of her daughters, Violet Hunt, was known as a novelist. His niece, Jessie MacGregor, has paintings in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He had three daughters.

He is buried with his wife and daughter at Brookwood Cemetery.