Boy in a Stable, aka, The Eavesdropper Watercolor, bodycolor, and scratching out 29 5/8 X 21 1/2 inches, 75.3 X 54.6 cm
One of William Henry Hunt's major figure paintings, this large watercolor was exhibited at the 1839 Old Water Colour Society spring exhibition under the title, Interior of a Stable. John Ruskin included it [No. 121, Mr. Quilter's Stable Boy] in his exhibition of the works of Samuel Prout and William Hunt in 1889-1890 at the Fine Art Society, a major Bond Street art dealer. Ruskin said of this painting: "... [Hunt] is here again in his utmost strength -- and in qualities of essential painting - unconquerable. In the pure faculty of the painter's art - in what Correggio, and Tintoret, and Velsquez, and Rubens, and Rembrandt, meant by painting - that single bunch of old horse collars is worth all of Messonier's horse-bridles, boots, beeches, epaulettes and stars, together." Sir Frederick Burton, an accomplished painter and one-time director of the National Gallery of Art in London, stated, after Hunt's death, that this was "the finest water-colour in the world." And while that opinion might be an overstatement, this is without doubt one of the most important, highest quality, and best preserved watercolors by Hunt. Large watercolors, i.e., those which could not be kept safe and away from light in albums, typically have suffered some or, more often, a great deal of fading. For a watercolor which hung on a wall for over 170 years to retain virtually all the original color is a tribute to Hunt's choice of paint, his heavy use of gum arabic, and the density of his application of paint, i.e., thick application compared to what was typical of most earlier English artists who instead used thin washes of transparent color. Of equal or greater importance was the fact that one family owned this painting for at least 130 years and most likely hung the watercolor in an interior room, protected from the damaging affects of natural light.
