Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

William Holman Hunt OM (1827-1910)
Portrait of Arthur Henry Giles, aged twelve, bust-length
Signed W.H. HUNT. (lower right, on sitter's sleeve)
Pen and brown ink
18 x 14.3cm; 7 x 5¾in

Together with a framed copy of correspondence from the sitter regarding the present work (2)

Provenance:
Anna Sarah Giles, mother of the sitter, 1852;
Arthur Henry Giles, the sitter, Weston-super-Mare, by 1907;
Private Collection, West Midlands;
Christie's, London, 14 March 1978, lot 175, where purchased by Maas (£198);
T. Clark, July 1978;
Agnew's, London, 1989;
From whom purchased by the previous owner, August 1994;
Christie's, London, British Art on Paper, 5 June 2007, lot 97

Literature:
Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Drawings executed up to his Departure for the Near East on 13 January 1854, PhD dissertation (Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1987), no. D87, pp. 435-6, pl. 215;
Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven and London, 2006), vol.II, p. 214, no. L26

Exhibited:
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Collective Exhibition of the Art of W. Holman Hunt, O.M., D.C.L., 1907, no.85, lent by A.H. Giles;
Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Exhibition of Pictures and Drawings by W. Holman Hunt, O.M., D.C.L., 1907, no.65;
London, Agnew's, Images of Victorian Life: An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 1990, no.73, illustrated

There was once an old label on the backboard of the present work which gave the following information: 'Arthur Henry Giles Aetit XII Drawn by Holman Hunt in the drawing-room of Mrs Coombes [sic], wife of the Supt., Clarendon Press, Oxford, on a Sunday afternoon in 1852, Millais, & Collins also present'. Hunt first met Mr and Mrs Combe in the autumn of 1851 when he was painting at Worcester Park Farm in the company of Charles Alston Hunt and John Everett Millais. Mrs Coombe asked Hunt to sign the present work and told the sitter to give it to his mother 'as the person who drew it will some day be famous'.