The Royal Birthday Stakes, Worcester, March 14, 1856: Coming In

Every publisher of the period engaged the indefatigable Charles Hunt to engrave hundreds of topographical, military and sporting plates in aquatint. These are invariably of high technical quality although those after his own watercolours cannot disguise the underlying weak draughtsmanship and lack of spontaneity. A number of members of the family were London engravers, living among the artists’ colonies around Covent Garden, later moving to the Surrey side of the Thames. This Charles Hunt should not be confused with the Victorian genre and domestic animal painter of the same name who exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere between 1846 and 1891.