English: Watercolor, bodycolor, and gum arabic on paper, with scratching out

11 X 8 in., 27.94 X 20.32 cm. oval Signed, l.r., W. HUNT

Wiliiam Henry Hunt painted this picture of a timid little girl late in his career, when he had largely abandoned figure subjects in favor of painting the still life watercolors which had become in very high demand. There is another, probably autograph, replica of this work, which has appeared a couple of times in recent years at English auctions. There is also a variant, rectanguler watercolor of the same girl, wearing the same clothes, and turning sideways in the same chair which once belonged to John Ruskin and which is now in the collection of the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston, England. That watercolor has traditionally been known as The Shy Sitter, but it appeared once at auction in the 19th century under the title, The Diffident Sitter. All three related works are of similar size, which makes it difficult to determine which was the painting exhibited at the 1854 Spring Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-colours as Diffidence and at the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris as Timidite, but one of the two oval versions was certainly the subject of an early chromolithograph published in England in the mid-1800s.