Yale Center for British Art

Creator:
William Henry Hunt, 1790–1864, British
Title:
A Lady Reading
Date:
ca. 1835
Materials & Techniques:
Watercolor and gouache over graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Contemporary drawn border: 11 1/2 x 8 inches (29.2 x 20.3 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.3.862
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
portrait | leisure | reading | window | woman | book | settee | middle-class | wife | rug | drapes | home | textures | genre subject | furniture | lady
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)

Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13)

Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30)

Pleasures and Pastimes (Yale Center for British Art, 1990-02-21 - 1990-04-29)
Publications:
Susan P. Casteras, The substance or the shadow : images of Victorian womanhood, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1982, pp. 22, 80-1, no. 46, fig. 12, N7630 C27 + (YCBA)

Elisabeth Fairman, Pleasures and pastimes, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1990, p. 10, no. 40, DA485 F25 1990 (YCBA)

Yale Center for British Art, Great British watercolors : from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007, pp. 154-56, no. 66, ND1928 .Y35 2007 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
In the 1820s and 1830s William Henry Hunt's watercolors of rustic figures, often sentimental or humorous in character, were extremely popular. This subject of a lady reading denotes a more genteel prosperity. The reader has been identified as the painter's wife. Hunt's careful rendering of textures celebrates the material comforts of the middle-class home and invites his own watercolor to be seen as the natural accompaniment to such refined surroundings. Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:10945