William Henry Hunt

William Henry Hunt (London, 1790 – 1864) was an English watercolourist regarded as one of the key figures of nineteenth-century English watercolour painting. During his lifetime he was widely collected, especially for his genre pictures of children, often in humorous situations, and for his detailed, naturalistic still lifes of fruit, flowers and birds' nests, which earned him the nickname 'Bird's Nest' Hunt.

Born near Covent Garden, the son of a tin-plate worker, he suffered from deformed legs that hampered his movement and probably encouraged him to move away from landscape towards still life and figure work. In 1806 he was apprenticed for seven years to the watercolourist John Varley, a friend of William Blake, and in 1808 he became a student at the Royal Academy Schools. Through Varley he entered the circle of Dr Thomas Monro, whose informal drawing academy gathered many young artists and whose patronage proved critical to Hunt's progress.

In 1824 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, becoming a full member in 1826. He exhibited there prolifically until his death, contributing 765 works in all. His technique combines loose pencil or pen drawing with clear, fluid washes, and he also used gouache, stippling on prepared grounds and scraping for highlights. John Ruskin considered him the finest still-life painter of his time. Several of his works are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

His reputation endures through public collections in Britain, the United States and Australia.}