17 DEVOTION c. 1840

This watercolor was owned early in the 20th century by Lord Leverhulme, the chairman of Sunlight Soap in the UK and Lever Bros. soap in America. Upon his death, it was part of the very large donation of Victorian art which he left to the Lady Lever Art Gallery (built and named in honor of Leverhulme's late wife)in Port Sunlight, the company town for his huge soap factories just outside Liverpool. By the 1950s, the museum was short of funds and had to sell of a percentage of its art holdings. Along with a very major oil painting, a large Ruben's which is now in the National Gallery of Scotland , a number of Hunt watercolors were auctioned by Sotheby's in London. There are several paintings by Hunt with praying male and female subjects, but I eventually was able to identify this as the Lever picture with some confidence. When the museum had deaccessioned art, the watercolor called "Devotion" was sold as part of a lot which also included a Hunt showing a girl seated while knitting. The sale at which I bought this watercolor included a lot in the catalogue, immediately next to the one for this work, which was a watercolor by Hunt of a girl seated on a beach as she was knitting. Coincident? I think not!