Although William Henry Hunt ‘possessed power to treat...many classes of subjects’, his finest figure drawings from the 1820s and 1830s are often those in which he appears most natural and compelling. [1] As recounted by a number of contemporaries, Hunt refused to paint from his imagination and would ‘even borrow a pin to draw from rather than to do it from feeling.’ [2] The watercolourist James Orrock later recalled Hunt saying, ‘Without nature, I could not otherwise get character of colour and form, to obtain which is my constant aim.’ [3]

A Lady at an Easel is one of several studies Hunt made of female figures painting and drawing, [4] and the artist was said to have been ‘more comfortable using family and friends as models than making formal portraits.’ He seldom dated or inscribed his pictures. [5] The sitter’s dress and hairstyle suggest that the drawing was likely created in the mid to late 1820s. In keeping with the fashion of the time, her chestnut hair is centrally parted at the front and styled into short, tight curls at the temples, while the crown is gathered and pinned into a chignon. Her ‘day’ or ‘morning’ dress features a skirt with prominent ruffles, a detail that Hunt captures with sophisticated and incisive pencil strokes. Gigot, or leg-of-mutton, sleeves had become a defining element [6] in dresses from 1825, with La Belle Assemblée noting in the same year, ‘the dresses are most elegantly finished, as to their ornaments of lace, flounces, and embroidery; but they are all made in the blouse style, with sleeves en gigot.’ [7]

As the decade progressed, frills, flounces, aerophane streamers, and puffs were adorned with ever greater extravagance, [8] ‘the Romantic woman was a distracting profusion of ribbons, froth, and superfluous movement: with her tiny waist and shortened skirt, her enormous sleeves and nodding plumes, she gave a general air of great activity and constant skipping motion...the style of the Romantic woman was exuberant and carelessly rapturous.’ [9] Without detracting from the composition’s carefully structured design, Hunt delicately depicts the sitter’s flat slippers, which emerge pointedly from beneath her tiered skirt and rest elegantly, one atop the other, on the low footstool. The careful orchestration of form reflects, in part, John Witt’s assessment that Hunt ‘possessed an innate and unobtrusive sense of composition which never deserted him.’ [10]

Paul Augustus Mulready, the eldest son of the painter William Mulready, inscribed the following on the back of the drawing: ‘Sketch by William Hunt, given to me by the artist August 1839, Paul A Mulready.’ [11] Hunt and William Mulready first met as students under John Varley, and by all accounts ‘Mulready was the leading spirit’ [12] and ‘unofficial instructor to his fellow pupils.’ [13] The two remained close friends throughout their lives. [14] The sitter may have been a friend, or possibly a relative, of Paul Mulready, as both his family and that of his uncle, John Varley, included amateur and professional female artists. [15] William Mulready’s first wife and Paul’s mother, Elizabeth Mulready (née Varley) was a landscape artist herself and exhibited at the Royal Academy throughout the 1810s. In 1825, she would have been in her early forties, making it unlikely that she is the sitter in this drawing. Elizabeth and William Mulready separated in 1810 following an unhappy marriage, [16] ‘afterwards one of the reasons given for the collapse of their marriage was that his wife was constantly finishing his pictures for him when his attention was distracted.’ [17] [18]