The Father's Boots Watercolor and bodycolor with scratching out 12 1/2 X 8 inches, 32 X 20 cm Signed, Lower right, W. Hunt and dated 1834
Provenance: (S) Sotheby's Belgravia 30 July 1874, Lot 298 (P) (P) £400 With Thos. Agnew and Sons (dealer), London (S) 1992
Exhibited: 1857, Manchester, England, Art Treasures of Great Britain Exhbition, No. 1879-1880, London, Fine Art Society, Exhibition of Works by Hunt and Prout, No. 173 Winter 1901, London, Royal Academy, Works by Old Masters, No.
This is the first of two paintings by William Henry Hunt which show boys in oversized work boots. Although both came to be known by the title, Grandfather's Boots, this, the earlier of the two, was originally exhibited by Hunt at the 1834 watercolor exhibition under the title, The Father's Boots.
Hunt was just gaining fame for his humorous watercolors showing his boy models when this wonderfully preserved watercolor was painted. The model, John Swain, was featured in two more watercolors also exhibited in 1834, The Attack (originally The Commencement) and the Defeat (orginally the Conclusion) Those two watercolors (pendants) were among the most famous of all images painted by Hunt, in part because of the clever subject matter, John Swain about to dig into a pie and him again, passed out after eating the whole thing, but also because Hunt painted two sets. The original pair, which were purchased before the 1834 exhibition by John SHeepshanks, bear the dates 1833 (The Attack) and 1834 (the Defeat), while the second versions are both dated 1834, indicating that they are the replicas. The first set, along with Hunt's other famous painting, Too Hot! (originally Hot Bread and Milk, exhibited at the 1832 watercolor exhibition), and this work, was lent to the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester and became the standards by which William Henry Hunts humorous figure paintings were judged from that point onward. The Manchester exhibit probably had the greatest assemblage of Hunt watercolors that anyone alive, other than the artist, had ever seen together at one time, and Hunt won one of the prizes for best work by a living artist.
This painting was later included in the art display at the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition. The curious catalogue of exhibited works is illustrated with rather cursory line sketches of some of the works, and this version of Grandfather's Boots is easily recognizable in one of those illustrations.
Although this watercolor had already become well known due to its being exhibited in some of the major 19th century art exhibitions, it rose to an even higher level of public appreciation when Ruskin praised it in his catalogue of an exhibit of the works of WIlliam Henry Hunt and Samuel Prout at the Fine Art Society, London, in 1879-80. Ruskin grouped Hunt's watercolors into 6 classes, the first of which he described as follows:
Drawings Illustrative of rural life in its vivacity and purity, without the slightest endeavour at idealisation, and still less with any wish either to caricature or deplore its imperfections. All the drawings belonging to this class are virtually faultless, and most of the very beautiful. It is, I am glad to say, thoroughly represented in this room, which contains several examples of the highest quality - namely 121 (the Eavesdropper, shown in color in another photograph posted here), 168 (Boy with a Lighted Candle, probably the watercolor of that subject also posted here), 171 (The Blessing, an old man seated in a chair and seen from the side, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, England), 172 (The Shy Sitter, also shown in color here and also in the Lady Lever Art Gallery), 173 (My Father's Boots, this watercolor), 175 (Boy with a Lantern, untraced but known through an engraving after the work), [plus two others, both untraced, The Blacksmith's shop and An Interior].
Ruskin ended his catalogue of the Hunt Watercolors in the exhibit with this rather amazing final sentence, written in connection with The Blessing, The Shy SItter, and The Father's (Grandfather's) Boots:
...and the three drawings with which I close our series...things that the old painter was himself unspeakably blessed in having power to do. The strength of all lovely human life is in them; and England herself lives only, at this hour, in so much as from all that is sunk in the luxury, sick in the penury, and polluted in the sin of her great cities, Heaven has yet hidden for her old men and children much as these, by their fifties, in her fields and on her shores, and fed them with Bread and Water.
At least he made his point crystal clear! And he obviously liked the three watercolors, for those reasons he gave.
