- Museum number
- 1921,0714.14
- Description
-
Bushey Churchyard, with tombs of Henry Edridge, Thomas Hearne and Henry Monro; part of the church visible at right, the tombs standing before it, amongst other graves, children standing and seated in the foreground, houses beyond a fence behind
Pen and brown ink, with watercolour
- Production date
- 1822 (around)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 320 millimetres
-
Width: 414 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- Hunt created a series of watercolours of and around Bushey Church. Two views of the interior, with a similar group of children, went through the sale rooms recently: Sotheby's 9 March 1989 (lost 58) and 7 June 2006 (lot 415).
Stainton 1985
A protégé of the collector and physician Dr Monro, Hunt was a frequent guest at Merry Hill, his country house near Bushey in Hertfordshire. He was unable to walk well, so Monro had him "trundled on a sort of barrow with a hood over it, which was drawn by a man or a donkey while he made sketches". A number of views in the neighbourhood of Bushey survive, but this example is of particular interest, since it shows the churchyard where two of Monro's other protégés and friends, Thomas Hearne (1744-1817) and Henry Edridge (1769-1821) (see 1859,0528.201; 1859,0528.207; Oo,5.37; 1890,0512.107 and 1845,0818.7), were buried. Their tombs are shown, together with that of Henry Monro (1791-1814), the doctor's second son, a promising artist who died at the early age of twenty-three. At the extreme right is Dr Monro himself, on horseback. This is a replica, executed c. 1822, of the original watercolour made for Dr Monro and now in the Yale Center for British Art. The vigorous, wiry pen outlines drawn in brown ink recall Hunt's early practice in 1806-11, when he was still a pupil of John Varley, of copying drawings by Canaletto in Dr Monro's collection.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1934 BM, Exhibition of English Art, no.367
1981 May, Wolverhampton AG, 'William Henry Hunt', no. 122
1981 Jun-Jul, Harris Museum, Preston, 'William Henry Hunt', no. 122
1981 Aug, Hastings Museum, 'William Henry Hunt', no. 122
1985, BM, British Landscape Watercolours 1600-1860, no.150
1991 Jan-Mar, Cleveland MA, Ohio, BM English Watercolours, no. 70
1991 Mar-June, N Carolina MA, BM English Watercolours, no. 70
- Acquisition date
- 1921
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1921,0714.14
