WILLIAM HENRY HUNT, O.W.S.
(1790-1864)
 

The Maid and the Magpie

1834

watercolour heightened with white on paper

44.1 x 56.9 cm

inscribed on reverse: George A Musgrave, Esq F.R.G.S. 45 Holland Park,W

William Hunt Date 1838       

Exposed to the light for 48 years

Interior of cottage at Shillington now the Property of Horace Musgrave, Esq

Painted for George Musgrave, Esq. Deceased of Shillington Manor, Beds.

Shillington Beds.

Cottage – David Coppers daughter pairing apples

School benches – cut straw ends of plaittings. Drawn by William Hunt for my father in 1838

P.609

Ostensibly a genre subject, this is in fact a reference to a popular melodrama of the same title by Isaac Pocock, first produced at Covent Garden in 1815. It concerns a poor serving girl saved from conviction for stealing a spoon by the discovery of a magpie as the culprit. Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie (1817) is based on a French version of the same story.

Shillington is not far from Bedford; Shillington Manor belonged to the drawing’s first owner, George Musgrave, while his son, Horace, came to own the cottage shown here. Despite the later inscription quoted above, Lindsay Stainton, in the 1998 exhibition catalogue, confirms Witt’s view that this is certainly the drawing exhibited in 1834 and that 1838 is therefore incorrect. She draws attention to the beautiful play of light on the girl’s face as she turns her head.

EJ

PROVENANCE: George Musgrave, for whom painted; Horace Musgrave; C. Fairfax Murray; Property of  a Gentleman; Sotheby’s sale 18 June 1970, lot 171, Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd, from whom purchased by Gallery, June 1970.

EXHIBITIONS: Old Watercolour Society, 1834, no.20; Winter Exhibition, London, R.A., 1908, no.214; William Henry Hunt 1790-1864, Wolverhampton, Central Art Gallery, Preston, Harris Museum and Art Gallery and Hastings, Museum and Art Gallery, 1981, no.115; Art Treasures of England: The Regional Collections, 1998, no.219.

REFERENCES: J. Witt, William Henry Hunt, 1982, p.168, no.267, pl.75; Painter’s Progress, 1983, p.216.