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About Will Harvey Hunt
Hunt, born on 13 June 1910 in Indianapolis, studied at the John Herron Art School where his teachers were William Forsyth, Donald Magnus Mattison and Henrik Martin Mayer. The school was established in 1902, seven years after John Herron bequeathed a quarter of a million dollars to the Art Association of Indianapolis to start an art school. John Ottis Adams was the head instructor but Forsyth became the school’s guiding force. A new building was erected for the school in 1929. When Mattison took the position of director in 1933, he fired Forsyth and eight others. Eventually the school and museum separated, creating the Indianapolis Museum of Art, while the Herron School of Art became affiliated much later with the Indiana University - Purdue.
He exhibited at the Hoosier Salon in 1935 (Tornado), 1936 (Siesta) and 1938 (Emily Lemcke and Nipponese). First his painting called Tornado won the "Outstanding Picture of the Exhibition" prize ($500) in the 1935 show, and the same year he won another prize at the John Herron Art School, most likely for our painting. Hunt was only twenty-five, so he was most likely still a student. He worked as an artist in the display department at H. P. Wasson and Co. There is a work by Hunt in the Northwestern University art collection and he painted ceiling decorations in the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, in Indianapolis.
In our painting, the foreground is a humble interior with a mother and child seated at a table. On the table we see carrots, beets, onions, cauliflower and other vegetables. This is a poor family at the height of the Great Depression: hard working rural folk. Both the woman and child are simply dressed and are barefooted. The hungry child looks eagerly at the produce, which most likely was home-grown. The woman is peeling potatoes, holding the peels in a bowl on her lap, while the peeled whole potatoes soak in another bowl filled with water. She is lost in thought and looks almost pious, devoted to her chores. Her rose-colored dress is picked up ever so subtlety in the tablecloth. There is a narrow porch area indicated behind the child, as well as a staircase with strong geometric, angular shapes that rise behind the organic shape of the child’s head. Beyond the porch is a small front lawn and the fields beyond, which have uniform rows of cauliflower or potato plants Through the open window one can see an oak tree and a gambrel-roof barn, on the side of which is a large pile of discarded straw, which is used for bedding. The wind-blown curtain is a welcome sign of movement in this image of tranquil stillness. Generally the pigment is fairly smooth. Hunt liked clear, solid, sculpturesque forms with sharp contours. There is something elemental and statuesque about the figures.
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Paintings by Will Harvey Hunt
| Cleaning Vegtables |
| oil on canvas: 52 x 42 inches |
| signed and dated 1935: reverse |
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