Robert Hunter

Robert Hunter ( – ) was an Irish painter who specialised in portrait painting. He studied under the elder Pope, and had a considerable practice in Dublin in the middle of the eighteenth century. He modelled his tone of colouring on the painting of old masters.

Life

Robert Hunter was born in Ulster in . By 1748 he was creating portraits. His early work tended to be three-quarter portraits with a landscape as a background. His daughter, Marianne, was also an artist. She married the portrait painter John Trotter. His portraits were excellent likenesses, if not of the first rank in painting. He had an extensive practice until the arrival of Robert Home in 1783, who attracted Hunter's prime business. Hunter contributed frequently to the Dublin Society of Artists after helping to found it. Many of his portraits were engraved in mezzotint, including John, lord Naas (by W. Dickinson), Simon, earl Harcourt, He was living in 1803, but the date of his death has not been ascertained. In Carey's "Memoirs" he is described as "a walking chronicle of everything relative to the Irish artists and arts and was intimate with Madden and Prior." "Sleator's Gazetteer" for 12 March 1763, contains verses on the merits of Hunter as a portrait painter. After lauding his great genius and matchless merits the writer concludes with the lines:

Could Hogarth, Reynolds, view the bold design, They'd gladly weave their richest wreaths with thine.

Hunter's works are good in colour and evince considerable talent. An excellent example is the "Portrait of a Gentleman" which was formerly at Bellevue, Co. Wicklow, and was sold in 1906, a work which might almost pass as a Reynolds or a Cotes. W. B. S. Taylor ("Fine Arts in Great Britain and Ireland") says "he took excellent likenesses and his practice was extensive; he was truly a gentleman in feeling, and had he practised his art at a time or in a country where the arts were better understood, he would have been very eminent in his profession.

Gallery