Out of the shadows: a thoughtful show at the Ashmolean Museum should do much to bring the circumspect Pre-Raphaelite landscape painter Alfred William Hunt the recognition he deserves

In the mid-1960s, Noel Annesley and I, then the two most junior forms of life in Christie's picture department, went on a northern tour. The highlight was a visit to old Mrs Newall at Newbrough, in the Tyne valley in Northumberland. This visit had been arranged by my mother, who lived nearby, and played bridge with Mrs Newall, who had the reputation of being very quiet and retiring, and not keen to show her collection to strangers. But she was very kind and hospitable to us. I am afraid neither Noel nor I had at this time heard of Alfred William Hunt; nor did we realise that the Newalls had been his greatest patrons, so this was one of the chief revelations of the collection. Our visit was to bear fruit with the sale of the Newall collection, at Christie's, in 1979, with Noel Annesley as the auctioneer.

And now, another twenty-five years later, comes the first Alfred William Hunt exhibition, hard on the heels of 'The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape' exhibition at the Tate last year. The Hunt exhibition, which began at the Yale Center for British Art, is curated by Christopher Newall, a lifelong enthusiast and collector of Hunt, and a member of the same Newall family. At last we can assess Hunt's life and work, and position him in the history of Victorian landscape.

Hunt was born in Liverpool in 1830, and exhibited his first oil at the Royal Academy in 1853. It was a view in the Lake District; it was skied, and no-one noticed it (no. 1). But it already revealed that he was a follower of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite style of landscape. Thereafter, Hunt painted only the occasional oil, concentrating on watercolour, of which he was to become a master technician. Like many mid-Victorian landscape painters, Hunt was alternately encouraged and castigated by Ruskin. He dutifully followed what he thought was the Pre-Raphaelite style, only to be criticised by Ruskin for being too niggling and too obsessed with detail. Hunt's reaction was to develop his own unique blend of Pre-Raphaelitism and the Turneresque. He painted what was before him, but tried to instil his landscapes with dramatic and atmospheric effects. His contemporaries recognised this; F.G. Stephens described him as 'the legitimate successor of Turner'.

Hunt and his family moved to London in 1865, but he continued to seek inspiration in the landscape of the north. He loved north Wales, which inspired many of his most beautiful and intense watercolours. A November rainbow, Dolwyddelan Valley of 1866 has a visionary quality reminiscent of Samuel Palmer. He also liked the Lake District, but the area that was to remain his greatest inspiration was the north-east--Northumberland, County Durham and North Yorkshire, especially Whitby. These were the places he was to return to again and again.

As a Northumbrian myself, it is Hunt's views of the Northumbrian coast that have always resonated the most with me. He stayed with the Newalls at Bamburgh Castle, and painted Bamburgh, Lindisfarne and that area better then anyone has ever painted it, Turner included. The more atmospheric and abstract they are, the better I like them; they convey the spirit of that wonderful coastline. Best of all are Hunt's extraordinary views of Tynemouth, incorporating parts of the not yet completed Tynemouth Pier (nos. 31-33). The combination of Turneresque romanticism with Victorian engineering makes these watercolours uniquely powerful in Hunt's work. Also memorable is the Iron works, Middlesborough of 1863, another Turneresque vision, which ranks with Turner's Rain, steam and speed as an evocation of the power of the Industrial Revolution.

So why has Hunt for so long been the forgotten man of Pre-Raphaelite landscape? The answer is partially bad luck, partially Hunt's own nervous and retiring temperament. He was constantly beset by doubts, worried by lack of recognition, and financial troubles. Burne-Jones called him a 'worry mutton', and there is no doubt Hunt was a perfectionist, who exploited every possible technique to get the effects he wanted. His daughter Violet wrote how she had seen 'delicately stained pieces of Whatman's Imperial subjected to the most murderous "processes", and yet come out alive at the end ... He sponged [the sheet] into submission; he scraped it into rawness and a flesh state of smarting receptivity'.

These words reveal just how hard Hunt had to work to get those precise but evanescent effects he wanted. Like so many Victorian landscape painters, he laboured incredibly hard to eliminate all signs of labour. He worked his watercolours to death, and yet made them look spontaneous and flesh when completed. Like Turner, he also kept a sketchbook in his pocket, and jotted down places, ideas and colour notes, for future use. Nothing about his art was accidental. The idyllic mood is perhaps his least successful: his pretty landscapes, such as Finchdale Priory of 1861 or Leafy June of 1878, are for me his least inspiring. Hunt is at his best when exploiting the visionary and dramatic aspects of landscape. Some of his views in Germany and Italy are particularly good in this respect.

Unlike George Price Boyce, who kept a diary and lived near Rossetti in Chelsea, Hunt was always on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. This goes some way towards explaining why he is not as well-known as Albert Goodwin, the artist with whom he is most often compared. This excellent small exhibition should do much to rectify that. The catalogue, with essays by Christopher Newall, Scott Wilcox and Colin Harrison, is informative and perceptive, and essential for anyone interested in English watercolours. Here is the perfect excuse to spend a day in Oxford.

'The Poetry of Truth: Alfred William Hunt and the Art of Landscape' opened at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, on 26 January and continues until 3 April The catalogue, by Christopher Newall, et al., is published by Ashmolean Museum Publications, ISBN 1 854 44196 5, 14.95 [pounds sterling].

Christopher Wood is a dealer and historian, author of The Dictionary of Victorian Painters and many other books on Victorian art and the Pre-Raphaelites. He is writing a book on William Powell Frith.

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