John Young Hunter (1874-1955)

John Young Hunter (1874-1955) was born at Glasgow on 29 October 1874, son of marine painter Colin Hunter, R.A., (1841-1904) and his wife Isabella Rattray née Young (1852-1940), a distinguished pianist, who married at Govan, Lanark, Scotland on 29 October 1874, Colin Hunter was a close friend of artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). John was educated at Linton House, St Paul's and studied at Clifton College, Bristol and at the Royal Academy Schools under Sargent, winning two silver medals, as well as studying at the University of London. He married at Kensington, London in 1899, Mary Young Hunter, née Towgood, but they divorced about 1920 when John married at Manhattan, New York on 3 January 1921, Eva Renz Schroeer (1888-1967) and they had an only daughter. A figure and portrait painter and an Associate of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters 1914, exhibiting at Royal Society of British Artists; Fine Art Society; Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; Walker Art Gallery; Leicester Galleries; Manchester City Art Gallery; New Gallery and at the Royal Academy from 1895. He also exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, from London 1894 and 1908, Moreton-in-the-Marsh, Gloucestershire in 1902 and from Wickhambrook, Suffolk in 1904 where he had settled at Gifford’s Hall and where their daughter Gabrielle Young Hunter was born in 1905. In 1911, a 35-year-old artist living at 9 Launceston Place, Kensington, London with his 38-year-old wife Mary and their 5-year-old daughter Gabrielle, with a nurse and two indoor servants. On 20 May 1913, Hunter sailed for Montreal, Canada and in 1915 was on the 'Lusitania' for New York, USA, pursuing his fascination with American Indians whom he had seen in Buffalo Bill's ‘Wild West Show’ in London. He again returned to England for a brief period, serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1918, but in 1920 returned to America living at Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Cutting his connections to the European art world, he settled in Taos and became a part of the colony of artists around Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962). He had a home and studio on the eastern edge of Taos and replaced his painting of society portraits with that of Indian subjects, landscapes, and still life. John Young Hunter died at Taos, New Mexico on 9 August 1955, leaving effects to his widow, Eva Renz Young-Hunter. His work was hung at the Tate Gallery in England and in Paris at the Musee de Luxembourg. He signed his works 'J. YoungHunter' joined.