Bendigo

Bendigo William Thompson, one of triplets, was born in Nottingham in 1811. An accomplished all-round athlete and acrobat, from 1832 he won 16 prize-fights in succession, three against the much taller and heavier Ben Gaunt. He became champion by beating Deaf Burke in 1839, the first match to take place under the new London Prize Rules. Bendigo’s matches were marred by his practice of going down to avoid punishment and the unruly behaviour of his supporters who were known as the Nottingham Lambs. Unable to hold his drink he was frequently imprisoned for breaking the peace. His name lives on in the city of that name in Australia.

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.