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About the Artist
Michael John Hunt was born in 1941 and is an English figurative painter and etcher. Primarily a topographical artist with a natural ease of draftsmanship that enables him to capture the essential details he needs for his paintings, Hunthas developed his own particular and distinctive style. Having exhibited at the Royal Academy six times as well as at the Paris Salon (Silver Medal) in 1976, he was approached by the Kunsthandel Pieter Breughel in Amsterdam (then owned by the family Noldus), and received many commissions and one-man exhibitions in Amsterdam over a period of 35 years. Mr. Hunt’s wife Rosemary is the curator of The Hunt Gallery, in Sandwich, Kent, where there is a permanent collection of his work.
A selection of Hunt’s interior paintings have been exhibited in the Society of Winterthur Fellows Gallery at Winterthur Museum as well as at the American Museum in Britain. A series of paintings of Bayou Bend interiors is on display at Bayou Bend’s Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center from November 4 through December 31, 2014.
Historic Rooms of Bayou Bend
The paintings by
Michael John Hunt
were on display at the
Lora Jean Kilroy Center
Bayou Bend, Houston, Texas
on 3 November 2014 through Christmas.
View at
www.mfah.org/visit/bayou-bend-collection-and-gardens/
Our next exhibition:
The American Museum in Britain:
A selection of paintings from the Winterthur Collection will be on display in the period rooms at The American Museum in Britain, Claverton Manor, Bath, BA2 7BD throughout the main season opening, 23 March – 3 November 2013, and during the Christmas Season opening, 28 November – 22 December 2013.
News in DECEMBER 2012 from Winterthur:
Paintings of Winterthur by English artist and Winterthur licensee, Michael John Hunt, are currently on exhibit at the American Museum in Britian. The exhibition, Painted Rooms: American Historic Interiors by Michael John Hunt, includes several of Hunt’s Winterthur paintings. Hunt began painting scenes from Winterthur in 2003 and has since put together an incredible painted archive of the interior spaces and exterior views of Winterthur Museum, Garden, & Library.
Another selection of paintings from Hunt’s Winterthur Collection was also on display at Winterthur this fall. “We are thrilled to have Michael’s Winterthur works on display, in Britain and at Winterthur,” commented Kristin DeMesse, Director of Winterthur Licensed Products. “This is the first time selections from the Winterthur paintings have been on exhibit. It is a truly magnificent collection, and the paintings tell the story of Winterthur’s visual splendor in such a unique way. What a wonderful opportunity to bring H. F. du Pont’s vision to a wider audience.”
Painted Rooms:
American Historic Interiors by Michael John Hunt
The American Museum in Britain is delighted to present Painted Rooms: American Historic Interiors by Michael John Hunt on view at Claverton Manor, Bath, from Saturday 10 March to Sunday 28 October 2012. Forty of Hunt’s exquisite interiors of Winterthur and Wynkoop, treasured historic houses in the USA, will be displayed in the American Museum’s period rooms and Gallery, before travelling to Winterthur later this year.
Celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic for his meticulously detailed architectural paintings, English artist Michael John Hunt (b. 1941) has an intuitive understanding of perspective that would rival the abilities of many an artist. He has exhibited around the world from Amsterdam to Dubai and counts among his collectors members of the British Royal Family as well as Washington Society.
One of the most striking features of Hunt’s portraits of American historic interiors is his theatrical use of natural light: sunlight filters between wood wall panelling, spills through window panes, and pools onto floorboards by open doorways. Fleeting shadows are thus captured forever in paint. Surprisingly, Hunt creates his pictures with layered acrylics and glazes producing subtleties of light and colour that are more usually associated with oil pigments. Thus Hunt illustrates his innate artistic dexterity – the painterly equivalent of a musician’s ‘perfect pitch’.
Founded by Henry Francis du Pont,Winterthur is the premier museumof American decorative arts, reflecting both early Americaand the du Pont family’s life here. Its 60-acre naturalistic garden is among the country’s best, and its research library serves scholars from around the world. Over the years, Hunt has built up a considerable painted archive of the 175 period rooms on view there and, since this is one of the museums on which the American Museumin Britain was modelled, this exhibition in Bathis most appropriate. Hunt has also produced a similar collection of paintings of Wynkoop House, a fine Colonial period stone house in New York State and the largest in Marbletown, when it was built for Cornelius Evert Wynkoop in 1767. Wynkoop, of Dutch descent, was a successful merchant and served as a Major of the Minutemen of Ulster County in the American Revolution.
Curator Laura Beresford comments: “With the symbiotic relationship between our museum and Winterthur, there is no more appropriate UK venue for an exhibition of Michael Hunt’s historic house interiors than the American Museum in Britain. These pictures will not be confined to a gallery setting: we will also hang paintings in our period rooms that mirror those at Winterthur. Our visitors will thus have the opportunity to make visual and historical connections, as they admire the virtuosity of a master painter.”