[...] the only master I longed for would not teach, i.e. old William Hunt, whose work will live for ever, as it is absolutely true to nature. We used to see a good deal of him at Hastings, where he generally passed his winters, living in a small house almost on the beach under the East Cliff, where he made most delicious little pencil-sketches of boats and fishermen. I can see him now, looking up with his funny great smiling head, and long gray hair, above the poor dwarfish figure, and his pretty wife, with her dainty little openwork stockings and shoes, trying to drag him off for a proper walk on the parade with her daughter and niece, where he looked entirely out of character. I remember "That Boy," too, whom Hunt taught to be anything he chose as model, blowing the hot pudding, fighting the wasp, or taking the physic; the apple-blossoms and birds'-nests, with their exquisite mosses and ivy-leaved backgrounds, were found in the hedges and gardens about Hastings.
From Recollections of a happy life, being the autobiography of Marianne North, by North, Marianne, (1830-1890), 1892.
Birds Nest, Apple Blossom and Primroses, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864), Watercolour, bodycolour and gum, on paper
© Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
