Anticipation Watercolor and bodycolor with scratching out 11 X 7 inches, 27.94 X 17.78 cm. Signed, lower right, W. Hunt, and dated 1830
Provenance: Spring 1830, Society of Painters in Water-olours (P0 10 gns. Lady Rolle Lady Rolle by descent (S) Sotheby's 12 July 1984, Lot 60 (P) ¢2,200 [hammer price} With Bourne Gallery (S) through Chris Beetles, Ltd., London in July 1988 to the present owner
This watercolor of a young boy waiting to dig into that pudding which sits in front of him was exhibited by William Henry Hunt at the 1830 spring exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-Colour. The model is certainly John Swain of Hastings, who would appear in many of Hunt's paintings over the next decade. This is, however, one of the first, if not the very first, painting by Hunt in which John appears. John apparently died of a heart attack and was found, face down in the sand on Hastings' beach -- the same beach where the Norman conquest of England had begun in 1066.
In the 1841 England Census, John Swain is actually recorded as being a resident of the artist's household in the Bloomsbury parish of London (where also, in literature, Peter Pan lost his shadow in the Darling home). It would have been surprising if Hunt had painted all of his many pictures showing John Swain only during the few months each year in which he resided in Hastings. But instead of the artist remaining in Hasting to paint the boy, Hunt somehow ($$$, I would wager) convinced John Swain's parents to let him take the boy model to live in his home in London.
There are stories about how young John Swain would make child-like copies of Hunt's own work which he tried to hawk on the street. He must not have had much success with his artistic aspirations, however, since in later decades John is shown in English census records as being back in Hastings, earning his living as a fisherman, as his family members had done for many generations before him.
