William Morris Hunt: From Sculpting to Painting

"The Falconer" by Thomas Couture

"Of Jane Hunt's children, one became an eminent architect, another became a physician spending his life in Paris, a third gave up his profession of lawyer at the time of our Civil War, rendering good service as a colonel of a Vermont regiment - and William became a famous artist.

She sent her children to the best schools the country afforded, but still was not content. When advised to take William to a southern climate to recover from an illness, Mrs. Hunt took him to the south of France - with the rest of the family - and then to Rome where William drew and modelled in the studio of H.K. Brown the sculptor, where he copied the head of the Naples Psyche, restoring the head as he imagined it might have been. So good was the work that his mother ordered it to be put in marble. Such was his love of art that a return to Harvard College was given up, and the plans of the family were wholly changed. 

He seems also to have studied for a short time with Antoine Louis Barye, the great French sculptor of animals, then, intending to go on with his study of sculpture, he went to Dusseldorf, then considered the art center of Europe. A friend said, 

'Although Hunt's surroundings were agreeable, socially and artistically, he was shocked at the system of study and rebelled against it from the start. He felt then what afterwards became an abiding belief, a part of his life, that all the qualities of an artist should be educated together. He believed that the study of art should be a pleasure; and not a forced and hateful drill. He looked forward to the time when he should enter the painting class as a moment of delight. But doubts began to arise regarding the value and future effect of the instruction he was receiving.'

He left immediately for Paris. While diligently searching the city for every possible object of artistic interest, he chanced to see in an art store window French artist Thomas Couture's beautiful "Falconer." He stopped before it, and exclaimed, "If that is painting, I am a painter!"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art-Life of William Morris Hunt" by Helen Mary Knowlton.)