untitled [head-study]

William Morris Hunt's Head Study (Portrait of a Man) captures the forceful features of an aging but still vital individual with a full gray beard. The crown of his head and his loose graying locks are covered by a black skull-cap. He turns to the right so that his face is half in shadow, with light glancing from the right temple just below the dense blackness of the cap. The image is as much drawn as it is painted, in thinly applied oils. Hunt detailed the facial features in rapidly applied, almost sketchy lines, but left unfinished the broadly painted blank background and the subject's shoulder at lower left.

Portraits and figural work dominated Hunt's painting. He made numerous works known in his day as "ideal heads": generic individuals portrayed as types or embodiments of abstract concepts or literary themes. For Hunt and his contemporaries trained in the European academic tradition, in which religious painting held an honored place, the "Old Testament" figure—an older, balding but strong-featured man with a long beard—was a commonly depicted type. In this study such an individual is presented in a modern suit-coat and collar, but his stern, rather visionary expression and head-gear suggest a philosopher, scholar, or poet. In an era in which head-covering was common, the skull-cap was as likely to be associated with intellectual professions as with ethnic identity.

Head Study (Portrait of a Man) may be a study for a finished work; equally likely is the possibility that Hunt made it as a pedagogical exercise for his students. Hunt had held art classes since his return from his own studies in Europe, in 1855. In the 1870s he made a series of portrait heads thought to be demonstration works, in which he painted spontaneously, building up the contours of the subject in layered tones and expressive brushwork and eschewing the attention to polished surfaces and the extraneous detail common in contemporary academic art. As an unfinished study, this portrait reveals Hunt's working method and his concern for spatial volumes and the sitter's individual character as expressed in his powerful features.

New Faces, New Places: Recent Additions to the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 14–December 31, 2000.

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002.

A Place on the Avenue: Terra Museum of American Art Celebrates 15 Years in Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 16, 2002–February 16, 2003.