61 A Sleeping Boy, 1836

During the past 42 years, I have managed to find only three groups of pencil studies by William Henry Hunt which are related to finished watercolors by Hunt which I own. For that matter, I have only come across about 5 studies which related to any of the more than 800 watercolors by Hunt of which I am familiar. The chances of finding a group of studies for two of my watercolors, A Sleeping Boy and Blowing Bubbles, were astronomically low. It was close to impossible that the same dealer would at the same time have a sheet of studies for a third Hunt watercolor that I own, A Marine Effect. And it was an outright miracle that both A Sleeping Boy and A Marine Effect were purchased by one person, Lady Rolle, when they were sold out of the Spring Exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-colours in 1836 and 1838, that they would remain together in the original purchaser's family for the next 150 years, and that the watercolors and the studies would ultimately find their ways to me in America.