Gladys Holman Hunt, Mrs Joseph (b.1878)
William Holman Hunt (London 1827 - London 1910)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1891 (monogrammed and dated)
Materials
Chalk on paper
Measurements
575 x 445 mm
Order this imageCollection
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
NT 1287922
Summary
Red, black and carmine chalk drawing on paper, Gladys Holman Hunt, Mrs Joseph (b.1878) by William Holman Hunt (London 1827 - London 1910). signed with monogram. and dated 1891.Inscribed on the back of the frame by Edith Holman Hunt "Belongs to Gladys MMHH". A portrait of Holman Hunt's daughter, Gladys, as a girl with head looking slightly right and wearing an open neck shirt.
Full description
The drawing shows Hunt's considerable skill both as a draughtsman and as a portraitist. Like other Pre-Raphaelite artists he frequently drew and painted friends and family. Among the best-known studies are his coloured chalk drawings of John Everett Millais (National Portrait Gallery) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Manchester City Art Gallery) made for Thomas Woolner in 1853. A fine black chalk portrait study of his father William Hunt, also of 1853, was formerly on loan to Wightwick from Mrs. Burt 1961-1985 (sold Sotheby's 10 October 1985, lot 18). Hunt used the soft red and black chalk technique throughout his career for sketches and studies for pictures as well as for numerous portrait drawings. They include studies of his friends and patrons Thomas Combe (1860) and Martha Combe (1861, both Ashmolean Museum), friends and fellow artists Edward Lear (1857) and Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1860, both Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and the deathbed study of Charles Allston Collins (1873, Birmingham City Art Gallery). Family portraits include his eldest son Cyril Benone Hunt (1876), Edith Holman Hunt of 1876 (Sotheby's 10 October 1985, lot 63) and Edith Holman Hunt in a large hat of 1881-2 (Sotheby's, 10 October 1985, lot 65), both formerly on loan to Wightwick from Mrs. Burt 1961-1985, and this portrait of Gladys. Many of these drawings follow a similar format: bust-length, full face but often turned slightly to one side as in this case, with shoulders sketchily treated. The strong, hard-edged modelling and emphasis on Gladys's large, heavy-lidded eyes give the portrait the intensity characteristic of Hunt's distinctive manner. Gladys Millais Mullock Holman Hunt (1876-1953) was the artist's elder child by his second wife Edith Waugh. Edith was the sister of his first wife Fanny and of Alice Waugh, Mrs. Thomas Woolner [WIG/ SC/ 3, Great Parlour]. Her relationship with Holman Hunt was opposed by her family, as it was then illegal in England for a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. They were married at Neuchatel in Switzerland on 8 November 1875. They arrived in Jerusalem in December, where Gladys was born on 20 September 1876. She was the model for the little girl in the foreground of Holman Hunt's The Triumph of the Innocents (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 1875-87), which he began in the Holy Land, and for Miss Flamborough (1882). She is shown here aged about fifteen. Gladys Holman Hunt inherited her father's artistic talent, and was taught painting first by him and then by his friend and former pupil Frederick Shields. When she grew up she assisted Holman Hunt with artistic business, and in 1902 designed a house at Sonning on Thames for him. In the early 1920s she married the eminent eye surgeon Michael Joseph. She was tall (6 feet 1 inch) and rather formidable: she quarrelled with her brother Hilary, and his daughter Diana Holman Hunt's book My Grandmothers and I (1960) reflects her fear of "Big Aunt". A member of the Joseph family recalls an incident when Gladys was in the Post Office and told the counter clerk that she was going to report her for insolence: when the girl would not give her name Gladys produced a small sketchbook and drew a portrait [information from Judith Bronkhurst]. She wrote an unpublished History of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. On their mother's death in 1931 Gladys and Hilary Holman Hunt inherited their father's possessions. The Benson chandeliers in the Dining and Drawing Rooms at Wightwick are from the dining room of Draycott Lodge, Fulham, Holman Hunt's home 1881-1902, which she presented in 1947. (adapted from author's unpublished property catalogue, Stephen Ponder, Wightwick Manor, circa 1995)
Provenance
Gladys Holman Hunt, Mrs Joseph; Mrs Elisabeth Burt, Gladys Holman Hunt's adopted daughter, by whom loaned 1961-1985; Sotheby's 10 October 1985, Lot 64, purchased by the National Trust
Marks and inscriptions
WHH (monogram) 1891 (signed and dated bottom left)
Makers and roles
William Holman Hunt (London 1827 - London 1910), artist