Alfred William Hunt (1830-1896) was one of Britain's most original landscape painters and watercolorists of the second half of the nineteenth century. Adopting the principle of "truth to nature" espoused by his friend and mentor John Ruskin, Hunt developed a highly individual form of Pre-Raphaelite observation of nature in the 1850s and early 1860s. He later moved away from the brilliant color and meticulous detail associated with Pre-Raphaelitism. Fearing that a literalness and narrowness of focus had descended on British landscape painting, he took a more atmospheric and poetic approach, inspired by—but never simply imitating—the work of J.M.W. Turner.

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