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Hunt was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1824. He was the son of Judge Jonathan Hunt, a prominent jurist and member of Congress, who died in 1832. His mother, Jane Maria (Leavitt) Hunt, who went from Connecticut to Vermont after her marriage, was a woman of ability and character with a penchant for art. William was the eldest of five children.
Education
He was precocious and learned to draw well at an early age, his first teacher being an Italian artist named Gambadella. In due time he entered Harvard College, but in his third year he was rusticated, "to his evident satisfaction, " and he never returned. His health was not good, and his mother took him to the South of France and to Rome. In 1845, at the age of twenty-one, he entered the Düsseldorf academy of art, but he found the system there inflexible and left the next year for Paris, where he became a pupil of Thomas Couture. He made rapid progress and before long was rated the best painter in the class.
Career
While in Paris he thoroughly assimilated and mastered Couture's famous method. At this time a new and powerful influence, that of Jean François Millet, made itself felt. To it Hunt owed much of his merit. He sought out Millet and made his acquaintance; they became friends; and Hunt bought "The Sower, " "The Sheep Shearer, " and several other pictures by Millet. His intimate association with Millet at Barbizon for two years and his admiration of Millet's art were factors of prime importance in the development of his own work. He also had the advantage of the friendship and counsel of Antoine Barye, the sculptor, and of John La Farge. Thus his style eventually became a composite of Couture's method plus Millet's ponderous virility, on which was superimposed his own serious and ardent nature.
With his sensitive poetic temperament and all these valuable contributing elements, he seemed destined to go far. He returned to the United States in 1856 and settled for a time in Newport, R. I. Then he went to Brattleboro, Vt. , to Fayal in the Azores, and finally, in 1862, to Boston. His first studio was in Roxbury, but in 1864 he moved to Summer Street. That part of the city was swept by the great fire of 1872, and much of Hunt's work done up to that time, together with paintings by Millet, Diaz, and other Barbizon painters, was destroyed. Fortunately he had hung some of the Millets in his Beacon Street house. By his marriage in 1855 to Louisa Dumeresq Perkins, he had entered "the charmed circles of what was considered the best society of the city. "
It is clear, however, that his life in Boston was not happy. He was ahead of his time in matters of taste; he felt like a missionary among the heathen, whose ignorance and indifference got upon his nerves. Yet he was a personage in the city; he had many good friends, not a few admirers, and a few patrons. His company was much sought for; his brilliant talk, his wit, and his personal charm made him popular. He had an enthusiastic group of students in his class, to whom his lightest word was law. His propaganda in behalf of Millet, Corot, Rousseau, et id genus omne, succeeded so well that Boston attained the glory of providing the first market in America for those masters' works at a time when they were not yet fully acknowledged in France. If in spite of all this Hunt was not happy, one must ask whether the cause did not lie within himself.
One of the earliest and best of his portraits is that of Chief Justice Shaw which hangs in the Essex County courthouse, Salem, Massachussets It is a very imposing work. The portraits of Francis Gardner, master of the Boston Latin School, and Mrs. Charles Francis Adams are also representative. The solid worth of such portraits as these goes far to justify the remark of Philip L. Hale to the effect that Hunt was better equipped for all kinds of art than either Copley or Stuart, and possessed a more artistic personality. In 1875 Hunt was commissioned to paint two large mural decorations for the Assembly chamber of the Capitol at Albany, N. Y. These paintings, "The Discoverer, " and "The Flight of Night, " were each sixteen by forty feet in dimension; they were in oil colors, and were painted directly on the stone walls. The work had to be done swiftly and under trying conditions. Unhappily the panels have been ruined by the dampness of the walls. They were the most important and perhaps the best mural paintings that had been done in America up to that time. Hunt's death occurred in the Isles of Shoals, off the New Hampshire coast. He was drowned in a pool near Celia Thaxter's cottage. It is generally believed that it was a case of suicide.