William Henry Hunt, A Mulatto Boy Holding a Casket (c. 1853)
This watercolor by William Henry Hunt was once part of the collection of Ralph Bernal, which included 49 watercolors by the artist when it was sold at Christie's in 1854 - the third largest collection of all time, behind that of Dr. Monro (168 early watercolors and drawings, sold in 1833) and one other existing collection of watercolors. Since the Bernal sale, this painting has been known by several titles, including one that is rather humorous - The Casket Bearer of Constantinople . The dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, was apparently mistaken by the person who chose that title for the dome of Santa Sophia in Turkey.
Even though the exact subject of the painting may be unknown or even confusing, it there really is a subject matter, as such, this is one of the artist's two most successful depictions of a Black child, and undoubtedly one of the most objective paintings of Blacks and Mullattos from a century known for almost never painting anything but caricatures of any non-Caucasian subject. The other painting by Hunt which is devoid of caricature, both in appearance and the title of the work, is an image of a young Black Boy holding a mirror. This was once in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, but it was sold as part of a museum-wide deaccession in the 1950s.
If this watercolor is inspected carefully, one sees almost a halo effect, with an area of darker blue in the sky next to the subject's hair. This was caused by the artist's scrapping of the paper beneath the hair in an attempt to give it more texture. Hunt then went back and painted in the background sky, after he had painted the hair. Some of the scraped paper extended beyond the child's head, which resulted in greater accumulation of pigment and a darker blue sky in that area. But, even if the artist was a little careless in scraping too great an area of paper, he still managed to end up with one of the finest heads he ever painted.
