Identity:

E. Aubrey Hunt was a landscape and rural painter.

Life:

Hunt was an active exhibitor, showing at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Fine Art Society, Society of British Artists, Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery, New English Art Club, Dowdeswell Galleries, Arthur Tooth and Sons Gallery and Goupil Gallery in London. He also exhibited with the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham, Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Royal Hibernian Society, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Manchester City Art Gallery. He was elected a member of the Society of British Artists in 1884, a society of which JW was President between 1886 and 1888.

JW greatly admired Hunt's work. In 1881 he wrote to Charles Deschamps: 'Now about Aubrey Hunt - I want Sir Coutts very much to see his picture - I am sure that it will be charming and really most important in the Grosvenor - His work is most brilliant and full of delightful quality - far more artistically rare than all the Ellis and Easts and Wyllies... put together' (#07923). Hunt was amongst those invited to a dinner organised by W. C. Symons to congratulate JW on becoming an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Munich, a dinner which was to be held at the Criterion in Piccadilly on 1 May 1889 (#02194).

Bibliography:

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Wood, Christopher, Dictionary of Victorian Painters, Woodbridge, 1971.Johnson, J., and Anna Gruetzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980.