32 VIEW FROM A HOUSE IN PALL MALL.
Watercolour. 11-1/4 by 14-3/4 in.
This view is signed and dated 1824, and forms a fitting companion to No. 34, which is of the same style. The artist, William Hunt, born in 1790, had a great reputation in his day as a painter of fruit, flowers, birds' nests, and other subjects of the kind, and also of rustic figures. His landscape is less known, and the works by him here exhibited are executed with unusual freedom. In these examples much of the outline is drawn with a pen.
The artist in this case must have been sitting on the balustraded projection of a building, long ago destroyed, on the north side of Pall Mall. He looked east, and the steeple of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields appears in the distance.
By W. Hunt, 1824 (1790-1864). Lent by Mr. T. Girtin.
Plate XIV. 33 CHURCH OF ST. PETER LE POOR, OLD BROAD STREET.
Watercolour. 13-1/2 by 17-1/2 in.
This is the old church of St. Peter Le Poor on the west side of Old Broad Street, which in Stow's opinion may have been so called because it was "sometime peradventure a poor parish." It escaped the Great Fire, but traffic increasing, as it needed repair and projected into the street, it was pulled down in 1788 and rebuilt farther back. The second church, an indifferent piece of architecture, has been destroyed under the Union of Benefices Act within the last few years.
Lent by Sir E. Coates.
Plate XV. 34 VIEW FROM THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. MARTIN'S-IN-THE-FIELDS.
Watercolour. 13-1/4 by 19-1/2 in.
In "Notes on Prout and Hunt" by Ruskin for an exhibition in 1879-80, he says: "Hunt learned his business not in spots but in lines. Compare the sketch of the river-side, No. 124, which is as powerful in lines as Rembrandt, and the St. Martin's Church, No. 123, which is like a bit of Hogarth." The view is along the colonnaded west front of the church, and up St. Martin's Lane, of which the part here shown no longer exists. The bit of churchyard with tombstones disappeared on the formation of Duncannon Street.
By W. Hunt (1790-1864). Lent by Mr. T. Girtin.
